Kyoto/Bellbird Park
14-16 June 2026
Hi Marlis,
I can’t believe it’s Winter already again, but we can’t really complain with the weather here in Queensland. I do hope you’re keeping warm and comfy until the sun comes out during the day.
It’s been a few strange but good months where I’ve been so busy that I hardly had time to do paid work, but got a lot done in other areas, so here we go with the adventures from the past two months.
Project Never Ending Garden
Stage one, which was
laying down new turf and the fencing, happened last year and after leaving it
alone for about 9 months and finding out what worked and didn’t, we had a good
idea of what to do next. Welcome to stage 2, laying down 5 tonnes of pebbles.
By hand, because I didn’t want to ruin the lawn with a wheelbarrow.
First, I removed a 10cm deep strip of grass and soil around the house where all the grass had died or refused to grow, ordered the pebbles, laid down 50+ meters of weed matting and when the pebbles got delivered, I set to load them into my two trusty 20 litre Bunnings buckets. I started on Monday at 7am and got nearly 80% done before I got heat stressed, but the next morning was much cooler and with another 2 hours I had it all done and done, including some pavers to create a path in the backyard , it immediately looked a lot better!
Then it was time for the next part, stage 2.5, laying down 2.5m3 of mulch while planting 60 tiny lillypilly plants at the front fence. I first had to dig 60 holes, remove the soil and then plant all of them in one go, I made the holes way too big, but fortunately I had a lot of compost to fill up the holes and again surprised myself with ow fast it went. Digging the holes took a full day and half, but the planting less than 5 hours and the mulch about a day, so in 3 days it was all done. I ended up ordering too much mulch, which I added to the back yard flower beds, not realising I had to move it all out of the way when we started stage 3, planting the back yard. Oops.
Early May we’d
finally found a nursery that had most of the plants we were after, but of
course I had to go back at least once to get a few more because it didn’t quite
work out with the spacing. Welcome to stage 3, another three days of matting,
digging, planting, fertilising and watering and now the yard is finally where
it needs to be, hallelujah! Not to put too fine a point on it, I did all this
by myself, while Yumi was off at work, saved a few $1,000 on labour and felt
quite proud of how it turned out.
For someone who doesn’t like gardening much, I did alright. After 6 weeks, 59 of the 60 lillypillies are still alive and growing, but man is it a lot of work to water them every day! I am curious to see how they are doing when we get home from our Japan trip (I am writing this part in Kyoto waiting to go out on the town one more day).
Yumi’s work, hobbies and volunteering
Yumi is busy as
always, but all with good things. They finally had some clarity on their CEO
who had been mysteriously absent for months and is now no longer with the
organisation, as they say. Doesn’t matter too much for her project and team,
she essentially runs her own ship and the team loves her to pieces, as they
should because she’s a great ‘boss’. Her budgets are looking good, more work
keeps finding them and they get to do a lot of good for the community, go team!
She also did another dance performance with the Choo La La burlesque dancing group and this one was actually fun to watch as it was movie-themed and the dances were less sexy and more showgirl. She’s now also started with the fourth round of the Common People Dance project and that’ll be good fun when they put on their performance in October (I think).
The greyhound charity business has been busy as all get out! We have had a foster dog named Wombat for 6 weeks now and he is a bit of a hand full. We call him 150% Wombat because he does everything with maximum energy. He’s only 3 and wasn’t very good at racing, so he’s been mostly around greyhounds. Which means he has zero manners and enough energy to annoy Dash and me during the day for 8 hours straight! But he is also extremely lovable and funny, so we take the good with the bad and let him settle down while we hope for an adoption request that just came in to work out for him to find his forever home.
The poor guy has been through a lot in the past few months. At the first house, he kept jumping the fence, so that didn’t work. Next one didn’t work with the other dog. The third was a lady who got too anxious with him being stressed, so he ended up with us as the fourth home in four weeks. We first took him off his meds, let him take notes from Dash (who gave us many long-suffering looks) and play with all the toys and kill all their squeakies. He’s an idiot, but good fun. I hope the adoption request works out for him, them and us, but mostly for Dash who is so over having this 3-year old puppy around all the time, haha.
Yumi was also very
busy preparing for the Dog Lover’s festival and other greyhound events, it
always takes a lot of organising to get the materials, people and dogs together
and tempers can flare, but fortunately she’s always there to calm things down.
I just drive where I am told, drop off or pick up a dog, look after a friend’s
dog for the day and don’t get involved in the drama if I can help it.
