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Japan Capital Area Population Languages Currency |
Tokyo 377 975 km2 125 416 000 Japanese Yen (JPY) |
Japan is a densely populated island country in the north-west Pacific Ocean. It comprises over 14 000 islands, the five largest of which are Honshu (the "mainland"), Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. Japan was governed in dictatorial fashion for centuries by a succession of warlords and emperors, culminating in the ill-fated decision to attempt to become an Asian superpower during World War II by invading the surrounding countries and declaring war on the USA and Great Britain. After being defeated in 1945, a democratic constitution was drawn up and since then Japan has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Japan has emerged from the ruins of the war to become a global leader in technological development and boasts the third biggest economy in the world (after the USA and China). Tokyo, Japan's capital city, is by far the most highly populated metropolitan area on Earth. | |
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[Wednesday 8 May 2024 : Cape Town, South Africa] A long, hard couple of days was our introduction to Japan. Ethiopian Airlines took us across seven time zones to the other side of the world via three flights, three ever-bigger cities and three countries - first it was Cape Town to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (six hours), followed by Addis Ababa to Seoul in South Korea (eleven hours) and finally Seoul to Tokyo in Japan (two and half hours). Our memory of Addis Ababa was of a blurred transit zone in the airport as we sprinted to the departure gate for the flight to Seoul; it was touch and go whether the 40 minute layover would be enough time, but we made it in the end, sweaty and breathless. Seoul at 4 pm the next day looked like a smoggy cesspit of grey-brown sludge ... hardly surprizing given that it is one of the world's most polluted cities.
[Thursday 9 May : Tokyo, Honshu] Tokyo's Narita Airport at 8 pm was calm and orderly. Our concern over how the eVisa system would work proved to be groundless - when we'd applied for a Japanese visa online, the system had displayed stern instructions about how we would need to display the visa's QR code on our phones at Immigration, via the Japan eVisa web site. At the time I thought that was odd - why should WE display the visa when the Japanese government had already digitally linked our passports and could tell whether we had valid visas or not? As it turned out, I was correct - the lady at Immigration did not say a word (barely acknowledging my konbanwa) and I offered no information other than my passport. She scanned it, stuck a stamp on a blank page and waved me through in the formal way that the Japanase do.
The only delay at Immigration was because we each had to fill out a paper entrance card (paper? In 2024? To get into Japan?), a fact that Ethiopian Airlines and the eVisa site had neglected to tell us. So we lost our place in the queue that we had strived so hard to get by hurrying off the plane, and filled in the wretched card before re-joining the queue again. That minor hiccup meant that by the time we arrived at Baggage Reclaim, our bags were already on the carousel (thankfully not still in Addis Ababa, Seoul or routed to Nome, Alaska). The next step was to buy multi-use cards for the Tokyo Subway/Metro/Train/Bus system, and for this there was another long queue. But finally, and 3000 Yen later, we had two Pasmo cards, valid for all trains and buses in Tokyo for the next 28 days - the exact length of time we needed them.
There are a bewildering number of different ways to get from Narita Airport into Tokyo, but at 8:45 pm on a Thursday night the options were reduced to a couple of very expensive ones, three via a longish walk to the train station at Terminal 2 and one that (fortuitously) involved no changes of train and left from the station at Terminal 1, right where we were. Unfortunately our various delays caused us to miss the train at 8:35 pm, and the next one was only at 9:13 pm. But at the appointed time the train departed with Swiss-style precision, and hurtled through darkened suburbs for ages before reaching the Asakusa district. After some momentary confusion on the streets outside Asakusa Station we found the APA Hotel no more than twenty metres from the steps leading down into the station. We finally dumped our bags with massive relief in a small (very, very small) room at 10:30 pm, nearly 29 hours after we'd left home. Amazingly, after all that we even had the energy to take a walk to the nearby Senso-ji Temple and buy some biscuits at the all-night 7-Eleven on the corner! We hit the sack battered, knackered and shattered.
