Osaka hotel confirmed

Booked the hotel for the one and only night we will spend in Osaka. Initially I was considering the Namba Oriental Hotel but a last minute check on Tripadvisor pulled me towards Hotel Ichiei instead.

Their semi-western Japanese rooms look interesting. I booked one of those which can sleep three and another Japanese room which sleeps five. For 5000yen a night per adult and 4500yen per child, I think its reasonable.

The hotel is right on top of the Namba Nankai station, a mere 2min walk away. This places us right in the heart of downtown Osaka, near Dotonbori. We plan to spend the day either going up to the Minka koen in northern Osaka or just hanging around the downtown area. Having been to the Tempozan area and the aquarium the last time, we don't want to revisit. Another option is to try Universal Studios but I am not keen since many of the rides are 3D or 4D rides (a big no-no for me since I am prone to motion sickness) and quite a number would have height restrictions.

Osaka would also be a good time for us to split up for an afternoon if we really want to. After more than a week of being in each other's hair, it would be good to go off on separate adventures for a while to recoup some lost space!

Looking forward to the neon zones, food and street life of Dotonbori and after that, a good night's rest at Ichiei!

Getting under the Japanese skin

Someone commented that going to Japan is like seeing Singapore from a different perspective. I thought I caught a whiff of a sneer in that comment. It did make me think though, why I was so fascinated with the place.

Well, first I think the comment is not invalid or unfair. I think Japan had a big influence on Singapore when we were growing ourselves into an economic miracle. The whole 'productivity' and 'courtesy' campaigns we had in the early days certainly had some root in Japanese work ethic and culture. Our efficiency, while still at very high levels, is not honed to an art which the Japanese have - the way they run their trains and the way we run ours is testimony!

The Japanese view of the end being more than justified the means is also not dissimilar as well - witness our ruthlessly relentless pursuit of new and modern and 'better' at the cost of sacrificing the 'older' or 'shabbier' eg our approach to building conservation (case in point the sacrifice of the old brick National Library building for a road tunnel that cuts travel time by less than 3min!). Practicality wins over sentiment most of the time. In Japan too, there has been a price to pay for relentless modernization, for endlessly building and building and this is discussed in Alex Kerr's book Dogs and Demons. In many places, the Japanese landscape has changed beyond recognition thanks to over-enthusiastic construction work and almost everywhere, some degree of environmental degradation has set in.

But yet, there is a lot more to the picture. I am fascinated by their mindset of community before self. Despite the flamboyance of the geisha and the cosplayers in Harajuku, the sense of individuality is very much subdued. I read somewhere (in "Lost Japan" I think!)that while the cosplay kids revel in the attention they get, once its sunset, they pack up, change into their ordinary clothes and ride the train back home to their usual lives. And while expressions of fashion like this is tolerated and indulged, you will find that most, once out of school and wearing the mantle of adulthood, will just conform to the usual social order and social norms. In this sense again, I wonder how different we are from the Japanese.

The Japanese code of bushido, or the way of the warrior, is another fascination. The sense of honour (and shame) that they have, in the old days to commit seppuku and today, to resign in face of disappointment or scandal, is interesting to read about.

I am no Japanese scholar and I am probably scratching the skin of the surface only and can never hope to do justice to this topic. But I remain a curious bystander and observer of these issues. When I go to Japan, the things I read - good, bad and ugly - all help to give a deeper depth and breadth to my travel experiences. So while I can appreciate the architecture of a gassho-zukuri house or a machiya, I can equally lament the loss of a changing landscape in preference for 'modernity' and efficiency.

Hence to me, when I research a destination, its not just about where to go and which train to catch and what to see. I like to go beyond the travel guidebooks to books that try to penetrate the Japanese skin. Alex Kerr's books "Dogs and Demons" and "Lost Japan" are staples on my bookshelf. Right now, the bio of Saigo Takamori gives insight into the mindset of the last samurai and the way of the warrior. "Hitching A Ride with Buddha" sketches caricatures and portraits of the average Japanese in his Honda picking up a hitchhiker and letting him glimpse a peek into their lives. Lafcadio Hearn's writing on Japanese supernatural tales give shivery insight into one aspect of Japanese folklore.

All these books are but pieces of a gigantic puzzle I am trying to piece together. Bits and pieces of clues to a larger picture. I don't think I can ever get there, but it sure is fun to try!