We also got a massive amount of food donated and then got a call to come and pick up some more, so I dragged 1,000kg of dog food up the driveway in 30 degrees and then another 400kg or so to hand over to a dog trainer who brings it back to Rockhampton. It’s all for the love of the doggies, so no complaints from me and it’s worth thousands of dollars that the charity can now use for other things, bonus!
Work but not actually work
I’ve not seriously
looked into finding a job, responded to a few inquiries, put my CV on the pile
for some roles, but I think I am no longer cut out to be an employee, so should
probably stop looking in that direction and go with the life of the contractor.
In that section there is a small job that I will do with a business in Sydney
through an agency in the UK through the wonders of the internet) and a possible
short term contract in July for Queensland Water of which I’ve heard both great
and terrible things, so I guess we’ll see. Another very random thing came up,
from a presentation Yumi and I did seven (!) years ago at a Disability
Conference. It was her last day at work and we got to do a dual presentation
and somebody remembered us from that. He now works for a business that wants to
try self-directed teams (a certain management style that can work if you let it
happen) so they asked me to put in a proposal after we come back from Japan. It
might be a big piece of work or may be nothing, but it’ll be fun to do this
work and maybe get Yumi involved on the side as well!
I’ve been very busy with writing about change management and finally got around to designing my own model, which I called the Change Loop. It’s kind of boring, so I’ll spare you the details, but it’s something I wanted to do for a long time and now I have. I also created a checklist for more ethical change, called the 4C framework and made good progress on the Conundrum Cards, which have been in development for 3 years and really need to get finished! Other than that I’ve been keeping busy with mentoring others and picked up another mentee in addition to Lindsey, I now also have Rachel to help find their way in their change careers. It’s very rewarding to be able to share my experiences and mistakes, so others can skip those parts and go straight for success in whatever they wanted to do.
I also made a lot of
new friends in the consulting space when I presented on Ethical Change at a
conference on the Gold Coast. It was much more fun than I had expected and I
was glad I got a free ticket for the dinner, which I normally always skip, but
I spoke with very interesting and entertaining people and the food was pretty
good too. It was a bit of a long day though, from 6am in the car (so I could
stop by the beach) and 10.30pm back home. Good way to spend a Friday.
Change Management
Volunteering
Now that I have so
much time, I put in a bit of extra time for CMI as well, organising a few extra
events showing up for others and even starting up a new event on The Gold Coast
and Sunshine Coast if the numbers work. I am working with another organisation
called the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC) and
it’ll be good fun to join forces and maybe get some more people from outside
Brisbane interested in joining the change community.
I also put some time into drafting a set of professional guidelines for our profession, but I don’t think it will go anywhere. Strangely enough everyone complains about our profession being such a free-for-all, but as soon as you mention standards or rules, people get all angry and upset, so I consider it a good mental exercise to help me think through my own viewpoints on it al and that’s okay. You an lead the horse to water, but…you know the rest 😊.
Fire Service
Volunteering
Now that the yard is
done, I had some time to go and fix up the yard at our fire station, which had
slowly been taken over by weeds, so over a period of a week and a few mornings,
me and few fellow firefighter volunteers pulled the biggest ones out and now it
looks a lot better. We haven’t had any fires of significance happen lately, so
we keep busy with other things like this.
Four of us went to a
school where we entertained about 100very excited 3-9 year old kids with
sitting in the fire truck and using the firehose to spray water everywhere.
It’s the best fun you can have without getting paid and a good workout because
I had to lift most kids in and out of the truck and some just jumped straight
out, but fortunately I was able to catch them all. After 2 hours I had my fill
of kids and we were allowed to leave, but it’s nice that we can do this for the
community. We also did a big show event in Ipswich and it was crazy busy, most
people just stopping by to get a free wooden spoon, of all things, but hey,
engagement is engagement and if we convinced a few more people to have a
bushfire readiness plan, that’s a job well done. I only stayed for a few hours,
but if everyone chips in, the job gets done.
I’ve also been getting more training to move up the next rank, called Firefighter Advanced Skills. I’ve done Operational Driving and Preserving a Fire Scene and next up are Mapping and Navigation next weekend, which will be a challenge for me for sure and one more that I cannot remember but hopefully it will be as good as Scene preservation, because that was good fun, learning how to ‘read’ the landscape after a fire came through to understand how and why it moved the way it did. We had one of the 10 or so State Fire Inspectors as an instructor and it was very clear he knew his stuff, which I always enjoy a bit extra as a teacher (of sorts) myself.