[Friday 10 May : Tokyo, Honshu] We forced ourselves up at 7 am in an endeavour to get our body clocks adjusted to the seven hour time difference. Despite the ordeal of the past two days we both felt fine, and were even more invigorated when we found a cafe near our hotel that served absolutely incredible coffee. In Japan? This was initially a surprizing find, but we quickly discovered that coffee is actually quite common in Japan, with many cafes and restaurants advertising it and a huge resident population of Westerners consuming it in vast quantities. There was even a Starbucks near Senso-ji Temple, but thus far we haven't descended to those depths of mediocrity. But coffee is expensive here, as one would expect of a drink that is sold largely to satisfy foreign tastes - the cheapest coffee we've seen so far cost 480 Yen (about 60 SA Rands), and usually it is a lot more than that.
Lunch was an interesting experience. In the quiet streets to the north of Asakusa we found an area of "Mom-and-Pop" diners, where simple home-cooked food was sold to locals. One place was full, the owner of the second apologised profusely when she turned us away because we were foreign and she only spoke Japanese, but a third welcomed us with a smiling konichiwa. The elderly woman who ran the diner understood when we asked for ramen (noodles), and served us two steaming bowls of soup mixed with noodles, bean sprouts and mushrooms. Her husband was the cook, and he observed us from the kitchen with great suspicion through clouds of steam and smoke. But they were both full of smiles when we complimented them on the food, and bowed graciously as we exited the restaurant. It was a simple yet delicious and inexpensive meal.
There are a surprizing number of Westerners on the streets of Tokyo. Everywhere we go we see elderly tourists in groups, lone backpackers and middle-aged couples like us, as well as many people that appear to be living in Tokyo. We hear every possible language while waiting to cross the road and see plenty of people looking at Google maps on their phones with puzzled frowns. The Westerners are easy to spot - they generally tower above the petite Japanese. And they are LOUD; the Japanese are incredibly quiet and only converse amongst themselves in whispers when in public. In fact, Tokyo itself is a very quiet city, despite being the biggest metropolitan area on Earth. You seldom hear sirens, nobody hoots, many cars are electric-powered and loads of people get around by bicycle. I don't think we saw a single motorbike in an entire day of rambling around. So it is often eerily silent on streets that are crowded with traffic and people.
[Saturday 11 May : Tokushima, Shikoku] A leisurely, plastic-packaged breakfast at 7-Eleven proved to be rather better than we'd feared. My egg salad sandwich and coffee were both pretty good, and Karen pronounced herself happy with aloe-flavoured yoghurt, fruit and an energy bar. After that it was another long train ride to an airport, but Haneda this time, not Narita [Aside: Tokyo has two major airports. Narita mostly handles long-haul international flights, while Haneda is used for domestic flights and those to nearby international destinations]. Japan Airlines duly deposited us in Tokushima, biggest city and capital of the island of Shikoku, after a short hop of barely an hour over the Pacific Ocean. Then we grabbed the airport bus into town and walked about a kilometre to Hostel Paq, our digs for the next two nights.
Incredible - a flight of just over ONE HOUR took SIX AND A HALF HOURS in total, from the time we left our hotel in Tokyo until we walked into Hostel Paq in Tokushima. That's how time consuming air travel has become. There is usually a long trip to get to the departure airport, huge delays due to elaborate security checks and identity verification, followed by baggage check-in and ages wasted sitting around waiting to board the aeroplane. Then, at the other end, you have to wait to collect your bag, find your way into the city and then on to your final destination. The train trip from Tokyo would have been quicker! Unfortunately long-distance trains in Japan are horrendously expensive, the Shinkansen especially so, and when we were planning this trip we found that flying to Tokushima was cheaper than the train! But the train would have been far more pleasant.
[Sunday 12 May : Tokushima, Shikoku] Our first day of walking the Shikoku Henro was fairly successful [Aside: We initially planned to walk about two weeks of the 1200 kilometre route]. Hostel Paq sent us on our way after a self-service Western-style breakfast (in terms of food) with Japanese-style rules - ONE egg, ONE slice of cheese, ONE slice of ham and TWO slices of bread per person. No exception! But coffee was unlimited, which was rather nice.