Finetuning Kyoto

Now that the main skeleton of the itinerary is done, all that is left is to fill in the spaces and fatten it up a bit with details.

In Kyoto, we only have one and a half days. It is certainly not enough to cover everything. In fact, I think even if we had stayed in Kyoto for months, it would not be enough to cover everything! Wise ones who visit and stay in Kyoto have said that the city offers so many tiny fascinating little nooks and crannies that it would be hard to discover them all even if you stay for a lifetime.

Well, I don't have a lifetime to spend in Kyoto (unfortunately!) and since we have been there before, and I want to cover more ground in the rest of Japan, we'll just have to make do with one and a half days. I console myself that this means I just have to keep coming back!

My options are:

1) half day in Kibune and Kurama. As Janice suggested, take the Eizan rail line from Demachiyanagi (only 30min ride) to Kurama. Kurama is known for its onsen and Kuramadera while Kibune's shrine is known for its waters with healing powers. Apparently its known as the 'Lourdes of Japan'! Well, having been to the original Lourdes, it is certainly tempting to head for this one. The deity there is also known for granting wishes pertaining to marriage. It sounds so very interesting to me - especially since KH works in the water industry! I think Kibune and Kurama is off the beaten track but will still have lovely autumn foliage to show off. Janice recommends an evening visit where the maples are lit up. Lovely!

2) Exploring the Northwest sector of Kyoto. We have not been here and covered the main sights of Ryoanji and Kinkakuji. Now how could any traveller worth his salt, come to Kyoto and not see these iconic sights? Yet I feel that coming here would be to jostle with crowds and just ticking off the sights as if on some checklist - which is not the way I like to travel. Still, seeing Kinkakuji with the phoenix all aglow on top against fiery autumn leaves would be a treat. My beef also is that the transport connections to the northwest are not fantastic and I would hate to have a long commute by bus! Recently though, I 'discovered' the highly under-rated Koto-in and Obai-ji, all part of the Daitokuji complex. Literally a warren of lanes in a 'temple village' where so many sub-temples congregate, Daitokuji sounds like an interesting place to visit. I could probably combine this with Ryoanji and Kinkakuji - making it a full day trip.

3) Sticking to the tried but true eastern hills of Kyoto - Higashiyama. We covered it in bits and pieces the last time and I think we did not do justice to the place. Last trip, we barely made inroads into Nanzen-ji, we skipped Eikando and barely made it 10min into the Philosopher's Walk before we gave up, headed downhill for ramen and bussed down to Chawanzaka and up to Kiyomizudera. Boy was that a long walk uphill! Even at Kiyomizudera, we missed a lot of stuff since it was near dark and closing time, wet and drizzly. We saw the beautiful stage, but missed the Jishu jinja the 'love shrine'. Because it as cold/wet, we went quickly downhill after that and did not walk around the older lanes of Ninnenzaka etc. We also missed Gion, Yasaka Jinja etc. So this time, I am thinking of revisiting Kiyomizudera and covering more ground in the area.

4) Visit the Toji flea market (which we also missed the last time) for nice 2nd hand kimono buys, and then heading to Nara for half a day. We don't intend to go to Horyuji, but just to Todaiji, Kasuga shrine and the general area of Nara park. The kids would enjoy feeding the heavenly messangers of the gods I'm sure! But KH said, we get the heavenly messangers at Miyajima too! A deer is a deer is a deer right?

So I'm really in a fixed. Over the past few days, I have narrowed down my options to these 4 combinations. I'd really love to do them all but its just not possible. The only thing to do is to get in from Kanazawa as early as possible so that we'd have as much daylight time in Kyoto on the first day, leaving us more time to cover more ground in the second day.

Decisions, decisions - such fun to ponder these dilemma.

Our JR passes are here!

Its past 10pm and I'm just home from Ion after picking up my JR passes. Very excited to now have this in hand and I feel like the trip is one step closer! We bought the 14-day JR Pass at SGD$673 per adult or 45100yen, after a 5% discount. All in, our passes cost (including Vivian's) SGD$4039. Funnily I thought I'd wince at the amount but I am not - guess the excitement factor overrules all else at the moment!

Dormy Inn Kanazawa

Finally managed to get two nights in this business hotel near the railway station at Kanazawa.

