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…
Month: April 2025
Art and the inner hush
There’s always a minor sense of relief when we make it through the fleet of taxis (not to mention armada of buses) bunched around an historic site. So there was a little spring to our step leaving the Osaka Castle and trekking to the subway where we caught a metro that took us to within a…
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…
View from the castle keep
Yesterday morning was devoted to seeing the Osaka Castle and the National Art Museum. The castle, known for its eight story pagoda-style toshu, or castle keep, covers 15-acres with a river-size moat circling an enormous outer wall, and a smaller moat outside the inner wall. Built in the 16th century by the Toyotami clan, it was…
Bowing deer, big Buddha
Took a day trip to Nara yesterday to see the fabled bowing deer. They roam at will in a park that encloses shrines and temples and have an unusual reputation for bowing back if you bow to them first. According to the guide books, this imitative behavior has evolved over the centuries. I bowed a number of…
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…
Dōtombori Day
We strolled the Dōtombori neighborhood yesterday. Divided by a canal, It’s a very commercial part of town, and to say that in Osaka means we encountered block after block of outrageous signage. The first stop after surfacing from the metro was to join Japanese families posing in front of the Glico Running Man sign. It’s apparently the…
Deserted, or just quiet?
A couple of the Wakayama port towns we’ve walked through in the last week, Yuasa and Kii-Katsuura, have been remarkable for their stillness. As towns go, they’re purported to be functioning. Yuasa is famous for the discovery and manufacture of soy sauce; Kii-Katsuura for its tuna fishing. But when we wandered the streets, nothing was observably going on. Yuasa…
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…