Power Walk to Your Dreams!

Mount Koya, Japan

Picture the tall cedar trees in North Vancouver. Then picture the ground covered with stone shrines and gravestones. You`re walking on a paved walkway through the trees. It`s silent and smells like cedar. That`s Mount Koya.

It took us awhile to get there. We took the subway to the JR train station and boarded a train that took about an hour to get to the next part of the trip, the cable car. After the cable car, we got onto a bus that wound up the mountain (couldn`t they have figured out a more direct route? That road is winding.) and brought us to the main street.

Deer and Fish

Kyoto, Nara & Uji, Japan

Nara should be renamed Deerland. They should build rides and charge admission. There could be a deer mascot named Bruce the Buck. We went there the day before yesterday. It was very very hot, so we didn`t wander around till later in the afternoon.

The deer were everywhere. They were the small fuzzy Bambi kind of deer, not the big scary deer of British Columbia. These deer were practically domesticated and could probably be taken home as pets.

People were feeding them biscuits and the deer would bow their heads! I saw a group of school girls giggling and bowing to one of the animals. It just went back and forth. The girl bowed. The deer bowed. The girl gave him food. Absolutely adorable.

Yesterday we visited the Manga Museum in Kyoto. It is basically a Manga library where people are silently reading on benches. I grabbed a few books from the small English section and got a bit obsessed with Time Stranger Kyoko. She`s a princess who`s pretending to be a normal girl, but she has to reveal her identity when her school friends are attacked! Then she has to free her twin sister, who`s been in a coma all of her life, by collecting magical stones and telepaths. It was great.

I would recommend a visit to Uji... They are tea drinking and cormorant fishing obsessed. We went to a traditional tea ceremony. The green tea was frothy and very tasty. The women there were very kind and we obviously didn`t know what we were doing. But we sat on the mat and politely accepted what they gave us. I wish that I spoke Japanese, because I feel like I`m missing out on the context of 90% of the things that we do.

Like the cormorant fishing that we did later in the evening. We got onto a boat and just bobbed on the water until the fishing started. The young woman had about 5 birds attached to strings. She would grab one and choke it until it spat out the fish it had eaten. There was a burning bundle of wood hanging off the boat, which I assume drew the fish in? Or maybe it was just so that they could see the birds and fish? I don`t know, but it was very fun to watch.

Food and Love

Kyoto, Japan

I love the food. Oddities: sliced bread that is the thickness of three slices of bread in Canada, liquid sugar in every cafe, and matcha (green tea) flavoured everything.

Whenever we decide to look for a place to eat I get excited. Our dinner adventure last night led us to some cool places in Kyoto. We found a small winding alley that had restaurants overlooking the river and spent some time looking at every display of plastic food we saw. The restaurants along that street were very expensive, about 30 - 40$, because they overlooked the river and the Gion district. All the buildings were low, made of wood and had an authentic Japanese style to it that the main shopping streets lacked.

Since the restaurants there were so expensive, we decided to keep walking. Along the main street we found a place that served pasta. But it was the strangest pasta I've ever had. We took our shoes off at the door and placed them into lockers, then sat at our table. The waitress gave us the Japanese menu and an edited English version of it. I randomly chose a cup of soup and a pasta dish. The soup turned out to be corn chowder. The pasta had in it garlic, small pieces of ham, little fish things with small black eyes and strongly flavoured shreds of what looked like lettuce (but didn't taste like lettuce). It was surprisingly tart.

Now, as I munch on some shrimp chips I bought from a local convenience store, I'm looking forward to some Japanese-style curry on rice tonight. Some other hostellers told us it's good. In plastic it looks disgusting. But I'll take their word for it.

Me in Asia

Matsuyama, Japan

We had some good luck as we arrived in Matsuyama. Taking the Willer Express night bus from Shinjuku, Tokyo was a relaxing experience, once we were on the bus. They have not just reclining seats, but ones that go all the way back. They also have a head shield that comes down over the top of the seat, if you want to cocoon yourself in a dark place. It was the most comfortable bus I've ever been on and I slept on a moving vehicle for the first time that I remember since I was a kid.

