J³ (James, Joel, Japan)

We returned to the hotel quite late tonight, so photos will have to wait. Quite possibly a couple of days, since we fly home tomorrow night. (So soon!)

Subway stations in Tokyo (and, for that matter, other cities too) have long been identified by a code – a letter representing the train line it’s on, and a number for how many stations since the start of the line. For the aid of tourists, JR East in Tokyo – along with the minor private lines who weren’t already using numbers – also started using station codes starting from August 2016 – you can tell that it’s for tourists because the station code’s aren’t included in the Japanese “next station” announcements on trains, only the English announcements.

For the JR lines, the codes have two letters, a J (for JR) then a unique letter identifying the line, which is usually the first letter of the line name, but sometimes getting the right letter is as tricky as getting the two-letter US state codes.  For example, the Yokohama loop line is JY. The Yokosuka Line is JO, because the Y has already been used (the Sobu Line shares the same code, since it’s connected through Toyko Station). The Yokohama Line winds up being JH (because JK is already the Keihin-Tohoku Line). The poor Tsurumi Line is JI, because every previous letter has been used (JT = Tokaido Line, JS = Shonan-Shinkuku Line, JU = Utsunomiya Line, JR = Japan Rail, the company, and JM = Musashino Line).

The Sagami Line, which we took way back on Day 3, doesn’t have letter codes at all, as with a number of other lines not actually in Tokyo Prefecture. Yet, I suppose. Neither does it have English announcements. It’s a fairly minor semi-rural line, mind. Single-tracked most of the way.

But I digress. Today we started with breakfast – the breakfast room here is a little bit more modest than some of our previous hotels.

Then we headed out for sightseeing. Today was our only day this trip that we’re actually spending in the Special 23 Wards of Tokyo – Mount Takao, from Day 3, is in the City of Hachioji in Tokyo Prefecture, and we had a brief visit to Tokyo Station on Day 4, but today’s the only day we actually spent all day sightseeing in the city.

Though first we started by heading the wrong way – in the scramble to find the right platform and get on the train, I neglected to read the destination board as closely as I ought, and we managed to board just in time for the train to pull out the wrong way. At the next station, the train we needed to catch back pulled out just as we pulled in, so we had to wait for the next one. Back Chiba once more, we hopped onto the Soba Line (Rapid) for Tokyo, changing to the Sobu Line (Local) a few stops before so we could go direct to our first sightseeing destination: Akihabara.

I mentioned on Day 2 that Nokogiriyama was the first time I’d returned to a place I’d already visited in Japan, but apparently I’d clean forgotten that I visited Akihabara in both of my previous two trips. Today I made it three-for-three. I can’t seem to help it – Akihabara is just the quintessential Japan; nothing even remotely similar exists in Australia.

First thing first, we headed to a place called Takemura for some morning tea. I visited this place on my last trip, but on that particular day it happened to be closed – it was open today. To recap, Takemura, a traditional Japanese sweets shop, in a traditional Japanese building. Mostly I’d heard of this place because it serves as the home of the main character in an anime series called Love Live, but once I’d seen it, I knew I had to visit it anyway.

I’d heard it’s usually completely packed by fans of Love Live, but I guess the fuss has died down a bit, because besides us and another trio of visitors, the place was empty. I decided to have kuzumochi – mochi covered with brown sugar syrup and roast soybean flour – while James had shiruko – mochi in red bean soup. Quite tasty. We also got a kind of tea made from a pickled sakura flower. And also regular tea.

Then we headed back to Akihabara. Mostly we wanted to go shopping for a bit, so we parted ways to wander around on our own. I went to get a t-shirt I’d seen on my last visit but didn’t buy for some reason, then popped into a bookshop for some manga magazines. Then I tried to find a figurine – I don’t usually do figurines, but this one was a really cute one of a character in a series I quite enjoyed recently, so I thought I’d have a look at it. I asked at three shops if they had it, before the shopperson in the fourth shop pointed out it doesn’t actually get released until October. Now if the first shop had told me that… (On a side note, those phone-book-sized tomes in the first image here are train timetables, as sold in the bookshop. And those are just Tokyo, not all Japan.)

We met up again and went to grab some lunch from a place doing gyudon and similar dishes, except that it specialised in the “stamina” versions of them. James had ginger pork, while I had unspecified meat with miso sauce. Both came with a raw egg to put on top, and a bowl of miso soup, and there were piles of condiments we could add in too, like mayonnaise and sauces and minced garlic.

After lunch, we returned to the station and hopped onto the Chuo Line for our next destination: Sendagaya Station. First target, Hatonomori Hachiman-gu, just to the south of the station, as a Hachiman Shrine, it enshrines Hachiman, a syncretic divinity of archery and war which combines elements from both Shinto and Buddhism. The Hachiman shrines are the second-most common type of shrine in Japan, after the Inari shrines.

But the main drawcard that attracted my attention is that the shrine grounds include a Fujizaka, a miniature version of Mount Fuji that mountain worshippers can climb which (somehow) conveys the same spiritual benefit upon the worshipper that climbing the real Mount Fuji does, despite being only about six metres tall. It’s supposedly the oldest Fujizaka in Tokyo, and is built using actual stones taken from the real Fuji. Or so I’ve heard. Quite a nice view of the shrine grounds from the top, though.