I’ve suggested a
new way of electing our officers and thought it would get a lot of pushback,
but not at all! Not only did everyone think it a good or reasonable idea, turns
out that 15 years ago they used to do it like this as well. My suggestion was
simply that we let members who want to go for an officer or management role
fill out a short form with why they want the role, what they bring to the role
and how they think to make a difference. Nothing spectacular, things move
slowly in the RFS, but they do move, haha.
Japan trip
The trip was absolutely amazing, going from Osaka to Tokyo, to Hiroshima and finally to Kyoto. I’ve included our travel diary in this letter so you can read what we got up to every day. I would include some of the 350+ pictures, but maybe I’ll just bring them when I visit you for your next birthday, because a few really don’t tell the story.
Short mentions
· My parents are
travelling with the caravan across the Netherlands and Europe every few weeks
it seems, I love that they still get to do that as it was always their dream.
· I’m planning to add
one more training day to my karate training. I already train Monday and
Wednesday, so Saturday is the addition and a very different kind of training
where we ‘fight’ each other using all the techniques we know for an hour. I am
only progressing slowly because like with most things, I just have to work
harder to get the same results, so let’s see how that goes. In a month or two I
might be ready to do my green belt grade and maybe, just maybe my blue belt at
the end of the year, but next year is fine too.
· I got hit from behind
in the new car! Nothing too serious and we were only doing 20km/hr on the
highway in a traffic jam, but I was so surprised when it happened, I didn’t
even realise I was hit at first. It was impossible to stop in a safe spot, but
I had their license plate for the police report and for insurance and they came
forward afterwards. It was a 78-year old man who misjudged the gap, it happens,
no one got hurt, so all is well that ends well. Now we just have to get it
fixed, which is annoying, but Zappy the electric vehicle will be good as new
soon enough!
· Our friends Helen and
Robert (and Roo the Greyhound) have moved back to New Zealand after nearly 30
years in Australia and managed to buy a beautiful property with lots of space
for themselves and Roo, good for them! We will miss them and the dinner parties
we threw each other, but now we just have another reason to go to New Zealand
Sorry, there’s not so much news to share, it’s been quite busy with bigger things, so let’s see what the next letter will bring.
Stay warm and healthy,
Gilbert
Japan trip #2 Diary
Friday 5 June - Osaka
travel and arrival
The flight was uneventful for its 9 hour duration. The food uninspired, the lady in the middle friendly and mostly asleep and while Yumi planned and memorised the travel guide, I read Supremacy, a book about the origins of OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic and the likes, unsettling and riveting at the same time.
It’s great travelling in Japan, especially with Yumi because everything just works and if we had just stayed on the train we were on, we’d have been at the B&B at 10pm, but Yumi saw an option to optimise and it turned out that it wasn’t quite that, so we arrived 30 minutes later than planned in our very artistic3-storey 8-person spacious accommodation. The stairs are probably the steepest I’ve seen and even a Sherpa would have another think if they’d really want t have a go, but as long as you go down them backwards, you’re mostly safe.
We knew we’d be up early the next morning (we were) so we had time to get sorted for the day then (we did). Our plan is to do as much of the outside stuff as possible, because Sunday promises a lot of rain and that is no fun.
Saturday 6 June -out on the town
The day started at 5am, which is 6am Brisbane time, so kind of late for me, but shopping needed to be done. We’re in a residential area where not too many tourists go, so if you don’t read or speak Japanese, good luck finding the vegan and vegetarian options. Somehow I still managed to get the essentials (aside from breakfast clusters/cornflakes) but one of the seven (!) minimarts surely has them, we just need to find them. On the way back I passed probably 500 bicycles and a few homeless people who have set up camp near the station. That’s a bit different from last time we were in Tokyo, but it’s already evident that Osaka is a very different town with a very industrial feel to it
We were out and about at 7am-ish with about 10,000 schoolkids going to do whatever school kids do on a sunny Saturday morning. There was Kendo gear, sports bags and musical instruments yet everything was calm and quiet, nothing like the feral energy you get from a regular weekday on the Brisbane trains.
We started with Shitennoji Temple, which had a very cool and steeply arched timber bridge and about 100,000 prayer flags and a few cats, it was very peaceful and quiet, good start to the day. From there we took the tram to Sumiyoshi Taisha temple, which reminded me a lot of the Phnom Phen Royal Palace, they might have had the same designer. Lots of Buddhas and shrines, the 5-layer pagoda was very cool and some of the other buildings were built with evident craftsmanship. Having recently played the videogame Ghost of Yotei (you play as a female kind-of-Samurai) I was mostly thinking how I could use my grappling hook to get to the top, but I think it would not be appreciated if I tried, so I didn’t, also, I lack the upper body strength to pull myself up 50+ meters and Yumi would die from embarrassment right after I died of a stroke…). There were dozens of turtles in the pond, doing their turtle things at turtle speed which made this a very chill experience as well.