After weeks of trawling hotel search engines and reading reviews, I came to the conclusion that Kanazawa lacks hotels with the X-factor for me. Yes, they have ryokans, inns, the usual cookie-cutter array of business hotels and the expensive tourist hotel groups. But these lack the oomph and personality I am looking for.

I checked out some ryokans but they left me feeling 'meh' and the reviews were lukewarm at best, ranging from the usual superlatives to criticisms on hygiene and cleanliness. The photographs also did not give me much to look forward to.

Given that the night before Kanazawa would be spent in Shibu Onsen, a hard act to follow, anything in Kanazawa would be less than exciting. So I made the decision to keep the budget tighter and head for a business hotel. The hotel that garnered the best reviews came from Dormy Inn Kanazawa, near the railway station. It was value-for-money for a hotel in its class, had a big public bath on the rooftop and the rooms looked far better, more spacious and more pleasantly fitted than any of its equivalents such as the Toyoko Inn range.

Still, once I settled on Dormy Inn I had a hard time making reservations - I just could not find an English site to do this and Rakuten, for some reason, had shut me out of making any reservations on its website. So I was dawdling on any decision on Kanazawa until sometime last week. I did one last check and found that Rakuten was again accepting reservations for Dormy Inn, with new offerings for the coming autumn/winter season.

Happily, I managed to book two rooms for two nights - one is a Japanese room for five and the other a semi-Western room for four. Best part was that kids below 12 sleep free.

We will come in late on the first night, travelling from Yudanaka (Shibu Onsen) to Nagano, and from there to Naoetsu, changing trains to Kanazawa. If time permits (though I think this is near impossible given that night comes much earlier in late autumn and travel hours are already high at 3.5hrs for the whole trip) we might sneak part of the journey through the magnificent Kurobe Gorge. Was told that we might see early snowfall and the scenery on a single-gauge track is said to be very nice! Given time (how many times have I said this!) the journey through Kurobe Gorge is worth breaking a night since there are numerous onsen ryokans lining the route, some of whom have rotemburos with stunning gorge/river views. Paradise for soakers like me. Ah well, next time...

But I digress. Back to Kanazawa. First night we'll come in late and so I imagine we will sink gratefully into our futons at Dormy Inn, a mere 3-min walk away from the station. The short distance from the station was another big 'pull' factor for me since I can't imagine persuading a bunch of tired kids plus my mother and my cold-averse sister to lug their luggage, change bus, walk great distances etc to get to a hotel.

The next day we will cover at least Kenrokoen early in the morning (I feel like a weird mix of boot camp sergeant, shepherd and baby-sitter here!) and then in no order, Seisonkaku villa in Kenrokoen, the Nogura samurai house in the Nagamachi district, popping over to Ninja-dera or more correctly, Myoruji (which is said to be lots of fun with all its Ninja trick walls, hidden rooms, escape hatches and so on) and perhaps by evening, walk through the Higashi Chaiya district, full of old wooden geisha houses and tea houses.

Kokuya Ryokan, Shibu Onsen

Okay, I just have to blog this. I am SO excited right now. If you can see me, I am simultaneously hopping in my seat and grinning from ear to ear. If I were alone, I would be screaming in glee!!

Our Japan itinerary is slowly but surely taking shape. I have confirmed accomodation in various places already. But nothing has gotten me more excited than my recent (read less than 10min ago!) confirmation from the gorgeous Kokuya Ryokan in Shibu Onsen!!

Kokuya is lovely - it comes with several in-house baths with different types of waters and in various configurations - outdoor rotemburo and indoor baths, to satisfy the hardcore soaker in me. Lovely spacious rooms, 9-course kaiseki dinners arranged to miniature perfection and its right in the heart of Shibu Onsen's quaint onsen streets. I am going to be wrinkled as a prune by the time I get through all of Shibu Onsen's nine public sentos AND Kokuya's 6 to 8 baths, but I can't wait!

Initially, looking at Kokuya's rates (18,000yen per person per night in a standard room), I felt that this was beyond our budget. The other places in Shibu did not look as appetising and reluctantly, I was going to give Shibu a miss. As KH smirked: "Nothing but the best eh? Either you get Kokuya or nothing, right?"