At Tokushima Station we bought tickets for the local train to Bando, nearest stop to the first temple on the pilgrimage route. After a short ride through the city, some straggly suburbs and rice paddies, we followed a few other pilgrims up the road to Ryozenji, temple number one. We bought the distinctive white jackets that pilgrims on the Henro wear, saw the temple then walked on to the next two, Gokurakuji and Konsenji. The temples were similar - immaculately maintained and squeaky clean, mostly wooden and set in beautiful gardens of stone-flagged paths, koi ponds and ancient trees [Aside: "Ji" means "temple", so "Konsenji" is actually "Konsen Temple"].
But at 1 pm the sky clouded over and it started raining. We decided to call it a day and head back to Tokushima. The nearest station to temple three was Itano, so we walked there and tried to decipher the automatic ticket machines - the ticket office wasn't manned at that time on a Sunday afternoon. We eventually figured out we had to buy a "fare ticket" for 430 Yen, because that's what we'd been given at Tokushima earlier that morning (although for only 330 Yen because Bando was closer to Tokushima than Itano). Unfortunately it appeared we had a wait of nearly two hours for the next train. So we sat on the platform, getting colder and colder in the wind and rain, and were flabbergasted a couple of minutes later when we heard a train approaching. How could that be? Japan Railways (JR) was efficient to an extraordinary degree, and if they said there was only a train at 15:41 then you could be sure that would be the case. Yet here was a train, going in the right direction and large as life. We climbed on board, and immediately noticed that the carriage was far more luxurious than the one we'd been on earlier. A ticket collector appeared and we showed him the tickets we'd bought. He looked at them and instantly jabbered at us in Japanese. Then he showed us his phone, on which appeared the number "450." Did that mean we should have paid 450 Yen rather than 430? Did we thus have to pay in 20 Yen extra each? Or was it 450 Yen extra? Mystified, we offered some coins but they elicited nothing more than further jabbering. Eventually Karen gave him a 1000 Yen note. He was happy with that, and promptly issued two tickets for 450 Yen each and gave us 100 Yen in change.
What? So now we'd paid 880 Yen EACH? The new tickets said "Tokushima Limited Express," and I recalled seeing an option with this name on the automated ticket machines, separate from the "Fare ticket" option. I belatedly realized that the train we were on was a luxury express train and it seemed to require a different ticket from the ones we'd originally bought. But surely if we had tickets that were for the correct destination but the wrong class (or something), we could just pay in the difference? Apparently not ... The guy insisted we buy completely new tickets at the full price. This was confirmed when we exited the train at Tokushima - the ticket collector at the turnstile wasn't interested in the original tickets, only the ones we'd bought on the train. So the original tickets were a complete waste and remained unused in our wallets. Japan Railways, what gives? Your system is so complicated, how is anybody supposed to figure it out?
We were bedraggled and soaked after we'd sloshed through Tokushima's wet streets to Hostel Paq, and holed up with coffee and a good book for the rest of the afternoon.
[Monday 13 May : Kamiita, Shikoku] Steady and persistent rain fell during the night and continued without respite the next morning. We packed our hiking gear into our backpacks and our precious few spare clothes into Karen's wheelie suitcase, which Hostel Paq graciously agreed to store for us for the next two weeks (not an unusual request - the hostel was full of Western backpackers starting, finishing or busy with the Shikoku Henro). Our train to Itano, nearest station to where we'd finished walking the previous day, was at 10:26 am. We checked out of the hostel at 9:30 am, pulled on our raincoats, backpacks and ponchos and headed for Tokushima Station; luckily it wasn't far, and we dried off in Vie de France coffee shop, a most un-Japanese place which was nonetheless full of Japanese people enjoying French confectionary. Two South Africans sipping coffee added to the confusing international mix of the joint.
This time round we made no mistakes with the train, and stepped onto Itano's rain-soaked platform at 11 am. A short walk through the streets brought us back to the Henro route just west of temple three. The trail towards temple four led us along narrow roads through rural towns, under a huge, elevated freeway and into a bamboo forest. We negotiated some confusing turns with the help of Google Maps, the Henro guidebook and signs affixed to street lamps. Temple four (Dainichiji) proved to be exquisitely beautiful, the most photogenic of the temples we'd seen so far. Neither an errant weed nor a stone out of place spoiled the serene perfection of the gardens surrounding the temple buildings. A young girl was tending an area containing bonzai trees, and looked up with a smile as we rang the bell at the entrance gate to announce our arrival.