Once we were done there, we headed over the railway lines to Shinjuku Gyoen National Park. Originally constructed as a garden for the daimyo Naito in 1772, it became an agricultural experimental station after the Meiji Restoration, before becoming an Imperial garden in 1906, then opened to the public in 1949. It contains a Japanese traditional garden, a French formal garden, and an English landscape garden. It’s only two hundred yen to enter, which is pretty cheap.

The anime movie The Garden of Words by Makoto Shinkai is primarily set in the Japanese section of the garden, which (I think) is what first drew my attention to this place, so we headed over to see the Japanese section first. It was quite serene (aside from the helicopter hovering nearby), with ponds and bridges, and a Taiwanese-style pavilion.

Sadly, time passed faster than we’d expected, and they soon announced over the loudspeakers that the park would be closing soon, so we decided to brisk-walk through the English section and see the French section. The English section was basically just like Centennial Park, only with more “time to go now” music playing over the PA. The French section had a few roses blooming, but it seemed like it was too soon in the season for most.

As an added advantage to crossing the park, exiting from the Okido Gate on that side of the park put us near the next train station we’d need to enter – this time, we’d be taking the Tokyo Metro, Marunouchi Line. We hopped on board, then hopped off again a few stops later, in Akasaka. The platforms seemed to be a long way underground, and interestingly, the down-line trains stop above the up-line trains.

Once on the surface, we headed to see a nearby shrine, but because I hadn’t realised that that map I was looking at in the station was upside-down, we headed south instead of north, and wound up at a different nearby shrine, Hie Jinja. Since it turned out to be extremely pretty, I guess that was a fortuitous mishap. One side of the shrine was an Inari shrine, and it had a long narrow staircase with torii gates all the way up. Tragically, we arrived too late to get a goshuin, but we had a poke around the place all the same.

After that, we headed for the shrine I’d actually intended to visit, heading there down the back streets. The Akasaka area in general appears on my list of places I’d like to visit in Japan, but I neglected to make a note of exactly why. The moment I stepped onto the back streets, I discovered why. Very pretty.

Soon, we arrived at Toyokawa Inari Tokyo Betsuin. Now, I’ve been calling it a shrine, and it’s the absolute spitting image of an Inari shrine (it’s even included in the name) but this place is actually a Buddhist temple, enshrining Toyokawa Dakini-Shinten. Actually, that bit seems to be a little bit of a legal fiction, avoiding the forced separation of Buddhism and Shinto during the Meiji era by going “We’re absolutely a Buddhist temple – we don’t worship that fox, it’s the woman riding on top”. It largely lacked the long tunnels of torii gates, but it was certainly packed with fox statues (many of which looked quite a bit like dogs) and red flags. And surprisingly, though it was past 6pm, I was still able to get a goshuin.

As the sun was setting and it was getting harder to sightsee any more, we decided to head for dinner. Tonight’s dinner was pre-booked for 7:15, because apparently 7:00 was too crowded, but we arrived at 6:45 and were shown right in.

Why did we pre-book? Because tonight ate at Ninja Akasaka, the full-on ninja-themed restaurant. To get in, we were taken down a wood-panelled hall, up and down stairs, past a fountain, over a drawbridge, before arriving on what looked like a street lined with little houses. We were shown into one. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to take photos for this section.

This restaurant has a whole pile of pre-set multi-course meals, and as part of the booking procedure, we were required to pre-specify what one we wanted, so we chose the shabu-shabu meal. We had deep-fried burdock strips, ninja-star grissini (with pâté), white fish and tomato ceviche, and turban shell bombs (which came with a fuse that our waitress lit, setting off a miniature explosion, which sadly I didn’t quite see because I was trying to take a photo of it).

Then came the main course, the shabu-shabu. Basically we get a tray of thin-sliced raw beef, which we dip into a ring-shaped pan of boiling kombu stock and swish around (“shabu-shabu”) for a few seconds. Then we dip it into either sesame sauce or ponzu sauce and eat it. First we had to grind our own sesame seeds for the sauce, mind. Extremely tasty, either way. Also came with greens and ninja-star buckweat dumplings.

Before the next course, the Ninja Master came in to perform some magic tricks for us (no photos allowed for this segment) – both of us thought that perhaps he was standing too close to us, because we could pretty much see how he was pulling off the tricks. He did it pretty smoothly, though.

Afterwards, we had a plate with the sushi of the season, and dessert, which was extremely intricate – a frog made from cheesecake wearing a wasabi leaf hat, and a biscuit bonsai tree in a pot filled with ice cream “dirt” (in vanilla, green tea and black sesame flavours).

I confess it felt a little like our waitress was rushing us at some point, bringing the next course almost before we’d finished the last, but by the time it came to pay the bill, we’d actually been there for close to two hours. We paid up, headed back to the subway station and caught the Metro back to Shimbashi, where we changed to the Sobu Line (Rapid) for Chiba.