But this afternoon, I went through Zeno's guide again, wistfully looking at the pictures and for the heck of it, decided to just write to him to ask if he could recommend a similar property at slightly lower prices. My budget was about 13,000yen per person. Shibu looked too good to pass up after all.

To my surprise, he was very quick and wrote back immediately. We bounced emails like a hard and fast game of ping-pong and bingo, he'd gotten us great rates at Kokuya - 14000yen per person with children paying 70% and 50% less. This is great news and far better than I expected. Needless to say, I confirmed this immediately.

I am SO SO SO looking forward to this, I can just burst with excitement!

Already, I am seeing us in our yukatas and getas, clacking through the narrow lantern-lit streets of Shibu, going from bathhouse to bathhouse, stamping on our tegatas (souvenir towels - each bathhouse has a stamp so after each bath, we stamp the tegata, with the aim to collect all nine stamps!) and then settling in with a fantastic kaiseki dinner, then snuggle in our deep comfy futons for a night. Can't wait!

I promised myself that this trip, I want a full ryokan experience and I am so glad to be getting this in Shibu Onsen. It will be our one ryokan splurge for the trip and I'm sure the experience will be worth it.

To keep the blog up to date, other accomodation I've booked todate include a wide range - a highly-rated hostel in Kyoto, our usual Family Fifty accomodation in Maihama near Tokyo Disney, a three-bedroom HOUSE - yes, you read that right - on the beautiful island of Miyajima, and a night stay in a shukubo (temple lodging) on the very spiritual Koyasan. So it looks like a good mix - we have nights in cheaper lodging and nights where we luxuriate a little. I think in travel, its good to have this mix so that we don't end up with travel fatigue brought on by too much stinging! It will be interesting to stay in a hostel with my mom, sister and family in one big room (all bunk beds!).

I am also looking forward to our shukubo on Koyasan - where Nov night time temps are likely to go as low as 0 deg celcius! Our shukubo is at the Shojoshoin temple complex, which is near to Okunoin - so very handy for a stroll at dusk to Kobo Daishi's mausoleum.

This is all shaping up very nicely and I look forward to posting pictures and sharing the trip details in this blog!

An almost final itinerary...

After numerous versions, ruthlessly pruning here and there, I've drafted this almost confirmed itinerary to Japan. Takayama and the Kiso Valley is out - with great regret from me and relief from KH who was reluctantly contemplating the 3-hour hike on the Nakasendo! Never mind, just gives me one more reason to go back!

So here goes:

Day 1
Arrive in Tokyo. Leave bags in lockers in Tokyo station. Visit Sensoji, maybe Sengakuji near Shinagawa, Shibuya (definitely). Collect bags and check into hotel after nightfall. Looks very likely that we will stay at the Family Fifty Inn again - because of its proximity to Tokyo Disney Resort. And also because for the price, it offers good value with a decent brekkie spread. Think big boiled eggs with orange centred yolks, free flow of juice, coffee, tea and salad with my favourite goma sauce. Far better than any continental brekkie spread I've had in Europe!

Day 2
Disneyland. We'll buy a two-day passport but our strategy remains the same - grab the good fastpasses EARLY and that means, an early start. So looks like we'll get to see the surreal sight of petite Japanese girls in whalebone corsets, laced up boots and heels and big Pooh Bear hats making a dash for it once the gates open at 8.30 sharp! I will leave it to mom and the sister if they wish to come with us, otherwise, they're free to explore Tokyo on their own.

Day 3
DisneySea.

Day 4
Take the 0948am shinkansen to Nagano. We'll arrive around 1116am, (by the way, all these times are taken from the super rail-trip planning tool Hyperdia which calls up ALL train connections in Japan in seconds! The marvels of the internet!) which means we have time to walk up to Zenko-Ji and grope our way to the path of eternal life (or something like that) before taking another train, one-hour, to Yudanaka Station. Aim to arrive by 1500pm or so. Which gives us time to leave our bags, change into our yukatas and hit the baths! We'll have all night to make the circuit of 9 sentos in the area, but must also make room for a nice kaiseki dinner in the ryokan. This is where I think I might splurge a bit on better accomodation in a good ryokan with the works.