Our schedule was anything but chill and by 10am we were 300 meters up in the air in the Akulas Tower and that was just the best! The views are amazing and just like the Tokyo Skytree you can see at least 40km in all directions. The city sprawls in all directions until it meets the mountains and the port, everything else is houses and (ugly) skyscrapers. Osaka is not a beautiful city from up high, but it’s impressive how much they managed to cram into such a relatively small area.
On the way down from the 60th floor we passed through 4 levels of restaurants and the 16-level department store, which must have everything you can think of, but we were getting hangry and ended up going across to the park with our convenience store sushi rolls because the food options were too hard to comprehend. Also, sitting in the park with all the families and kids eating and running around was a nice break after 15,000 steps in not-too-hot weather.
We did a round of the
Keitakuen Gardens which were indeed very nice and peaceful in the middle of the
bustle of Saturday traffic, being followed by a crow that didn’t look to
impressed with us and kept a beady eye on us at all times, just in case we actually
stepped on the grass, which we did not of course, we’re not savages.
Osaka Castle was next and that was…not what we expected. It’s beautiful from the outside and we were very happy we had the Osaka Amazing Pass so we could walk straight past the line and then we just climbed stairs to each floor to look at museum-like displays until we got to the top for a nice view and way to many people in such a small space. We quickly got out, stopped by the figurine museum, mostly for my sake, and then took the riverboat for 20 minutes to see Osaka from the water and wave at the people on shore as we were instructed to do.
Once off the boat we made our way to Dotomburi, snapped the picture with the running man and marvelled at how over the top everything was in every side street and along the canal. Our feet were starting to feel the 30,000+ steps so we made our way back to the B&B, stopped by the supermarket for supplies and relaxed a bit until it was time to go out for dinner.
We’ve started using the Happy Cow app and found Shinsekai Paprika Shokudo that caters to vegans because that’s a lot harder than expected. Instead of wasting a lot of time trying to find somewhere to eat, we now just look at the app and that helps a lot. You’d think that vegetarian and vegan food was more popular, but absolutely not, so we learned a thing and still had a good meal. 9pm seemed like a good time to go to bed after watching some very random Japanese tv shows that made no sense at all, but were entertaining all the same. Let’s get ready for a very rainy day tomorrow!
Sunday 7 June – More exploring and finding food options
It started raining
before we even got started, so we changed gears and waited for most things to
be open before we fetched the brollies and made our way to the station in the
rain that would stay with us all day.
First stop for the day was Osaka Station to figure out the Shinkansen situation for Monday and Tuesday. We were hoping to find a bento box to have the whole train experience, but no one seems to keen to offer vegetarian or vegan options so we decided to figure something out for ourselves.
By then it was time to go and see the second tall building, Umeda Sky Tower. The rain kept on raining so we rode the funky escalator, did a quick round of the rooftop, did not engage with the Boyband X exposition and were out the door in 30 minutes continuing on to some of the department stores and a quick sushi snack.
Turns out department stores are the same across the world, although one was like JB Hifi (very overwhelming with sound and visual) but much, much worse, so we fled into the Uniqlo where Yumi bought new sunnies to replace the ones that fell apart yesterday and almost bought a new jacket, but didn't after all. Sigh.
Then began the long, confusing and frustrating search for our lunch place across many floors, twists and turns and even led to us sitting down to the realise it was the wrong place, but I left my very comfy vest there and had to accept we will never find that cafe again. The quest continued and after giving up 3 times, but not really, we finally found Secondroom or Vegan and Gluten free Osaka, you choose, they won’t tell you because veganism should be hard and that includes finding restaurants!. After all that drama, we had a lovely chat with the Angelino waiter about language and living in Japan and the food was very good, even if it was a very big lunch of okonomiyaki, gyoza and mushroom dough balls. Burp!
Refuelled, we were ready to go back to Den Den (Electricity) Town to look at some of the stores, stroll through the aptly named Cooking Alley that had everything you could ever need in the kitchen, including fake sushi and other food items that were surprisingly expensive. We then continued on to the Joshin Toy Store which was a very cool five floors of everything die cast, model trains, airsoft guns, figurines and model build kits. I think all the men were there because they wanted to, the 3 women I saw… were mostly there to make sure the men left at some point.
Eventually we left too, back to the B&B, again, for some well-deserved rest for our feet before heading out to the noodle place for some Udon and Ramen and even though we forgot our pocket wifi, we figured it out all the same. Good meal, bit salty, but after the big lunch we had it was just right.
