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Japan Spring 2024 - Part All the Rest
A few weeks ago I began to give a potted version of my trip to Japan last March-April, with my daughter and her boyfriend. I didn't get very far, because Flickr (where I keep my pictures for importing to LJ) was playing up - and still is, as far as my main computer is concerned. However, I'm now on a laptop, so I'm going to put just a few highlights here. Just a few because I'm now actually back in Japan again, and will be blogging properly (i.e. in something more approaching real time) from hereon out, d.v.
So, we left you just as we were about to leave Tokyo for Hakone, and thence Kyoto. I had booked - not quite a ryokan but an onsen hotel, situated on the old Tokaido in Hakone, for daughter and boyfriend (D&B) and the next day we made an attempt to take the funiculuar railway (which they call a cable car) and the cable car (which they call a ropeway) to Ashinoko, with the hopes of catching a glimpse of Fuji. Alas, we were prevented by a thunderstorm, so had to go back by the same route, thence to Odawara Castle, where many young boys were pretending to be ninjas (a ninja TV series partly filmed there having been recently broadast (House of Ninjas, if you have Netflix). Fuji did peep out in time to be spotted from the Shinkansen, however.
An overcast Hakone
A delicious but almost intimidatingly fish-heavy kaiseki feast
Meanwhile, I was tucking into the by-now-customary unagi-don with my friend Yuko back in Odawara.
Odawara Castle Set off by Some Kind of Dango
Obligatory Japanglish
Fuji Peeks Forth
The Kyoto part of the trip included a visit to Maruyama Park at night (highly recomemended but difficult to photograph, so take my word for it), a visit by day to Arashiyama, where I'd paid for D&B to rent yukata (and very nice they looked in them, even if they ditched the geta in favour of trainers for much of the day), a quick Puri-Kura (sp?) photo with friends - where I look frankly amazing.
Other highlights include a trip to Shikoku - my first time, across the Inland Sea by way of the Shimanami Kaidou. Matsuyama was a really good sized city for us - and far less touristy than any others we visited - to the extent that Boyfriend was asked by a group of starstruck 14-year-old boys in Don Quixote how tall he was. (He thinks they'd been taking bets on it.) We visited the famous Dogo Onsen, immortalised in Natsume Soseki's Bocchan, though it was closed for repairs, so all we could do was pose outside in the most Western way possible. THe main highlight was perhaps a short trip to Shimonada Station, one of many, many places said to have inspired Spirited Away, but definitely glimpsed at least in Makoto Shinkai's Suzume.
And there I'm going to stop, because I have things to prepare for tomorrow, and I'm already behind on this trip. Please to imagine the Pokemon Craft exhibition we visited on the shores of Lake Biwako, or our meeting with my Russian friend Irina in Dotonburi, the kobe beef in, er, Kobe, the new sights at Ghilbli Park or the pleasures of the latest TeamLabs in Azabudai Hills (and the three-way French-English-Japanese conversation that followed in the restaurant afterwards) - or even our pleasant stay in Akasaka and our constant quest for Bic Cameras where they will do same-day film development.
It was a good time.
So, we left you just as we were about to leave Tokyo for Hakone, and thence Kyoto. I had booked - not quite a ryokan but an onsen hotel, situated on the old Tokaido in Hakone, for daughter and boyfriend (D&B) and the next day we made an attempt to take the funiculuar railway (which they call a cable car) and the cable car (which they call a ropeway) to Ashinoko, with the hopes of catching a glimpse of Fuji. Alas, we were prevented by a thunderstorm, so had to go back by the same route, thence to Odawara Castle, where many young boys were pretending to be ninjas (a ninja TV series partly filmed there having been recently broadast (House of Ninjas, if you have Netflix). Fuji did peep out in time to be spotted from the Shinkansen, however.
An overcast Hakone
A delicious but almost intimidatingly fish-heavy kaiseki feast
Meanwhile, I was tucking into the by-now-customary unagi-don with my friend Yuko back in Odawara.
Odawara Castle Set off by Some Kind of Dango
Obligatory Japanglish
Fuji Peeks Forth
The Kyoto part of the trip included a visit to Maruyama Park at night (highly recomemended but difficult to photograph, so take my word for it), a visit by day to Arashiyama, where I'd paid for D&B to rent yukata (and very nice they looked in them, even if they ditched the geta in favour of trainers for much of the day), a quick Puri-Kura (sp?) photo with friends - where I look frankly amazing.
Other highlights include a trip to Shikoku - my first time, across the Inland Sea by way of the Shimanami Kaidou. Matsuyama was a really good sized city for us - and far less touristy than any others we visited - to the extent that Boyfriend was asked by a group of starstruck 14-year-old boys in Don Quixote how tall he was. (He thinks they'd been taking bets on it.) We visited the famous Dogo Onsen, immortalised in Natsume Soseki's Bocchan, though it was closed for repairs, so all we could do was pose outside in the most Western way possible. THe main highlight was perhaps a short trip to Shimonada Station, one of many, many places said to have inspired Spirited Away, but definitely glimpsed at least in Makoto Shinkai's Suzume.
And there I'm going to stop, because I have things to prepare for tomorrow, and I'm already behind on this trip. Please to imagine the Pokemon Craft exhibition we visited on the shores of Lake Biwako, or our meeting with my Russian friend Irina in Dotonburi, the kobe beef in, er, Kobe, the new sights at Ghilbli Park or the pleasures of the latest TeamLabs in Azabudai Hills (and the three-way French-English-Japanese conversation that followed in the restaurant afterwards) - or even our pleasant stay in Akasaka and our constant quest for Bic Cameras where they will do same-day film development.
It was a good time.
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