Tragically, it’s time for us to head home tomorrow. Kinda feels like we’ve been here a long time, yet it’s still over far too soon. I’ve booked an evening flight again this trip, so we’ve got most of tomorrow to sightsee. Plus, I’ve deliberately picked a hotel in Chiba so that we can get to Narita more cheaply and faster – our JR Passes expired at the end of today.

Today’s photo count: Six hundred and forty-six

Today’s pedometer count: 18,420 steps, for 13.1km

Today’s goshuin count: Three – two at Hatonomori Hachiman-gu (one for the shrine itself and one for the Fujizaka, and the first includes a blue stamp, which I’ve never seen before) and Toyokawa Inari Tokyo Betsuin.

Today’s stamp count: Just one, Sendagaya Station.

Here’s a quick little lesson for those who want to learn Japanese (or who want to travel in Japan and want to sound like they know Japanese). English has a whole lot of loadwords which originally came from Japanese – for example, sashimi, or tsunami, or Osaka. As per typical English pronunciation rules, the stress in these words tend to fall on the second syllable. SaSHImi, tsuNAmi, oSAka. Japanese, however, doesn’t have syllabic stresses at all (though there is a slight tonal stress which I never quite got the hang of). The best way to approximate this without too much effort is to put a stress on the first syllable instead of the second. SAshimi, TSUnami, Osaka. Now you too can sound like a local!

Today, we had breakfast.

Then it was time to check out of our hotel, and embark on our longest period of travelling between hotels. I mean, aside from the trip over the Alpine Route, though that doesn’t really count, because the Alpine Route itself was our activity for the day. Today we travelled from Shin-Osaka to our next (and, sadly, final) hotel, in Chiba, on the east side of Tokyo, via shinkansen.

It was a comfy enough trip, as all shinkansen trips have been, but also quite full – lots of westerners boarded at Kyoto (though not all went all the way to Tokyo), so sadly we weren’t able to get a window seat. We shared a row of three with two other people. I calculated when we’d be passing Mount Fuji, and headed out to the carriage vestibule to take photos through the door’s window, but although we’d even seen blue sky in places, Fuji was completely concealed by very dark grey clouds. That’s Fuji in the third image below.

Actually, one thing we noticed along the way was that all the rivers were running very high. Not sure if that was from the rain or from snowmelt. All the rice paddies seemed to be flooded too, but maybe they’re just getting ready for planting season.

We arrived in Tokyo shortly past 1pm, so we decided to grab some lunch from the station’s food court – we both ordered dumplings from a Chinese-style dumpling shop. I had a mixed box of shumai, while James had got a special deal of twelve boiled dumplings for the price of ten, and a “premium” meat bun. Then we headed to the train for Chiba.

Our hotel in Chiba (again Toyoko Inn) is just a short walk from Chiba Station. The surrounding blocks are full of love hotels and hostess bars, though. When we checked in to the hotel, there was a man behind the counter. An actual man. Never seen one at Toyoko Inn before.

We actually managed to arrive right at the time we could first check in, for the first time this trip, so we stuck our luggage in our room, had a short break, then went out for a wander. For another first-time thing for me, the beds in this room run lengthwise, with the pillow end under the window – every other hotel has had the beds running crosswise… like pretty much every other hotel room ever.

First we headed for Chiba Shrine, which was just a few minutes walk away. We passed under the Chiba Monorail on the way – we’ve actually got a monorail station on both sides of our hotel, Chiba Station a few blocks on one side, and Sakaecho Station a few blocks on the other. Chiba Shrine was certainly a little bit different to any other shrine I’d seen – the main building has two floors, with a worship hall on each floor.

After Chiba Shrine, we pretty much just wandered the streets in a big loop, and when we found ourselves back at the train line, we decided to get some dinner at Mos Burger. I had a teriyaki chicken burger, with chips and a very thick milkshake. Yum.

From the table in Mos Burger, I happened to spot a branch of a dagashiya (traditional Japanese sweet shop) chain in a shopping street built under the railway line, so we popped over there. As a chain, it was all packaged snacks rather than actual traditional ones, but it was still entirely filled with chocolates and lollies and chips and crackers and other snacks and weird things, and it was also full of people buying things. I can’t even imagine having a shop like that in Australia. I bought myself a bamkuchen for dessert, but it’s probably nicer fresh.

We decided to head back to the hotel at that point to actually get an early night for a change. Firstly, though, I had to fix my camera strap – one of the attachment points had come untied, and managed to slip free as we were heading for Chiba Shrine, but luckily I caught my camera by pure reflex before it fell. I spent way too long trying to thread the string back through the hole, until I worked out I could just pull out the string completely, loop a thread around the middle, and use that thread to pull the string though the hole, and it was done just like that. Almost annoyingly simple.

So, blog’s done now. Pretty short, but we did spend half the day on a train. Still trying to hammer down exactly what our plans for tomorrow are – I’d run out of steam a bit by this point in the planning, so I’ve just written “something in Tokyo”. Time for an early night, however.

