:::[day: 290ish. location: Kyoto, Japan]:::
Well, this is now my 5th time in Japan. I really either have to marry this country or start seeing something else. The flight over was less than brilliant. Leaving Melbourne Airport in the afternoon, I found myself literally surrounded on all sides (save for the wall of the cabin) by loud, sub-human, trogladytic Queenslanders chanting AFL football songs and complaining that Jetstar had run out of beer and "beam and coke". Jetstar ran out of said items about 15 minutes into the fight due to the popularity of said items with the proles.
Arriving at Gold Coast airport, we (Darius and I) took a cab to Outrigger's Hotel. The Outriggers is best described as a serviced apartments building atop a pokies venue posing as a "Tropical Getaway Hotel". We were kept awake throughout the night by the baboonesque mating calls of the locals sauntering the streets 14 stories below.
After leaving queensland and sitting inflight for 9 hours, we finally arrived at KIX in Osaka and to the train to Kyoto. I had forgotten how humid and souplike the summers are in Kyoto but we were greeted by fireworks as we travelled by train (perhaps a "congratulations for surviving Queensland" parade) and promptly set out the next morning to Kanazawa.
Day 1-2 Kanazawa.
Kanazawa was everything I remembered it to be. The owners of the ryokan we stayed at were incredibly nice as was the local sake which I procured a 1.8 litre bottle of. They seem to be rebuilding the castle there (by traditional means rather than ferro-concrete) which is welcome. Kenrokuen still remains the best Japanese garden, the samurai quarters are lovely and the geisha district cute. We ended up travelling by express train and shinkansen via Echigo-Yuzen along the less travelled Sea of Japan side of the island to Tokyo.
Day 3-4 Tokyo, Mito, Kamakura.
We arrived in Tokyo and make our way to our accommodation near Tokyo University. The website made the accommodation appear traditional and aesthetically pleasing; and had we slept in the entrance hall this would have indeed been true. Rather, the Homeikan (the name of the "ryokan") was a traditional Ryokan entrance tacked onto the side of what appeared to be a converted 1950's school building. No prizes for guessing which part the rooms were located in. Oddly this time in Tokyo I failed to visit any of my usual haunts (Harajuku, Akihabara, Shibuya) and instead ended up going to Odaiba. Odaiba was a lot of fun. There was a 30 metre tall Gundam there and an 18th century themed shopping mall. All very kitcsh but interesting. Mito had Kairakeun which was the final of the "best 3" gardens in Japan. Kairakuen was better than the one in Okayama (that the Japanese seem to revere for its expanse of lawn) but not as good as Kenrakuen. Mito was nice however despite the small amount of time spent there. Kamakura was wonderful and for the second time I felt like I didn't spend enough time there. We arrived back in Shinjuku and took an evening bus to Mount Fuji to start climbing overnight.
Day 5 Fuji.
Fuji is something that I wanted to do ever since I left Japan 7 years agao. Having talked to people who have climbed it. I knew in advance that it wasn't going to be pretty or even necessarily interesting. That said I felt the need to do it. It took 6 hours to get to the top. 2 of those 6 hours I was waiting in queues. I managed to see the sunrise from the top of Fuji, then spend 5 and a half hours going back down a via a different path (which we were all directed to go via). This "path" was basically a bulldozed track at a 45-60 degree angle covered in loose screenings (I believe "scree" is the correct term for what it was) that caused no small amount of injury for the large amount of people coming back down. The Japanese have a saying that everyone should climb Fuji once, but only a fool climbs it twice. To be honest, once was one time too much. After gettting to an onsen and washing away almost 12 hours of straight climbing/marching, we took a bunch of different trains to get to Matsumoto.
Day 6-7 Matsumoto, Narai.
Matsumoto is a small but very nice city. The castle there is the main attraction and is well documented in Engish. We stayed at a 100 year old Ryokan (Marumo) that was thorughly beautiful and served the best coffee I have had in Japan. The thing that struck me about Matsumoto the most was how friendly and open the people were. Having lived in Japan, I am used to the 2 catagories that foreigners fit into - as MatchaPocky put it we are viewed like dogs, either dirty and threatening, or to be rewarded for being able to do stupid tricks. In Matsumoto I found none of this. No sly staring at the "hen gaijin", no sucking of breathe between teeth nor any of the insincere abasement and congratulatory comments that follow your arrival. People were friendly and honest and the city has a cosmopolitian atmosphere which is entirley unusual for a city so far inland and away from the major centres of tourism. I was finally called a "gaikokujin" (the polite term for a foreigner) for the first time in Japan by an Izukaya owner in the middle of an indepth conversation about why Australians don't eat horse given that we eat beef, chicken and even kangaroo. I had to agree with him that we were odd.
In short, while somewhat light on attractions I throughly enjoyed Matsumoto. We had a brief day trip to Narai the following day which was a lot larger than I expected but somewhat lacked the grace of Magome and Tsumago. We boarded a train to Kyoto and are now staying with Eimi again in Higashiyama. Six more days and I am going to be back in Australia wishing that I was back in Japan.
...so fucking broken...
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