Back through the rain
once more with Yumi navigating us safely back as always, I just follow along
and try to keep up! We go to bed at 9.30 because tomorrow is a 4.50am start for
Tokyo!
Monday 8 June – Tokyo Time!
The early start wasn’t too bad, even if there was a bit of rain on the way to the station, we got there mostly dry and on time to explore the many, many, many food options. Out of all of the literal 1,000s, 1 was vegan, which Yumi found of course and we brought our own travel snacks so we were all set and ready for a very fast train ride into Tokyo, 600km from Osaka, taking only 2.5 hours and not a minute more! It was my first time on the Shinkansen and it’s pretty cool. I mean, it’s still a train, but very fast and it has a very funny nose, lots of leg room and you get to see what other people are doing while the landscape rushes past.
There’s rice paddies,
raging rivers, the mountains in the distance and then up close after another
tunnel, mostly miniature cars (where are all the Toyota Corollas?) and not that
many people. We made a few stops along the way, but arrived in Tokyo at 9.45am
on the dot to get Yumi’s passport application sorted at the Luxembourg Embassy
at 3.30pm, so we had some time to ourselves.
Now, we had been to Tokyo almost 10 years ago to the day and had done most of the touristy things already, so we decided to not go across the crossing, see the palace and rush up the SkyTree (all very cool) but instead went to Yanaka. It’s a quaint part of Tokyo, somehow obsessed with cats and because it was Monday and still early, not much happening, which was just as we like it. We walked around a bit, pointing things out and somehow talking about the sandbags for the Love a Greyhound Marquee, but eventually we ended up in a park where we found some shelter from the drizzle that started and then got more serious to eat our lunch bento box which was a lot of fun, trying to find out what was what. Turns out the pickle is the worst item, but Yumi let me taste it first so she could avoid it…Nice.
With the rain not letting up, we bought two bigger umbrellas, after which the rain promptly stopped, so I carried them around the rest of the day awkwardly, as I do.
We decided Ginza shopping town would be a good place to go and the Uniqlo flagship store would be the starting point. Imagine hell, but everyone is super friendly, with 1,000,000 people all wanting to see the same unique t-shirt. Dude, I am just here for a hoodie! But we also bought a t-shirt and that light jacket we didn’t buy the first time (of course) and added a bit more weight to the backpack because if you can shop tax free and save another 10% on already cheaper than Australia prices, of course Yumi wants a part of that!
Next stop was Itoya,
which is the fancy version of Officeworks, with pens for $1, but also $1,100,
origami paper, very cool postcards (I bought one for Marlis) and lots of other
stuff you really don’t need. The plan was to get to the café on the 12th
floor (the building and floors weren’t massively big, just very tall), but The
Grand Navigator wanted to stop at a shoe shop nearby for some new Onitsuka
trainers, but people were lining up outside, which is stupid, so we returned to
the station and found some more snacks to eat on the train.
The visit to the embassy was good fun, with the required machine having a moment and refusing to cooperate, but the lady helping us had a great sense of humour so we had a good laugh and were out the door in just 30 minutes, done for another 10 years!
We finally sat down for a bit to rest our feet and rode the 600km back to arrive very much on time again back in Osaka, finally got to use our umbrellas in Osaka where it still rained and rained and went to bed at 10.30 because tomorrow is Hiroshima and the end of the Osaka stay so we need to get up 3 hours early because…well, just because. When I say we, I mean Yumi, but I just go along, that’s how you stay together for nearly 30 years folks and it’s not like I wasn’t awake anyway.
Tuesday 9 June - Hiroshima
Atomic Bomb Site
We started the day bright and early, got the whole house back as we found it, leaving no trace that we were ever there, which has become a bit of a hobby of Yumi and it makes for great guest-reviews on AirBNB, so why not?! 7am and we’re all ready to go!
First stop is the FamilyMart to use what is called the Takkyubin service, that lets you send your luggage ahead, so it doesn’t get in the way while you travel. Kind of convenient, after you fill out the paperwork, pay the fee ($50), sing three Japanese karaoke songs of your own choosing and stand on one leg for 5 minutes in the middle of the shop while sleep drunk commuters are (not so) politely move around you. The Indian clerk (there’s a surprising amount of Indian people now, that wasn’t the case in 2016) seemed confused about the whole process himself, so fingers crossed our suitcases will be waiting at Yamato Kyoto when we get there tomorrow…
On to the station with our daypacks for Hiroshima and after buying the cookie tin souvenir that Yumi wanted (I just wanted the cookies), we made our way to the third Shinkansen trip from Osaka and settled in with about 1,000 extremely well-behaved schoolkids also going to Hiroshima, where we arrived without anything exciting happening, aside from more rice paddies, mountains, towns that all look the same and stops in towns that I only heard about in movies and the news.