Today’s photo count: A mere two hundred and ninety-three

Today’s pedometer count: Just 9371 steps, for 6.4km

Today’s goshuin count: One – Chiba Shrine

Today’s stamp count: None

Some Japanese place names are quite a bit of fun. Or, at least to me. There’s one train station near us named Nishinakajima-Minamigata Station. That particular mouthful of a name means “West Central Island, Southern Side”. One wonders how many other directions can get worked into that.

Osaka is the capital and largest city in Osaka Prefecture, and the second largest in Japan, with a population of over nineteen million. Oddly, during the night, it falls back to only third largest, because a fair percentage of the people who work in Tokyo live in Yokohama, meaning Yokohama overtakes Osaka in population when the workforce goes home. Osaka means “large hill”, but it used to be spelt with different kanji, but during the Meiji Restoration, people realised that when the second kanji was read as two separate kanji, it means “samurai rebellion”, so they changed it.

Today we started with breakfast, as usual, though there was a comparatively extravagant spread available, I thought.

Then we headed out for sightseeing. First step was to take the Osaka Municipal Subway Midosuji Line to Tennoji Station. Originally this was just intended as a place where we change trains, but quite recently – as in, just a few days ago – I discovered that Shitenno-ji, a Buddhist temple generally regarded as being the first in Japan, is in the area. In fact, Tennoji station takes its name from the temple.

Sadly, and as predicted by the iOS Weather app, it started to rain as we started walking away from Tennoji Station, and didn’t let up at all for the remainder of the day. Fortunately not pounding, driving rain, but still an annoying all-day shower.

We started our stroll walking in the wrong direction – somehow I’d gotten the idea that the Midosuji Line runs north-south at Tennoji, because that’s what it does at Shin-Osaka, but actually it runs east-west. But the upside of that was that had a lovely stroll through Tennoji Park, and got a nice view of Tsutenkaku (essentially Osaka’s equivalent of Tokyo Tower or Kyoto Tower).

As we left the park, a random person popped out of a house (or shop?) and handed James an umbrella – I had my el cheapo plastic one from the convenience store, but James was just in his raincoat and waterproof pants, so perhaps the guy took pity on him. Although it was a raincoat, the general effect of it is that he was looking a bit damp.

Soon, we reached Shitenno-ji and had a bit of a look around. The temple was founded in the year 593, though most of the present buildings are reconstructions dating from 1963. According to my Lonely Planet guidebook, though, there’s a stone torii dating from 1294, making it one of the oldest in Japan (though while I photographed it, I didn’t specifically notice it at the time). The temple’s name means “Four Celestial Kings”.

We arrived in time to see a group of monks performing some kind of ceremony in front of some of the minor side temples. We looked around at more things, but the main courtyard cost money to enter (and appeared to be half under refurbishment), so we decided to pass on that. I found the goshuin office, and discovered they had twenty-three different goshuin on offer. Not even sure what most of them mean. I got two of them and left it at that.

Heading back towards the station, we popped into a small shrine and temple. The shrine was Horikoshi Shrine – I mostly popped in here because I’d mistaken it for the temple we went to after, but it turned out to be a very nice-looking shrine. Seemed they were also one station on a stamp rally commemorating the Summer War of Osaka back in 1615 – recall that Osaka Castle is also a museum about this war, but they were commemorating it here because Tennoji was the site of the war’s final battle. Turned out Shitenno-ji also had a stamp, according to a poster in the window here, but I hadn’t noticed at the time, and we weren’t about to go back for it.

The temple we visited was Tokoku-ji, and I found it notable because they have an actual piece of the Berlin Wall – and by “piece”, I mean a full-height section of the wall about two metres wide. I’d spotted it as a point of interest in Pokémon Go, so we basically just popped in, took some photos, and popped out again. Incongruously, considering it’s a temple, the road leading up to the gate is lined with love hotels (for those who’ve never heard of love hotels, I’ll just say they rent rooms by the hour, and leave it at that).

Back at Tennoji Station, we decided to stop for lunch – ramen. Specifically, ramen at Tenka Ippin, a chain of ramen restaurants whose kotteri soup base I’d heard many great things about. We both ordered kotteri ramen, James with won tons and me with corn, and it was so very tasty.

From there, we hopped onto the Hankai Tramway, a little light rail that was constructed in 1900 and is still running. With all the rain, though, the windows all fogged up making it a little tricky to take photos. Our target was Sumiyoshi Taisha shrine, but I wanted to hop off a couple of stops early – I’ve been working on creating subtitles for a live-action Japanese drama as a hobby, and several scenes were filmed at and around Tezukayama-yonchōme Station on the Hankai Uemachi Line, which is just a few stops short of Sumiyoshi.

I went for a bit of a wander around the place, while James headed straight for the shrine. It was very interesting seeing the locations for myself in person. I’d vaguely hoped to find the house where the series’ characters live, but there’s no reason that it’s anywhere nearby – or, for that matter, that it even exists in the real world. They’re certainly vague enough about how places relate to each other in the series – one early episode has one character point vague directions to Tsutenkaku and Osaka Castle, but the positioning of her arms describes an area of Osaka that’s nowhere near the Hankai Line.