The Henro guidebook promised a bakery between temples four and five, but despite being absolutely sure we were on the right path and scanning every building on the way we saw no sign of it. Before we knew it we were at temple five (Jizoji), famished and thirsty. The main temple building was covered with scaffolding for major roof repairs, but the temple's other claim to fame was proudly visible in front of it - an 800 year-old Gingko tree, its roots cordoned off with red traffic cones in order to protect them from careless (or uncaring) people.
We spent the night in a minshuku for the first time. A minshuku is a traditional Japanese-style guest house, usually run by a family, and includes all meals, an overnight stay in a room kitted out in traditional style and a shared bathroom. Our room was immaculate and spacious. The floor was covered with tatami mats and the only piece of furniture was a long low table. We obeyed our hostess's instructions, relayed via Google Translate, as to when we should shower and enjoyed a delicious meal comprising multiple small bowls of different kinds of food. I was expecting to have to sit on the floor cross-legged while we ate, but as it turned out we sat on chairs at a Western-style table with four other Henro hikers, all elderly men on their own. Nobody in the house, guests included, could speak a word of English, so communication was difficult.
When we returned to our room after supper we found that our beds had been rolled out. These were simply mattresses on the floor, and were a trifle hard for Western bodies grown fat and lazy after years of sleeping on soft beds.
[Tuesday 14 May : Awa City, Shikoku] Rice, tofu and some unidentifiable pickled stuff for breakfast at the minshuku didn't quite hit the spot as much as the superb dinner the night before had done. But right at the end our hostess asked if we wanted coffee. Coffee! At a minshuku? I gladly responded with hai (yes) and enjoyed a surprizingly good brew produced via a packet and boiling water that was basically a single-cup filter device.
The walk today was pleasant, on narrow, quiet side streets in bright sunshine. At one point, as we passed a rather stagnant pond, Karen suddenly shrieked and grabbed my arm. I got such a fright I nearly jumped into the pond. She pointed at the gravel next to the road, and I looked down to see a snake about a metre long slithering towards the water. It was dark gray, almost black, and its tongue was flickering in and out. "I nearly stepped on that snake," said Karen. We wondered whether it was a pit viper, an extremely venomous snake endemic to Japan that hunts day and night and has been known to bite humans. The snake slid into the pond without a ripple and we walked on, more wary of what was under our feet than before. Temples six (Anrakuji) and seven (Kumadanji) followed in quick succession.
The road meandered on with no restaurant or shop in sight to provide sustenance. Passing by a closed doorway, I glanced in and saw some boxes of fruit and what looked like shelves of goods. Was this a shop? There was no sign. I peered through the dusty glass of the door but it was too gloomy inside to make out details. But when I pushed the door it opened, and I stepped inside to find a tiny shop cluttered with all manner of household goods. Apples, oranges, packets of noodles, chopsticks, umbrellas; it was a hodge-podge of clutter. Nobody was at the desk in the corner but as we were looking round a tiny, wizened old lady appeared from a darkened doorway. Predictably, she looked surprized to see us. I called out a cheery "konichiwa" and proceeded to examine the goods for sale. Unfortunately the takeaway food options were limited. Eventually we bought two bagels (the freshest-looking of the few "fresh" items on display) and two massive apples. Actually, for Japan the apples weren't so big - all the apples we've seen here (precious few of them) have been huge, far bigger than even the biggest apple you can buy in South Africa.
