Author: Oli

We noticed that not everyone received an email for our last post. If you were one of the unlucky ones, you might want to check out Soaking up the atmosphere in Kinosaki Onsen before reading this post.

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We split our two remaining nights in Japan between Nara, a small city south of Kyoto, and Tokyo. Nara is only a short 45 minute local train from Kyoto, and made for a very convenient short excursion. The city is well known for its resident deer population, who are loved by both residents and visitors alike.

We bought some ‘deer cookies’ (rice crackers) from a vendor as soon as we saw the first group of deer hanging out in a little park, and immediately a group came trotting over meet us. Some were more persistent than others, with one of them head-butting my bag and his little horns clonking against my metal water bottle. Another even gave Sara a light nip on the back of her leg (although this might have had more to do with the fact she had a piece of bacon in her pocket that she didn’t find until later – and no, she can’t explain why it was there). I really don’t want to give the deer a bad rep though, as most were incredibly well mannered and would even bow their heads to request a cracker. These must be the best fed deer in the world.

Nara is also home to a number of temples and shrines, the largest and most impressive of which is Tōdai-ji. In fact, Tōdai-ji is the largest wooden building in the world, and is also home to a 16m tall buddha statue. The temple itself was genuinely quite atmospheric, with the beautiful architecture accentuated by the smell of incense and sound of the chanting monks.

We spent the rest of the day walking through Nara-kōen, a large park to the east of the city, which is home to many more shrines and temples, some with a beautiful view over the city.

It was at this point that we realised that there was no shortage of deer, with small herds of deer dotted throughout the park. They did seem a little cheeky when left to their own devices though, as we caught various deer disassembling shop displays, peering through restaurant windows, and generally hassling cookie vendors.

On our way back into the city we paused at Kōfuku-ji, another Buddhist temple home to an impressive five-storey pagoda. But of course, the area in front was occupied by more deer, who seemed more than happy to dismantle the small barriers that stood between them and tourists with rice crackers. The best part though was that many of the tourists patiently put the barriers back together each time, only for more deer to arrive and dismantle them once again. The security guards were less concerned with the futile barrier maintenance, and we even noticed one had a pocket full of acorns to feed his deer friends, who clearly knew what was on offer.

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We returned to Tokyo via Kyoto for one last bite at the apple before our flight. The Yanesen neighbourhood had so far evaded us, but we managed to squeeze in a sunny Saturday morning walk before we had to head to the airport. Our route started in Ueno Park which was already busy with families enjoying the weather. Almost immediately, we came across a small festival where local dance groups were performing on a stage to the now pervasive J-Pop. The couple below were our favourites, who performed their final song with help from a plushie character each. I think the song and plushies had something to do with Pokémon, though I’m only guessing at this point!

Our route wound through several traditional, low-rise areas and ended in Sendagi, a lovely neighbourhood of tiny shops and zig-zagging narrow residential streets, which was brought to life by the weekend footfall. This turned out to be one of our favourite parts of Tokyo we’d seen so far, and we explored the labyrinth of alleys for as long as our schedule would allow before it was time to take the train to the airport.

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Our next destination will be Southeast Asia, which has been our target ever since leaving London. We’re particularly excited to return to Vietnam after our first visit nine years ago, during which we were blown away by the country’s incredible street food. We also had some unfinished business to attend to, since our first attempt to visit Hạ Long Bay was cancelled due a rather rude typhoon.

Our background research for Kyoto consisted of watching the film adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, which is set in the city. While Sara had previously read the book, this was my first introduction to Geisha culture. For anyone else that didn’t already know – Geisha are women trained from a young age in a number of creative arts, such as music, poetry and dancing, and they can still be seen on the streets of Kyoto if you know where to look.