Snooping done, I made my own way to Sumiyoshi Taisha. I found an “all drinks 100 yen!”  vending machine, so I bought a melon cream soda to use up my ten-yen coins and slurped on it as I walked. Spent a while poking through what I’d taken to be some minor temples and shrines I’d seen on the map north of Sumiyoshi, but when James messaged me to ask where I was, I discovered on looking at the map that I’d actually been skulking around the inner courtyards of Sumiyoshi itself.

Sumiyoshi is one of the earliest shrines in Japan – its construction pre-dates the arrival of Buddhism in the country, and more importantly, Buddhist architectural styles. Basically, it was built in an entirely Japanese style, and it’s the ur-example of what is now called “sumiyoshi-zukuri”, or “sumiyoshi style”.

It’s quite an expansive shrine, though, with buildings all over, and a sharply curving bridge that you could actually walk up and over (unlike other bridges of that style that I’ve seen). Rained throughout, though – and both of us were rapidly discovering precisely how waterproof our shoes are.

Once we’d seen the shrine, we headed to the nearby Sumiyoshitaisha Station on the Nankai Main Line for our third train trip – and our third railway company for the day – to get back to Namba Station in central Osaka. The Namba district contains the Dotonbori canal – views along which are some of the most-often used shots in travel ads – and lots and lots of shopping streets, the largest of them mercifully covered over. Last time, we clean missed visiting actual central Osaka, so I thought I’d rectify that this time.

James and I parted ways again and wandered up and down separately for a while. The first thing I wanted to see was Houzen-ji Temple – a tiny little temple which is little more than a courtyard to one side of a back alley. It has a statue of Fudo which is entirely covered in moss, thanks to the practice of splashing water over it as a means of worship. Wandered a bit more after that, before meeting up again with James and heading to dinner.

On our last visit in Osaka, I made several attempts to get Osaka-style okonomiyaki (Japanese savoury pancake/pizza thing, name means “cooked as you like it”) but was never able to find any restaurant near our hotel, so this time I wasn’t going to be leaving without getting some. Fortunately, I managed to find a nice looking little restaurant on my wanderings, so we headed into there. It was most tasty. The chef cooks it sort of it front of you, then it’s served on smaller versions of the big hot plate that are kept hot when not in use.

After dinner, we dropped by Bic Camera so I could, out of some desperation, buy a new external battery for my phone – I’m getting a bit tired of them running flat in the early evening or even mid-afternoon. Not entirely sure how the prices compared to Australia.

Then, since it had become full night, we headed to see the lights of Dotonbori. Very shiny. Very crowded. Still raining.

Headed back to the hotel by the Midosuji Line again. I’d been vaguely hoping to make it four companies for four trips, but while there is a JR station at Namba, it’d require multiple transfers to get back to our hotel using JR only, so Osaka Subway it was. I grabbed a donut from Mister Donut for dessert, trying to go for something fairly uniquely Japanese (though not quite so uniquel Japanese as matcha and red bean paste). Got a “golden chocolate” one (though still not sure what the golden bits were made of) and wound up costing me less than I expected – maybe end-of-day sales.

Back at the hotel, I did a bit more laundry while blogging. Wound up not actually getting all that soaked in the end, though it was mostly just annoying having to shield the camera from the rain. I did quite like the transparent umbrella, though – not too sure why they’re not a thing in Australia.

Tomorrow is also forecast to rain, but that doesn’t matter so much, since we’ll be travelling back to Tokyo. Thursday and Friday have no rain predicted.

Today’s photo count: Six hundred and eighty-five.

Today’s pedometer count: 22,347 steps, for 15.5km

Today’s goshuin count: Five. Two from Shitenno-ji (the second one refers to one of the Seven Lucky Gods, though I’ve clean forgotten which), then Horikoshi Shrine (a little plainer than I would have liked), Sumiyoshi Taisha, and Houzen-ji.

Today’s stamp count: Just the one from Horikoshi. It shows Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa shogun, and commander of the attacking forces in the Summer War of Osaka.

After my last two trips to Japan, I constantly found myself discovering I’d passed within a block of – or sometimes even right out side – some place that’s a famous attraction, or looks really nice to try. Shortly after my last trip in December, I discovered I’d managed to do the exact reverse – specifically, the melon bread shop I randomly came across in Asakusa by pure chance and street-wandering is actually massively famous in Japan, and people come from far and wide to buy their melon bread. Go figure.

Today we returned to our old Toyoko Inn style breakfasts. One side note, our last Toyoko Inn in Osaka back in 2010 had the Tokaido Main Line passing right behind it. In this hotel, the shinkansen line is quite visible outside the window (and for James, quite audible too). Fortunately, since all shinkansen passing through stop at Shin-Osaka, nothing’s going at full speed.

Then we headed out in order to do something we weren’t able to do on our first trip back in 2010: actually climb the main keep of Himeji Castle. We booked a shinkansen from Shin-Osaka without a hitch (the slowest, all-stops Kodama, though) and arrived at Himeji in almost a blink of an eye.