Time for a tram ride
this time and while the station is less busy, it’s still kind of confusing in a
sense because how overly structured it is, but my tactic is to follow most of
the foreigners and a very helpful station guide did the rest to get us on board.
The IC card is absolutely great, works across cities and most types of public
transport, please takes notes here, every Australian city!
It’s too early to check in at 11.00 at the hotel, so we drop off our bags and go see the sites.
We have lunch at a
5-in-1 restaurant for some Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (a sort of
omelette/frittata, but with noodles and a LOT of sauce) and then it’s time to
go see the atomic bomb memorials we came to see.
It’s weird to realise that the city was bombed with just one bomb 80 years ago and while there is nothing left to remind you of the damage, aside from the mercantile building that has been in a billion photos, they manage to convey the inhumanity and black mark on the US’s leadership of then very well. We walk the Peace park and see the monuments, the folded paper cranes (birds), the memorials and hear the bell every minute or so, but until you get into the Peace Museum and shuffle past the survivor stories and images (and I’ve seen more than a few), it’s difficult to comprehend destruction so immense and that people did this to other people!
I want to believe that they simply didn’t know how absolutely horrific it would be to do this to other humans, but as I said to Yumi, it’s not like we’ve learned a lot since then...
The strangest thing was that whole groups of schoolkids, some couldn’t be older than 6 or 7 were also going in there and of course seeing dead and burned bodies in life-size format was bound to have some of them crying, but then again, I might have teared up a few times too.
Once we’re out and properly depressed, we walk around town some more, check out a few shops and find a very uplifting bread shop where we buy some snacks and breakfast that reminds me of Paris and the things we used to eat when visiting Yumi’s parents. Yumi’s feet decide it’s been enough for her, so we go back to the hotel, check in and I venture out alone with a map and our (amazing) pocket wifi, because I am not a complete idiot, to see the Castle and just experience the city as I do. My feet are just as tired, but I feel the need to see what I can, while we’re here, because I don’t think there’s much else to come back to once we’ve completed the visit to Miyajima tomorrow.
Hiroshima is a quiet city, like Tokyo and Osaka, very clean and organised, but a bit less well kept as some of the others and less gargantuan in size (only 1.1million people here), easy to walk around, even for geographically challenged people like me!
I call it a day after
an hour and a half of seeing the Castle (annoying influencers alert) and
walking the streets as planned and take my once-every-five-year bath to relax
my legs a bit, nice! We go for noodles in a department store, which is not as
weird as it sounds and have a great meal with a lovely lady server who looks to
be at least 85 and uses hand gestures to explain what we need to do with the
noodles and tempura. Must be for my benefit, haha.
We walk around a bit, looking for ice-cream, but not after 8pm you don’t, because everything ice-cream shuts shop then, which is fair enough, we still have the cookies and read some before calling it a night with our beautiful view from the 24th floor.
Wednesday 10 June – Miyajima and Kyoto
A late start at 6.30am after a very quiet night’s sleep and the stunning view of the city and bay in the morning sunlight. Today we’re taking a boat ride to the island of Miyajima, which has a big gate, deer, lots of temples and history that… yeah whatever.
We get sorted and checked out by 7.45am, leave our bags at the hotel and get our tickets early so we don’t get left behind. We could have saved ourselves the trouble of getting some food because the island is full of food options and this is what I love about Japan, no inflated tourist prices, exactly the same as on the mainland, also very limited vegan options, but that’s okay, we haven’t starved yet and the Happy Cow app is working it’s magic quite well!
When we arrive after a 45 minute fly-boat trip with possibly the most entertaining PowerPoint presentation ever on the city, the oyster farms and water levels (there are a lot of bridges and high tide is an issue some day), we arrive on Miyajima with about 1,000 schoolkids (not kidding). They seem to keep streaming from all sorts of ferries and yet, still very well behaved and mostly orderly, until they see the deer of course…We know to leave them alone, they’re very pushy and can be aggressive because they know you have food, so we admire them from a distance and make our way to the Tori (Big Gate) and the beach.
They’ve done a great
job in keeping the tourist experience to a minimum, although it must be
annoying to the people living there, even if most people don’t make it into the
neighbouring areas. There’s a lot more to see than just the 16m,
400-year-oldgate and its complex of shrines, treasury, mausoleum and
performance halls, we’re lucky it’s low tide so we can almost walk up to it to
take some pictures.