Our journey from Tokyo to Kyoto got off to a slightly chaotic start when we arrived at our local metro station to find the line we needed wasn’t running. This was not the news we wanted to hear after lugging Katie’s suitcase up and down goodness knows how many stairs, but after a quick re-plan we found a new route that still got us to Tokyo terminal in time for our long-distance Shinkansen. We even had time to grab a few bento boxes for lunch, and Katie also bought me a cute little dessert in return for my luggage porter services.

We stayed in a Ryokan for our first night in Kyoto, which is traditional family-run Japanese inn. Our room certainly felt authentic, with its floor of tatami mats, simple futon beds (thin mattresses laid on the floor), and chairs that sat flat on the floor (i.e. without any chair legs).

While the Ryokan naturally had its own onsen, it was the food that was the real highlight of our stay. We’d ordered a seven course kaiseki (fine dining) dinner, which consisted of two fish courses, two beef courses, two vegetarian courses and a dessert course. Each course was a real feast for the eyes, which also tested our comfort zone on a few occasions (crunchy fish eggs weren’t a hit with any of us!). We enthusiastically donned our ryokan-provided yukatas for dinner, although with hindsight, I’m not totally sure this was what they expected us to do with them!

On our first afternoon we took a train out to Fushimi Inari-Taisha – an iconic Shinto shrine famous for its hundreds of torii (shrine gates). The gates are arranged so close together that they effectively form a tunnel, which winds its way up and down through a quiet mountainside forest. Guarding the shrine were a handful of fox statues, which are said to represent Inari’s messenger. Inari is the god of cereals, which explains the grain in the fox’s mouth in one of the photos below, and apparently the fox in the other statue pictured is holding the key to the rice granary.

The next day, we took a stroll through Nishiki Market – an alleyway of artisan shops covered by a beautiful stained glass ceiling. Most of the stalls seemed to be selling souvenirs or presents to take home, while even the food stands seemed to offer a fairly sanitised experience. This was nicely summed up when we heard an announcement encouraging punters to take their food purchases to a dedicated food zone in an effort to keep the market clean and tidy. This level of consideration and tidiness just seemed to sum up Japan perfectly.

We later headed to south Higashiyama to take part in a traditional tea ceremony. Sara had unknowingly sat on the special cushion, which meant that she was the guest of honour and thus the recipient of the single cup of tea that our host made over the next ten minutes. It was strangely mesmerising watching her proceed through a series of very intentional and quite mechanical movements to prepare a cup of matcha tea. I wish I’d paid more attention, because next it was our turn to spoon some matcha powder into our cups, whisk it with hot water until frothy, and enjoy the end product. Our host kindly complimented our technique as we almost certainly made a hash of things, but our teas generally came out fine in the end.

We spent the evening exploring the atmospheric Hanamikoji Street and the surrounding geisha district. We loved walking through the dark narrow streets lit by red lanterns, and even managed to spot a real life geisha clip-clopping along the street in her kimono and wooden clogs.

On our last day, we took a train out to the west of Kyoto to visit Arashiyama’s Bamboo Grove. We each took a lot of photos, but none of them quite seem to do justice to the size and density of bamboo. I found the height of the bamboo was even more impressive when I considered that they were also hollow – as was confirmed by the very pleasing sound they made when we knocked on them with our knuckles.

Our final bit of serious sightseeing in Kyoto was a trip to Kinkaku-ji (aka the golden palace), a reconstruction of an earlier temple which was burnt down by a young monk in 1950. As stunning as it was, this was probably the pinnacle of us turning up to a sight, reading a bit of information, and saying “huh” (although Sara says that’s her favourite kind of sightseeing).

Later that afternoon, Sara and Katie were keen to do some yukata shopping so we went our separate ways. Honestly I’d barely taken a few steps before I saw a sign to a Pokémon Centre, and had to check it out. However, it seems like some time has passed since I last played Pokémon, as I didn’t recognise roughly half of the plushies that were on the shelves. Keen to buy something but also knowing full well that my rucksack was already heavy enough, I settled for a cup of Pikachu-flavour noodles. Who knew Pikachu tastes like sweetcorn?