We exited the station, and there was the castle, visible at the end of the main road. I don’t seem to have mentioned it in my blog from back then, but I’m pretty sure the station was being refurbished as well on our last visit, because for some reason we walked along the underground shopping mall most of the way to the castle, and our first glimpse of the building wasn’t until we were pretty much standing outside the front gate. This time we could see it all the way along the main street, in all its shining white glory.

So we reached the castle and headed inside. To recap, last time they’d just started a massive restoration of the main keep, so we arrived just after they’d closed the building to visitors, but before they’d opened up the observation platform in the scaffolding they’d erected. This time, we decided to focus our efforts on the main keep only, having seen all the peripheral structures on our last visit, and it was certainly an impressive keep.

Six storeys tall and filled with all manner of defences, the keep was built in 1609, and even though it’s needed a couple of face-lifts over the years, it really is quite a nice building. Had to carry our shoes throughout in a plastic bag, though, which was a little bit annoying. Tried to take a panoramic photo of the view, but there was mesh over the windows preventing me from photographing anything that wasn’t directly in front of me.

Once we’d finished admiring the main keep, we wandered back towards the train station along a shopping street parallel to the main street looking for somewhere for lunch.

Most places seemed to be not-food shops, though, but we turned left onto another shopping street, and right onto yet another, before finding a teishoku restaurant on a main road – one of a chain named Munashi. I had a beef-and-egg set with udon soup (kinda like oyako don, only with beef instead of chicken… and with the rice in a separate bowl), while James had “stamina” chicken (Japanese has “stamina” cuisine, which is a dish that helps you to get enough energy to get you through the day – I think exactly what that means depends on the dish, but in James’ case, it had lots of garlic).

After lunch, we headed back to the station, and entered the ticket office. Once again, we found a huge queue, and having learnt our lesson from yesterday, this time we decided to head straight for the shinkansen platform and try for the non-reserved seats. When the shinkansen I expected to show didn’t (possibly because I was misreading the timetable), we went to the ticket office inside the station and booked the next shinkansen without issue. Lesson to be learnt: try the inside ticket office if the outside one is crowded.

On our last trip to Himeji, we were travelling between hotels, so Himeji was our sole activity that day. On this trip, we did it as a day-trip from Osaka, so we still had a half-day. So we went to Shin-Kobe, the shinkansen station serving the city of Kobe (the capital and largest city of Hyogo Prefecture, and sixth-largest city in Japan).

For almost literally right on the back doorstep of Shin-Kobe Station is Nunobiki Falls, regarded as one of the three greatest falls in Japan, along with Nachi Falls (which I visited last trip) and Kegon Falls in Tochigi Prefecture (though signage near the waterfall was much more humble, only referring to the falls as one of the best hundred waterfalls). By “almost literally”, what I mean is you walk out the front door of the station, down a passage which passes underneath, and suddenly you’re already in a tree-covered mountain path. The waterfall is just five hundred metres away.

(An alternate option I’d hoped to visit here was the Nunobiki Herb Garden, a kind of botanic garden focusing on flowers and edible herbs at the top of a mountain – it’s accessed by the Shin-Kobe Ropeway, which travels for one and a half kilometres. Trouble is, by the time we reached Shin-Kobe, the garden would be closing in only a bit over an hour, so maybe it’s something I’ll have to leave for next time.)

It was an extremely nice stroll up the mountain, though – albeit uphill all the way. First, after emerging from the back of Shin-Kobe Station, we found a whole group of people picnicking along the river underneath – some of them even set up literally beneath the station. I was quite surprised by how many people there were – I thought it was a fairly typical summertime activity, but uncommon otherwise, though to be fair I couldn’t really say for sure.

In any case, we headed up the mountain (first passing just a handful of houses) and went to see the falls. They were certainly quite impressive, though a little tricky to photograph through the greenery. A couple of the falls had viewing platforms installed over the river, like bridges that didn’t lead anywhere. Quite a peaceful area, though. And for some reason, large numbers of westerners passing through as well – I wouldn’t have really thought of this as a major tourist attraction. James launched his drone to take some photos of the main falls from the air as well.

We decided to head uphill to see what else we could see, coming across a small tea house above the main falls, then a small shrine, then a lookout area with views over Kobe.

The area maps on the walk also had hand-written maps taped to them with suggested walking times between sights on the walk, and it had another location only a little further up the walk labeled “Ivy Bridge”, so we decided to head there and have a look. It was a suspension bridge with vines wrapped around the cables – clearly added manually after the fact, but still an impressive look nonetheless.

A side path continued on the other side of the bridge, so we decided to follow it up, soon finding ourselves walking along a ridgeline with the ground dropping off sharply on both sides – and an even more impressive view over Kobe. We kept climbing until we were right underneath the ropeway gondolas, but decided it was probably time to turn back. As we did so, we passed several groups of westerners on their way up as well, who (just like us) were following the path because it looked interesting, rather than because we knew where it lead.

We headed back downhill by a slightly different route, finding a small valley which contained Kaiun Fukutoku Benzaiten Shrine and Tokko-in Temple. Both quite closed by this point in the day, but both quite pretty nonetheless.