We keep making our way up the hills, strolling through temples and laneways, one beautiful temple after another and while I am not there for the religious elements, I can appreciate the magnificent craftsmanship that must have been required in the construction and maintenance of the ancient buildings. The 1,000s of buddha statues with their little red, green and yellow caps (but mostly red) make it look like a perpetual party and because it’s such a beautiful sunny day, everything looks that much better.
We do the ‘walk
through the dark’ under a temple and reemerge as newborn people, eh presto. The
experience only slightly diminished by two adults loudly speaking behind us the
whole time like nervous teenagers…Another things I dislike as usual is that everything
is super holy, but also all about money and donations. I am sure they need a
lot of money to keep it all going, but it’s always a bit jarring when salvation
appears to have a price and it comes at 500 yen per candle.
Anyway, we keep making our way around the island, stop by one more massive (and nearly empty) temple on the way back to the pier, brave the shopping street that is nicely tucked away and true to its name, you can buy and eat anything you could possibly want there and boy do people want things! Good for the shop keepers, we still have a city to get to, so we keep going, get too much attention from the deer to eat our lunch so I eat and walk and Yumi quietly judges me for eating while walking. It’s puzzling to me that she doesn’t live in this culture or society, but feels the need to live up to its standards. Live and let live I say, I prefer not to be hungry, so munch!
Friday 12 June – And more temples!
An early start once again, out the door at 7.30, straight into morning rush hour. The funniest thing is that little schoolkids travel by themselves. And I don’t mean 10-12 year old, these look like 4-5 year olds, with their huge backpacks and little hats, they are just the cutest! Less cute is the press of people in the subway, which I’ll remember next time it’s a bit busier on the train out of Brisbane! Fortunately we only have to go a few stops and we’re at Fushin Inari, the place with all the vermillion (orange) portals/gates.
There are indeed
many, almost as many as the number of tourists and while the ridiculous antics
of people posing for their Insta or whatever account are both funny and
annoying, I try to be less judgmental and keep failing, what a way to visit a
shrine by making it all about you. Anyway, we walk around through big and small
gates winding up the hill and I try to get Yumi to follow me up 40 minutes
one-way but as she’s the smarter of the two of us, she talks me out of it,
despite the promise of wild boars and we save our feet and steps for the rest
of the day.
Glad to have seen it,
I don’t think I have to see it again, especially the gates sponsored by
companies, if there was ever a critique of commercialised religion, this might
just be it.
Next up is another big Buddhist temple Tofukuji that has a famous bridge and a beautiful garden (they all do), but no tofu, go figure! It’s almost completely deserted, which is a nice break from where we were earlier. We walk around, laugh at some more influencers instructing their clueless boyfriends how to take the perfect shot no one cares about and go on to the next temple, which is Sanjusanjen, which loosely translates to 30 lengths of something that make up a long distance, which is kind of Australian. How big is it? Well, it’s not small. It’s enormous, at least 150 meters long to make space for 10 rows deep of 100 same but different statues, a massive many-armed buddha in the middle and 30 deity statues at the front. The schoolkids seemed to have followed us here as well, they are everywhere, do they even ever go to school?! The garden is nice (again) to sit in and get away from the crowds, which turned out to be a good thing because the biggest tourist trap in the history of tourists traps is about to come up on the schedule.
Kyomizudera is everything that’s bad about tourist traps, narrow streets, people wearing kimonos poorly, shops everywhere and 10,000 people a space that fits maybe 3,000, good times! Like the Inari gates, these places are probably best visited earlier than midday, so we kick ourselves for doing this now and continue on. There are always little pockets of quiet and we’ve gotten good at finding them, so we take our pictures, look at the very impressive construction that still stands after 400+ years and listen to the many different languages all marvelling at the various buildings. We have lunch in a lovely small café that has 3 menu items, all vegan, including freshly made donuts, and some cool jazz playing in the background. With our batteries and bellies full again, we hunt for a Totoro t-shirt for Yumi but the flagship store doesn’t stock them, which I am sure makes sense in Japan, so we continue on to Nishiki Market through Ninenzaki (shopping street) and Higashiyama.
We pass through Gion (food district) again and stop at the Pokémon Centre where the line is so long I decide to try for a different souvenir, anywhere else really. By the time we get back it’s nearly 30,000 steps again and we still have to go out for dinner.
