Category: Japan

When we were planning our itinerary with Katie, she mentioned that she’d like to visit an onsen. As if I needed any excuse! I decided it was about time we went all out and visited a whole town dedicated to bathing, and so we picked Kinosaki Onsen as our next stop. This is a small town in northern Kansai that offers an all-you-can-bathe pass for its seven public bath houses fed from a natural hot spring.

As soon as we arrived on the train from Kyoto, we got stuck in. We’d read that there were free foot spas dotted around the town and we found one in the cafe below our accommodation, which was a great warm up for the afternoon’s activities (combined with some canelé and – oddly enough – Costa coffee).

The next step was to get dressed in the appropriate attire for visiting the baths, and handily enough, our accommodation had a whole room of yukata for us to choose between and borrow for the day. Oli went all out in a navy ensemble and looked totally splendid. When he added the straw handbag also provided by our hotel, he looked a bit like he was off to market, at which point Katie and I totally lost it! To be fair, it turned out that he’d got his outfit absolutely right and no one gave him a second glance – except me and Katie, who were still struggling to regain our composure as we shuffled down the street in our tabi (toe socks) and geta (wooden shoes).

The town itself was really pretty, centred around a canal lined with willow trees and traditional buildings. First, we visited Satono Yu Onsen, the biggest of the public baths, which had several pools and saunas inside and an outdoor bath on the roof. Next, we turned what should have been a quick ten-minute walk to Goshonoyu Onsen into a soggy half-hour epic through the rain – we certainly didn’t have Geisha-level skills in walking in our yukata and geta! Thankfully, it was worth the wobbly and puddly walk because this onsen had a really pretty set of outdoor baths in a waterfall (sadly no photos as there were lots of naked people around).

After these two baths (which were SO hot), we were ready for a break and decided that it was time for an early dinner, as the town seemed to be rapidly closing for the night. Unfortunately, we couldn’t turn the tide and by 6pm everything was shut! We had to resort to a supermarket sweep in a convenience store and then Oli and I hosted a very sophisticated dinner party (with beer, thankfully) in our room. So, no snow crab for us (the local winter speciality). We’re still not quite sure what happened! Everything we’d read suggested that Kinosaki Onsen was more lively than most onsen towns, and this was peak season. Oh well, you win some, you lose some…

After our actually-quite-tasty dinner, I was determined to get my money’s worth from my day pass to the baths, so I headed off for a solo late-night soak at Kounoyu Onsen. This had a beautiful outdoor bath surrounded by trees, and walking there and back was really atmospheric with steam rising from around each bath house and couples walking together through the quiet town in their yukata.

Not to be outdone, Oli went for a bonus early-morning soak the next day at Ichinoyu Onsen, which had outdoor baths set into a cave. This sounded really cool, but his walk wasn’t quite so relaxed as he came across several warning signs for wild bears, not quite what you want to see when out alone in the early morning! Thankfully, he had a bear-free morning and we caught our train back to Kyoto without too much incident.

Sadly, this was where we had to say goodbye to Katie, as she was heading back to Tokyo to catch a flight and we were on our way to Nara to make some new friends 🦌. We had the best 10 days exploring more of Japan together – thank you so much for coming, Katie, and bringing a whole new level of organisation, water wipes and snacks to our trip! And big thanks and kudos to Andy for holding the fort at home…

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.

This is the second part of a bumper post covering our time in Tokyo with Katie (see yesterday’s post for part I).

Day two: A palace, soba noodles and manga

We had another clear day, so headed to the Imperial Palace gardens to explore. The gardens within the inner moat were closed, but since we’d read that what you could see inside was quite limited because the Emperor still lives here, we weren’t too disappointed. Instead, we explored Kokyo Gaien National Garden, which has views of the palace and moat.

I think we were secretly all slightly relieved that the main palace gardens were closed, as we’d had another late start and were ready for lunch! We’d had soba (buckwheat noodles) several times since arriving in Japan, but always served hot. To us, this seemed the natural way to order them, but we started to notice that most other people ordered them cold, so I gave it a go when we visited Kanda Matsuya. They were delicious and perfect for a light lunch.