Continuing down hill, we eventually arrived back at the station. Since we were in Kobe, there was something I’d been wanting to try for dinner: authentic Kobe beef. I asked at the station information counter if there was any restaurant offering it nearby, and there was – at the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel, which we could reach from the station without even going back down to street level.

Trouble is, as a restaurant in a hotel named “Crowne Plaza”, we knew it was going to be obscenely expensive, but hey – how often do you get to eat Kobe beef? And I’m not talking about the stuff they sell in Australia called “wagyuu” – there’s no official certification of that anyway. But this restaurant… let’s just say the cheapest item on the menu (which was just regular beef too, not Kobe beef) cost about as much as a night at Toyoko Inn in a twin room for the two of us, and leave it at that.

The restaurant contained just us two and a couple, so not exactly packed. As a hotel restaurant, the staff could also speak pretty good English – for some reason, I asked for a Japanese menu anyway, though it still had English included all the same. Basically at this place, the chef stands and cooks on a hotplate in front of you. The Kobe beef sets we ordered included more than just the beef, there were also entrees (a choice between smoked salmon and regular roast beef – I decided to have the beef, so I could compare the two, but James had the salmon), a salad, a small plate of pickles, a side of bread or rice (we had rice), and the chef also cooks a succession of vegetables as well.

Let me say this, though: the meat was absolutely scrumptious. So tender, so juicy.

James ordered the tenderloin cut, while I got the sirloin, but when they arrived we decided to just share both. The meal finished with coffees, to which James and I added cream and sugar and slugged down so that we’d look at least slightly refined and full of culture, but we both would have preferred to have the taste of the meat lingering in our mouths rather than coffee. We were, however, both pleasantly surprised to feel quite sated after our meal – we were kind of expecting the usual fancy restaurant offerings of dainty piles of things with jus drizzled everywhere and whatnot, but it was actually big slabs of meat, big chunks of vegetables, several side dishes, and so forth.

Back at the station, we checked in for our ride back to Shin-Osaka, and returned to our hotel. Let’s see if we can manage to not stay up too late this time (but as James is having to tech support things back home over the internet, that may be wishful thinking).

Tomorrow’s weather is forecast to rain. Nooooo.

Today’s photo count: Seven hundred and sixty-nine

Today’s pedometer count: 14,941 steps, for 10.7km

Today’s goshuin count: None, but I wasn’t really expecting any

Today’s stamp count: Three – Himeji Station, Shin-Kobe Station and Nunobiki Falls. I’ve actually been quite impressed with the last bunch of station stamps – Shin-Osaka, Himeji and Shin-Kobe all have those big stamping machines with a lever, which I’ve had trouble getting a good impression with in the past, but these have all come out quite cleanly, and the stamps are very bright and quite detailed.

Yeah, I wound up having basically the same meal again. Whoops.

I’ve done yesterday’s photos, but it’s almost gotten too late to do today’s. I really gotta get caught up on sleep…

The iPhone weather app is almost annoyingly accurate at predicting the weather over here, especially when it’s near enough to get the hour-to-hour breakdown. Annoying because it’s starting to get smug about it, but also because it’s predicting rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today’s weather has been unseasonably warm – they’ve even been talking about it on the news.

Opened with breakfast in the hotel. Some fairly similar stuff to yesterday, though the main dish was salmon.

After breakfast, we sadly packed out suitcases and checked out of the ryokan, and they presented us with gifts of wash cloths branded with the ryokan’s name. It was quite a nice place to stay, despite the expense (and despite the fact that our suitcases had to live in our room’s little lobby rather than on the tatami mats. We dragged our luggage to the station and stuffed them in coin lockers – I’ve been saving my 100-yen coins just for this.

Today’s plans have probably changed the most over the course of working out this trip. My original idea was that we’d walk the Philosopher’s Walk, a nice walk along a river in north-east Kyoto. When it turned out we could only stay in the ryokan for two nights, I changed instead to riding the Sagano Scenic Railway in Kyoto’s west, since we could get there from Kyoto Station with a single train.

Late in the planning, though, I discovered something new: Fushimi Inari Taisha (which we visited on our first trip in 2010) would be having the Shinko Festival today. Falling always on the Sunday nearest April 20th, the Shinko Festival is the most important festival in Fushimi Inari’s calendar, when all the portable Inari shrines get taken from Fushimi to a place near Kyoto Station in order to confer blessings on the area (its companion festival, when all the shrines come back, is the Kanko Festival, which falls on May 3rd this year).

And conveniently, Fushimi Inari Taisha is also a single train ride from Kyoto Station, so we hopped on the train and found it absolutely packed. A great many foreigners too. Not sure how many were going because they were heading to see the Shinko Festival, and how many were going simply because Fushimi Inari is a popular tourist attraction, but there were a lot of people either way.

The festival was due to start at 11, so we were aiming to be there around 10 to look around a bit before it started. It was still quite nice, but far more crowded than our last trip. We headed up the 1000-Torii Path to the first inner shrine, then headed back down the other side back to the main shrine, and when we got back, the festival was just getting underway.