A few hours later we go to the place that Yumi found in Gion that’s on the third floor of a building that could be anything, that has lots of vegan options and we love every bit of the vegan sushi (avocado and mushrooms), the dumplings, the Kyoto style fries (just like regular fries but more salty) and the vegan ice-cream in 5 flavours. It’s unexpectedly raining on the walk back, so Yumi, afraid of melting, takes us to explore Gion a bit more and the variety of food and shops is just astounding and the shopping arcade is huge, streets stretching out in all directions. We somehow make it through the rain (it wasn’t that bad really, just a few drops) and call it an early night, this eating and walking business is hard work.
Tomorrow we’ll do some more tourist-y things, but we’re starting to wind down and prepare for our flight back to the doggos on Sunday 9.45pm!
It was relatively quiet still as we arrived almost exactly when it opened at 8.45am. This one has been around for about 350 years and was the home of the last Shogun before he ceded power to the emperor and that was it mostly for the Samurai too. It was cool to go inside and get an impression of what it must have been like to live in the building. Mind you, all the furniture is gone, but the wall and ceiling paintings are all still there, as are the squeaky nightingale boards, that kind of sound like birds twittering if you use your imagination. I always wondered why the tigers looked so weird, but turns out the artists had never actually seen a live one, only skins and images, so that explains a lot. Not why they thought that leopards were every 3rd tiger born, but hey, I am sure people in 400 years form now will wonder what we were think as well.
The palace itself was worth the wander, but the gardens were also very well done, with an opportunity to go up one of the walls and stand where the emperor stood twice, which was a big deal because he didn’t get out much. Apparently he also took a real interest in gardening and was involved with the design. I don’t think we’d have a lot to talk about, but him and Yumi would get along just fine.
Onwards we went to Kyoto station to figure out our tickets and the train back to the airport and have a look at the massive building. It reminded me of the Market Hall in Rotterdam, but even bigger and more industrial looking. I took the 20+ flights of stairs because I am that guy, while Yumi rode the escalator and I surprised myself by not collapsing in a heap at the top. We ate our mid-morning snack (lemon custard thing for Yumi and fancy bread roll for me) with view of Kyoto tower and the city and then got organised around the train tickets so we don’t have to figure it out on Sunday. Check!
We considered visiting even more temples, gardens and shrines, but temple fatigue had set in, so we went shopping for souvenirs, shirts and crackers instead. We had a nice lunch in a clothing shop that had completely vegan lunches, so I went with the omelette and rice, but it wasn’t what I had hoped (as usual) but Yum’s food looked amazing! We had good fun pointing out all the weird and wonderful shops, Nishiki market is enormous and covered, so super busy, but also relatively cool. We went to find a few toy and figurine stores, including the Nintendo shop and had a great time just looking around. I am always in awe of how much easier it is for Yumi to navigate, even with Google Maps I have to stop every 20 meters or so to make sure I don’t get lost.
We called it a day at 4pm and relaxed at the BnB for a bit, went for a nice diner in a place that had zero customer service (not rude, just absent, working in the kitchen) but a very extensive menu so we had a great meal and were back home at 8pm after a nice stroll through the neighbourhood.
Tomorrow we don’t have much planned, two museums, maybe a garden and a Starbucks, all in less than 1km away from the BnB where we’ll store our luggage until it’s home time at 4pm.
Sunday 14 June – The last bits
We gave ourselves a slow start to the day, leaving the BnB in near pristine condition before heading to The Museum of Kyoto, not to be confused with the Kyoto Museum, which is completely different and somewhere else, this was just down the street and our feet were very happy with that. They had a big exposition on a collection of woodblock painting by two artists (Hirosuge and Hokusai) that even I had heard of and Hakusai painted that very famous wave with mount Fuji in the background.
After that we continued on to the manga museum, housed in an old school building with what must be the creakiest floors in the whole of Japan, but also 300,000 manga artefacts and some interesting background to the cultural phenomenon it is. I had no idea that Dragonball Z (look it up) was more than 40 years old and that’s not even an old-timer, they go back as far as the 1940s. Seeing them all on display and in chronological order does paint a good picture of how much has changed. They also had artists in the museum showing how to draw and create the stories, which was pretty cool. I wish I could draw like that, but should say I wish I had the patience to learn to draw like that, because it’s 100% teachable, if you have the patience…
Time for lunch at a place we walked past at least 6 times and didn’t notice, but this time I had a very creamy and tasty white curry and Yumi had a more spicy yellow curry with noodles and rice, because why not?!
We spent the rest of the time buying a travel pillow for me, browsing a Sunday market in front of city hall and lounging at Starbucks until it was time to grab a taxi and head to the station to take the train to the airport.
On the way there we
passed a ginormous temple that we somehow didn’t visit, but you know what? It’s
been good, I am sure it’s wonderful, but I want to go home, I miss my dog.