Our next stop was Akihabara, Tokyo’s home of subcultures like anime and manga, and unusual eating establishments like maid cafes. We’d already paid a brief visit with George and Erin, but Katie didn’t want to miss out. Unfortunately, she was still feeling the effects of jetlag and promptly fell asleep in a coffee shop! She headed back to the apartment for a proper nap while Oli and I stuck around to delve a bit deeper into some of the niche interests represented in the area. In record time, things got…weird! We learnt that manga really does have something for all ages, shall we say. On a more innocent note, Oli and I raced each other on a motorbike arcade game and, after a number of dramatic crashes and running out of time to do even one lap, established that I should not be allowed to ride one in real life (although I think we knew that already).

Given that walking is our only real exercise these days and we’ve been eating vast quantities of excellent food, we took a walk back to our apartment instead of taking the train. On the way, we passed through the buzzy Ameyoko market street, which was yet another side of Tokyo we’d not yet seen. Unfortunately, the temptation to bend our route around visiting Asakusa Beer Kobo (a highly rated craft beer joint) was too much and we immediately undermined any benefits of having walked an extra few miles, particularly when we ordered some fried chicken as a pre-dinner snack!

Later that evening, we met back up with Katie and had our first tangible experience of the suspicion of foreigners that we’d heard about when we were refused entry to an izakaya – we’d not even stepped foot inside or opened our mouths before the owner blocked the doorway and told us that entry was for Japanese-speaking guests only. We might have been fluent speakers! As we weren’t, we tried not to be too offended and moved onto a much friendlier establishment that served sake in quite possibly the finest vessel we’d ever seen.

Since the transport in Japan was so well organised, we couldn’t really introduce Katie to our favourite game of public transport roulette, so instead we gave her an experience of another, equally risky, game we sometimes play inadvertently: dinner payment chicken. The rules are simple: go to an establishment that you think will accept credit cards, order with enthusiastic abandon, watch anxiously as everyone else settles up with cash and then keep up a confident demeanor when the bill arrives before frantically checking whether you have enough to actually pay. Extra points are awarded if the staff don’t notice you borrowing a menu to estimate what you might owe to decide whether you can afford another round of drinks (we couldn’t)! This was our closest shave yet, and we had the equivalent of about 30 pence between us after paying the bill 😬

Day three: Divide and conquer

It was grey and rainy on our final day in Tokyo, so we parted ways to find some indoor fun.

Katie and I headed to Shibuya City for a delicious sushi lunch at Katsumidori Seibu Shibuya (another item from her Japan to-do list). We feasted from the conveyor belt and also by ordering from an iPad that was placed in each one-person booth. Our top pick was the seared sardine, which was a bite-sized piece of smoky, melt-in-your mouth deliciousness. We shared most dishes and had to do a lot of precarious passing of delicate pieces of sushi under and around the screens installed between each seat – I’m still not totally certain how much all the individual booth dining in Japan has to do with Covid and how much was already there to give people privacy while they eat. In any case, we were very proud that, despite lots of temptation passing us on the conveyor belt, we were restrained enough to spend only the equivalent of about £5 each!

Next, we spent some time shopping and exploring the hipster lanes of Harajuku. Katie spent an inordinate amount of time in a stationery store while I drank coffee, so we were both happy!

Meanwhile, Oli headed for the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (via lunch at a ramen joint, obvs).

Although this museum’s primary purpose seemed to be to encourage children to build an interest in science and technology, I promise I wasn’t the only one there without any kids! The museum curators seemed to love an analogy, and had a particular soft spot for marble runs. So much so that they’d managed to illustrate a whole range of complex concepts with separate marble runs, such as the Internet, disaster risk management, and the carbon cycle. I’m not sure I really got under the skin of any of these topics, but the exhibits were strangely mesmerising.

Oli

That evening, we met up again to pay a brief visit to the d47 Museum and then to see the Shibuya Crossing (another sight we visited with George and Erin a couple of weeks ago) on a busy weekend evening.

This seemed like a fitting way to end our second visit to Tokyo, and we were all excited to be heading to Kyoto on the bullet train the following day.