I’d been under the impression that the festival would start with the parade of the portable shrines, but that wouldn’t be until 2pm – the 11am start involved the priests conferring blessings, transferring sacred objects to the portable shrines, and otherwise getting things ready. The ceremony consisted of chanting, reading of sutras, and much presenting of elaborately prepared trays of sake and mochi, fruits, vegetables, fish, and birds.

Sadly, we weren’t permitted to photograph any of this (the illustrative images here are from earlier setup steps), so we just stood and watched. Later we realised that if we headed to the front of the shrine and took photos across the stage (long-distance, like some kind of paparazzi) noone could see us do it. After an hour or so of watching that, we decided to head on – I’d been hoping they would carry the portable shrines by hand, but instead they were setting them up on trucks, so not really all that worth waiting until 2pm for.

As we turned back to the station, we spotted a side street with all the festival food booths I’d been hoping to find. Places selling stuff on sticks, yakisoba, shaved ice, roast chestnuts, and many other things. We decided to get rice balls wrapped in meat, shared a cup of satsuma sweet potato hot chips covered thickly in what we’d originally thought was salt, but actually turned out to be sugar), and shared a tray of takoyaki.

Then we headed back to the station to change to a train heading over to Otsu in Shiga Prefecture, because it was time to revisit Omi Jingu. Because, see, Omi Jingu also had a festival today.

I first became interested in this shrine when I saw it in a movie I watched named Chihayafuru, about a school club playing competitive karuta – karuta is a Japanese card-finding game, where a reader reads out the first half of a tanka poem, and two players try to be the first to grab the card from the ones laid out on the floor that contains the corresponding second-half. Omi Jingu is where the national karuta championships is held every year – in January for all-comers, and in July for high-school players. But aside from that (and obviously it’s not January or July) the shrine just plain looks pretty.

Today’s festival is the Omi Matsuri, always held the first Sunday after April 20th, and it starts at 2pm, making it fairly simple to attend both this and the festival at Fushimi Inari. As we arrived in the park around the shrine’s main approach road, we ran across a small group of kids (with adults chaperoning) towing a small portable shrine with cries of “wasshoi, wasshoi!” (something like “heave ho, heave ho!”) As we went to move on, another group went by, then another.

We decided to break away and zip up to where they were heading, and we found a whole bunch of groups and their portable shrines congregating in front of the shrine gate. Seems like it was a major event for the local community, with each district there with their own portable shrine. They were all taken up into the inner courtyard, and arranged along the walkways around the side.

Then the priests lead a ceremony of blessing, and the portable shrines were taken back outside (after the groups had taken the time to pose for a group photo with the official photographers). James and I had a close look at the hall at the back of the courtyard (not the shrine’s innermost hall, which we could see up the stairs at the back of the hall), until shrine attendants started putting up fences to block access into the inner courtyard – seems we could only access it because there was a festival on, so I feel at least a little bit privileged.

Most noticeably, and in a huge contrast to Fushimi Inari, we were quite literally the only Caucasians in the whole place. Possibly because pretty much everyone else there was either a participant or a relative.

We decided to call it a day, and headed back down the main approach road, finding some stalls towards the first torii gate – mostly stalls selling hand-made items rather than the usual festival stalls, though there were a few stalls selling things like crepes and pancakes and tapioca drinks.

Back at the station, I grabbed a “corn stick” from the 7-Eleven to snack on, then we hopped back on the train. Arriving back in Kyoto Station, I remembered there was a well-reviewed croquette shop nearby that I’d been wanting to try. Well, I say “croquette shop”, but actually it’s a butcher’s – in Japan, butcher’s shops sell croquettes.

The croquettes were sitting uncooked in a case, and when we ordered them, the woman fried them up fresh for us. Like the woman at the stall yesterday, she was also impressed at my Japanese ability. The croquettes were quite tasty, and very crunchy.

We retrieved our luggage from the lockers, then went to queue for shinkansen tickets to our next destination, but the queue was so long I was worried we’d wind up waiting forever in line for tickets, then another forever on the platform, since we’d miss the last shinkansen in a while if we waited in line too much longer. So we decided to just catch the regular commuter express. Unfortunately, it was absolutely packed.

Occurred to us too late to consider it, but we could have (a) booked our tickets at the ticket window inside the station, which had a much shorter queue, or (b) just taken the non-reserve seating car on the shinkansen (though to be fair, not all shinkansen have them). In any case, we arrived safely at our next destination, Shin-Osaka, though we had to stand the entire way.

After checking into our hotel – another Toyoko Inn – we headed out to dinner, eventually finding a teishoku place that caught our eye. I ordered a beef yakiniku set, forgetting that I’d already eaten that before during this trip. Woe! I also forgot my camera again, so had to take photos with the phone. Bah.

Today’s photo count: Six hundred and seventy-nine, including the ones on the phone

Today’s pedometer count: 15,900 steps, for 11.3km

Today’s goshuin count: Also three – two at Fushimi Inari (main shrine and inner shrine, though sadly the latter was just a loose page) and one at Omi Jingu. Fushimi Inari filled my book, too, so I bought a new one at Omi Jingu – it’s cherry blossom pink.

Today’s stamp count: Three – Inari Station, Otsukyo Station, and Shin-Osaka Station