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…
Author: Ella
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,…
The thigh burning continues
Post by Ella Yuasa to Hidaka Hike #2 went considerably better than Hike #1. No rain for starters. The ascent was paved (gravel in concrete) and not slippery even though we’d had a drenching storm the night before. Howling wind, rumbling thunder, flashing lightning. So all was wet but no mossy rocks to slide on….
Guesthouse Moriamon in Adiragawa
Post by Ella Maki, a vibrant woman in her 30s, fetched us from the Yuasa train station for the 20 minute drive to her guesthouse in the small village of Adiragawa. The Adira region is famous for mikan (mandarin oranges) and the area is chock full of steeply terraced mikan orchards. Guesthouse Moriamon sits nestled…
Shoyu
Post by Ella After our hike yesterday we took a train from Kainan to Yuasa. We had about an hour to kill before the owner of Guesthouse Moriamon cane to pick us up so we wandered around the town. Yuasa is the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce (shoyu) and has been designated as a historical…