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After a lovely few days in Kyoto, Sara was very excited to visit Kinosakionsen – a town named after its natural hot spring bath houses. I was a little worried she might eventually dissolve given her daily onsen use, but at least Katie was here to keep an eye on her for now.

Another Shinkansen bullet train brought us back to the island of Honshu, where we’d picked Sendai as a base for the next three nights. This was as much for its convenience for a couple of day trips as it was for its exciting food scene.

Day trip 1: Matsushima

On our first day out we took a local train along the coast to Matsushima. The coastal town is famous throughout Japan for its beautiful collection of pine-covered islands dotted across its bay.

Matsushima is also home to Zuigan-ji, a Buddhist temple constructed in 1606. After a short walk through the grounds we kicked off our shoes to explore the temple’s dark wood interior, which was beautifully decorated with golden painted screens. The temple was built by Date Masamune, a regional ruler and founder of modern day Sendai, to serve as the family temple. However, we were saddened to learn that when he died, 15 of his samurai committed junshi, also known as “suicide by fidelity”.

When our stomachs started to rumble, we picked up some local delicacies from a seafront cafe. Sara went for kiritanpo (kneaded rice on a bamboo stick), which she barbecued over charcoal until it puffed up and the outside turned golden and crispy. I’m not entirely sure what I got, but it was softer in consistency and fortunately they barbecued it for me. While both skewers had quite a subtle flavour, the kiritanpo had a very satisfying texture, and their warmth was very welcome given the cold outside.

The real highlight of the day trip was a walk around Fukuura-jima, a small island connected to the mainland by a vibrant red pedestrian bridge. The island has a circular perimeter path, affording stunning views across the bay in the late afternoon sun, which had already begun to cast a golden glow across the sea.

That evening we returned to Sendai to try another local delicacy for dinner – beef tongue. For this, we sought out a restaurant called Tanya Zenjirou, located on the third floor of a covered arcade not far from Sendai’s main train station. Between us we tried tongue three ways; sliced in half (pictured below), thinly sliced and in sausage form. Honestly, the taste was great, primarily because it had been expertly barbecued to ensure it was smokey and charred on the outside while still rare on the inside. I don’t think either of us had expected this dish to be a winner, but I’d happily eat it again!

Day trip 2: Ganiba Onsen

The next day, we travelled 226 km by Shinkansen to Tazawako, followed by a local bus up the snowy mountain to Ganiba Onsen. Once again, I was very happy to be a passenger on the bus as it trundled its way through snowy forests and past ski areas to finally reach our onsen at the end of the line.

While this onsen had typical indoor baths, it also had an outside mixed bath located at the end of a very snowy path. Fortunately, the onsen owners had ploughed a path through the snow (which came up to my shoulders!) as otherwise there’s no way we would have found it.

The outdoor onsen itself was absolutely stunning. It required a bit of a leap of faith to leave our clothes in the changing rooms and emerge into the sub-zero temperatures, but we left any anxiety behind us as soon as we plunged into the lovely warm waters. The water was so warm in fact that we ended up using some of the surrounding snow to cool ourselves down! It was so relaxing soaking in the steaming water, watching piles of snow periodically fall from the heavily laden tree branches surrounding the pool.

On the bus back to the station we decided to hop off at the shore of Lake Tazawa. Legend has it that a local woman drank so much water that she turned into a dragon, and was soon followed by a local prince, and it’s their antics that prevent the lake from freezing over during winter to this day. Alighting the bus here was the sort of plan where we both agreed in advance that it was absolutely mad thing to be doing, and yet that didn’t stop us. The snow was so deep that even retracing our steps in our walking boots was a real challenge!

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After an exciting few days on the move, it was now time to return to Tokyo to stay put for a few nights. Once again we wouldn’t be alone, as Katie (Sara’s sister) was joining us for the next nine days. We were delighted to have more company, and also keen to explore a different side of the world’s largest metropolis.