Post by Ella Kagoshima is a small town of 600,000 people. Compare that to Osaka city with nearly 3 million and Tokyo city with 14 million. Our hotel in Kagoshima is not in an area with many restaurants so we relied on google maps to locate a few choices. We walked into a tiny place…
Author: Ella
…Yaki
Okonomiyaki is a savory Japanese pancake, usually made with a batter of flour, eggs, and dashi (Japanese broth or water), and then filled with shredded cabbage. Usually meat or seafood is folded in. Very thick. More than an inch I’d say. The topping is a Japanese mayo. Bonito flakes are available if you’d like to…
Takkyubin
Post by Ella What a deal. Luggage forwarding service (known as Takkyubin) is common all over Japan. I’ve used it three times now. From Osaka, we forwarded one suitcase to Fujiya Mae, our ryokan on our 4th night of our hike. We exchanged dirty underwear and socks for clean and stuffed little trinkets we’d picked…
Fron city to volcano by Shinkhansen
Post by Ella Osaka to Kagoshima, home of Mt. Sakurajima. 4 hrs 15 min. Not non stop but stops were brief. Be ready to get off (or on) the second the train stopped. One thing about going so fast (up to 200mph), it’s hard to appreciate the scenery. Quite a bit of the time we…
Riding the trains
Post by Ella Japan Railways (JR) is a mega corporation that runs the majority of train lines in Japan. There are branches: JR East, JR West, JR Hokkaido to name a few. Each has its own website and there is no unifying theme for the look and feel of the interface. There are also many smaller…
When the earth moves
Post by Ella Weather and geologic stuff happen all the time here. There is an app for that. Safety Tips gives you the latest info about earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes especially are common here and all new buildings (1990s I think and later) are superbly engineered for earthquake resilience. If you allow…
47. Good Fortune
Post by Ella Yesterday, a day trip to Nara, home to a famous deer park and several temples, shrines and gardens. At Kohfukuji, a temple that originated in 630, I paid my 200 Yen and received Good Fortune #47. Nothing goes the way you would like at first, but if you work hard perseveringly, you will…
Full on Osaka
Post by Ella Time to join the city crowds. See some sights. Yesterday we headed towards the highly touted Dotonbori area. Might have a resemblance to Times Square. Dotonbori Shopping. Long rows of covered arcades filled with vendors. What are you looking for? All flavors of Kit Kats? capsule toys? shoes?UniQlo clothing? Ferris wheels, animatronic…
Bahaha juice
Post by Ella Yesterday we had a few hours to kill in Kii-Katsuura waiting for our train to Osaka. A very small town but an important tuna fishing port. We wandered, were stopped by friendly locals to see if we needed help (we may have looked a bit bedraggled). One pulled up beside us and…
By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
Post by Ella A big day. It’s April 1 here. Grubb’s 75th birthday and our anniversary (16 years married, together 20). Can we give the old arthritic man a congratulations for accomplishing the Kumano Kodo? Hotel Urashima, the most famous resort in western Japan. Situated on the Pacific with the waves crashing practically at the…
In the no hike zone
Post by Ella Grubb grabbed my title “shrine hopping” but that’s what the day entailed. No climbing treacherous mountainsides, no slip sliding, no cursing because the up kept on going. We left that all behind. Today was bus, shrine, train, bus, shrine, temple, sacred waterfall, bus, boat. Topped off by a soak in an Onsen…
Complicated and simple
Post by Ella How to ride a bus in Japan. We’ve successfully decoded the procedure for riding a bus now having taken about a dozen rides. One enters from the rear door and grabs a numbered ticket from a little dispenser. The number on the ticket represents where you got on the bus. If the…
The art of bathing
Post by Ella We are staying at the Fujiya Mae Ryokan, a traditional Japanese hotel in the town of Kawayu Onsen. Grubb is busy working on a post about our final hike yesterday. Onsen indicates hot springs. You can get a scoop at the front desk, walk down to the river, dig yourself a little…
Finally, people!
Post by Ella I’m finding it hard to keep this blog up to date. So many experiences on the Kumano Kodo portion of our trip. The first two days of our walking, we met no one else on the trail. Yesterday our hike took us onto a more popular portion of the Kumano Kodo and…
Shinto pilgrimage
Post by Ella I’ve not said much about the pilgrimage aspect of the Kumano Kodo. The trails we are walking are part of the Kumano Kodo and were developed as a way to get to the most revered shrines. The rugged mountains of the Kii peninsula are a spiritual haven where deities reside. By the way,…