Day 5
This will be a day of hard travelling. We will leave Shibu Onsen early to catch the 0920am train to Nagano. From there, we will take the train up to the coast of the Sea of Japan, changing trains at Naoetsu. We will pass through mountain scenery en route down to the coast. From Naoetsu, we might stop at Kurobe for a short trip down the scenic Kurobe gorge, if we have time. If not, then its all the way to Kanazawa, the rain capital of Japan! We'll probably not have time to do much except check-in but that's good, because we need a break from all the travelling and trains.

Day 6
This is where we wander around Kanazawa. Top of the list at 8am when its gates open is the top-rated Kenrokoen! Said to be Japan's loveliest garden. We must get there early to beat the crowds of tour groups. Other places to see if we have the time: Omayajinja, Myoryu-ji or aka the Ninja temple! Also nice to visit the Samurai quarter, see Nomura House, which is a samurai house now open to the public. We might also visit Higashi Chaiya, the old geisha quarter. Kanazawa is a big town, but its old quarters are left intact because it was not bombed in WW2, hence the preservation of many pockets of old houses and buildings which are worth wandering and getting lost in.

Day 7
Leave Kanazawa on the 0904am train to arrive at Kyoto 1109am. Leave bags in the hotel and then sightsee. Likely to go to Kinkakuji and Ryoanji in the northwest of Kyoto. If we have the energy, Nanzenji is likely to be nicely lit up during the autumn season. Its open till 2100pm I think, so we should have some time to explore.

Day 8
A full day's sightseeing in Nara, feeding deer in the deer park, the gi-normous bronze Buddha in Todaiji and the world's oldest surviving wooden structure - Horyuji. Back to Kyoto for the night.

Day 9
Leave bags in hotel but pack smaller bags for the next couple of nights. Head for Koyasan. Overnight in a shukubo on Koyasan. Walk through the ancient cemetery of Okunoin at dusk.

Day 10
Leave Koyasan and head for Osaka. We should have the second half of the day left in Osaka. Time to do a bit of shopping or visit the Umeda Sky Building and the floating garden observatory? Or go a bit further to the outdoor museum of old Japanese houses (Ryokuchi Koen), since we're giving the Hida area a miss and won't see the gassho zukuri of the Shirakawago region. Whatever our plan, we'll keep it free and easy so nothing is really planned for the second half of the day.

Day 11
We could either spend the day in Universal Studios. Or move on to Himeji for the morning and then finishing it (it takes about 1.5hrs to finish Himeji castle on a tour), move on to Hiroshima and Miyajima for the night. We are likely to reach Miyajima by 3pm if we leave Himeji by 1pm latest. So this will allow us time to see Itsukushima at its quietest. At night, when the crowds are gone and the lanterns on the gallery lit, Itsukushima looks elegantly beautiful. We might splurge again on a ryokan here in Miyajima.

Day 12, 13 and 14
Walk around Momijidani to see the autumn colours, take the ropeway up to Mt Misen and down. Leave Miyajima by noon to Hiroshima, where we will spend the afternoon at the Peace Park. We can leave Hiroshima late, taking the shinkansen down to Kyoto for the night. This is where I am not very sure about the itinerary and will tweak it a bit more.

Option 1 - If we spend a day in Osaka at Universal Studios, then the subsequent days get pushed backwards. Which means we will not have one more day in Kyoto but will have to take the overnight train back to Tokyo, arriving in the morning of the 28th at 0708am. In time for a sushi brekkie at Tsukiji and then hopping on the Narita Express to the airport to catch our flight back to KL and Singapore. This also means we will take our bags with us and not leave them in the hotel in Kyoto as said earlier.

Option 2 - We go as planned to Himeji etc but on day 12, we spend the day in Hiroshima, returning late to Kyoto for the night. On Day 13, we spend the day sightseeing in Kyoto and on Day 14, take the early Hikari Shinkansen, zooming back to Tokyo in time to make the 10.30am N'EX to Narita. I'm just worried that we might be cutting it a bit thin here and it does seems like a hard day of travelling considering that we would be spending about 3 to 4 hours on a train, followed by 7hours on a plane and then in transit for another 2hrs or so before flying an hour again. Does seem like a really long day, and I can expect grouchy kids, which would NOT be fun on long connections.

The night train option looks increasingly interesting since the experience will also be a novel one for the kids - to sleep on couchettes in a moving train. Price-wise, we'll have to pay a supplement for the couchettes and this should be more expensive than paying for accomodation. But might be worth it for the time saved and the experience.

So how does this look?