Our good luck came with a fairy godmother - Japanese style. The woman across from us asked us where we were going and she offered us a ride to our hostel. Not even knowing where the hostel was, she and her husband took us right there.

The layout of Matsuyama is like this: The centre of town is a hill with Matsuyama Castle perched on top. The surrounding area has a historical garden, an art gallery and if you go down to the main street, a shopping mall and municipal government building. This building is impressive. It's huge, white and dominates the street.

The neighbourhood where our hostel, Eco Dogo Hotel, is located is in the northeast section of town, in the area around the oldest hot spring bath, onsen, in Japan. Next to the bath is a strip of stores and along the streets there are expensive hotels, but there's quite a mix of old, new, rich and not-so-rich.

We hiked up to a shrine today and wrote wishes onto pieces of paper. Then we tied them to prickly little trees. It was a shrine to the God of War, so I hope that gives me the strength to fight this humidity. And any spiders that might crawl out from toilet paper rolls (this happened to Brittany).

At the next temple we went to, a sweet Japanese women got so excited that we were from Canada that she immediately stuck out her hand and wanted to shake ours. We're understanding certain words like 'doko' (where) and 'nihongo' (Japanese). It seems to get us by. I've learned to point at something on a menu and say 'kore o kudasai' (this is what I want please).

We're still wondering what the difference between 'arigato gozaimass' and 'arigato gozaimashta'. That might remain a mystery...

Best places we've found to eat breakfast:

A small restaurant in the shopping mall close to the Onsen. They lead you to a room overlooking a garden where you sit on cushions in front of small low tables and serve you Westernized breakfast like ham and cheese sandwiches with veggies and pasta salad. But you can still get a small bowl of frothy matcha tea and no one there speaks english. It's very peaceful.

The other place is on the second floor above the Lawson convenience store near the historical train station of Dogo-onsen station. There, they serve the most amazing waffles. If you try the fruit waffles, they put sprinkles on it! And it comes with a bright orange sauce, whipped cream and lots of fruit. I had a chocolate waffle with ice cream, whipped cream and banana. I could die happy now.

We haven't only eaten Western food. Last night for dinner we had ramen noodles. We've tried octopus in vinegar (with beer) at a local bar. We're had dinner with rice, katsu (fried pork cutlet), veggies etc. And we've snacked on balls of jelly flavoured with matcha, orange and something else (it was brown. That's all I know). We've had matcha flavoured gelato. And I've had orange flavoured gelato, which doesn't sound exotic at all, but it's a local favourite. Everywhere we look, there's orange candies or drinks.

There's a tourist office located on the shopping street nearby and we picked up an english map. Nothing is in english here and no one speaks it, so we've been getting by with a lot of smiling and nodding.

This morning we were daring and went to a local onsen. We entered and looked lost, so a Japanese woman showed us where to pay at a machine. We figured out the character for womem and men. Also, we saw that the price chart had the cost for children, adults and seniors. It's confusing when you don't know how much something is supposed to cost and you don't speak the language.

A woman who worked there showed us the room where we needed to put our things in a locker. We went into the bath room and saw that we should have brought our own soap, shampoo and something to scrub with. We felt a little ridiculous, surrounded by old Japanese ladies, but we were mostly ignored.

The water was very hot. We hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so I felt quite light headed. I won't go back to an onsen unless I've eaten something first. There's a bar nearby where they say "have a beer after bathing' but I'm thinking it would make me tipsy ridiculously fast to drink right after. We went to this bar last night for drinks and appetizers and there were a lot of people dressed in bathing robes. It made us want bathing robes. They look so comfortable.

The people here are so amazing. If we get lost, someone will approach us and try to help, even if they speak no english. We have only encountered friendly people.

Rachel