Ten minutes later we ate our bagels on a bench next to the roadside. They were filled with some kind of jam and were sickly sweet, but we were desperately hungry. Then we shared one of the monster apples. Refuelled, we slogged on, up the wrong road as it turned out. A roadside worker pointed us in the right direction and soon we found temple eight (Kumadanji), and shortly after that temple nine (Horinji). With that we were finished for the day, and followed Google Maps through a maze of rice paddy fields to the main road bisecting Awa City. In a back street we found "Art Village 3980!", a place we'd reserved for the night on Booking.com. The booking information was confusing, because the implication was that we'd reserved an entire house with two bedrooms, a lounge, bathroom and kitchen, all for ourselves. But at the price we'd paid it didn't make sense. We arrived at the specified location to find a seemingly deserted house. A young girl popped out of a doorway, and when I said "Konichiwa. Reservation?" she nodded and led us out of the door we'd come in, through a yard to the house next door, over a ramshackle wooden platform and in a side door. Then she disappeared as rapidly as she'd appeared.
This new place was totally empty. We took off our boots and explored. There were two bedrooms, each containing two single beds, plus a lounge, kitchen and two bathrooms. Everything matched the pictures we'd seen on Booking.com so we knew we were at the right place. But none of the four beds were made up and the kitchen was a mess. What was going on? We put our backpacks in one of the bedrooms and went into the kitchen to make tea. A few minutes later we heard somebody coming down the stairs, and a middle-aged bespectacled Japanese man burst in, flustered and perspiring. With sign language, garbled English and even more garbled Japanese we gathered we'd put our gear in the wrong bedroom. We moved it, and then the chap proceeded to make the beds and clean up in a blur of frenzied activity. We sipped our tea while he worked like a demon. Fifteen minutes later we had access to a spacious room overlooking the property's unkempt garden.
Having free use of a fully kitted kitchen was an opportunity too good to miss. We strolled down the road to a Family Mart convenience store, bought eggs, rice and pastries for supper, as well as fruit, nuts and yoghurt for breakfast. Then we enjoyed having the house to ourselves ... until an elderly Japanese gentleman appeared and moved into the other bedroom. He was also doing the Henro pilgrimage. Still, it was an excellent overnight stop, if a trifle odd.
[Wednesday 15 May : Yoshinogawa, Shikoku] We left our rambling but spacious digs at 9 am and retraced our steps back to temple nine (Horinji). There we picked up the path again and followed a succession of minor roads through closely packed yet rural houses, interspersed with fields of rice, cabbages, onions and the newest (yet most valuable) crop - solar panels. We saw thousands and thousands of solar panels in fields. No wonder Japan doesn't have power shortages - years ago they had the foresight to realize what a problem this was going to be and began harvesting the free power provided by the sun. Now they have a countrywide network of millions of solar panels and power points are available everywhere, usually free. Bus stations, train stations, in fact virtually everywhere there are free-to-use power points. People use them all the time to charge their cellular phones. Is anybody at Eskom (the South African national power producer) listening? Not likely - Eskom are as keen on solar power as vegetarians are on roast beef sandwiches, perhaps less so.
Temple ten (Kirihataji) proved to be at the end of a long uphill road, followed by several sets of stone steps that seemed to go on forever. Eventually we reached the top and found the main temple hall and the Daishi hall. But further up the slopes, poking through the treetops, we could see the pointed roofs of other temples and pagodas. They proved to be a bridge too far for tired legs and we gave up on them.
The trek back down the road took us through similar terrain. We climbed up a grassed embankment, wondering what was on the other side, to find a small river and an enormous flood plain. The extent of the flood plain, and the size of the embankment built to protect the houses behind it from flooding, did not add up. Surely such a minor river could not overflow so disastrously? But an information board provided the answer - the flood plain was actually an island between two rivers, the second of which was huge. We were only at the smaller of the two rivers.
A single-lane bridge crossed the river [Aside: Single-lane roads and bridges are very common in Japan, where land is scarce and road users are disciplined. Why waste valuable space on two lanes when one will suffice? When cars approach each other from opposite directions on a single-lane road, one of them simply waits at the nearest passing point to allow the other to go by before proceeding. The system seems to work very well]. The road across the flood plain wound its way through fields of rotting cabbages (most un-Japanese to allow that; perhaps they were diseased?) until we reached a line of trees. On the other side of the trees we came to the Yoshino River, a wide and major watercourse that was the reason for the flood plain and the two embankments on either side. Again there was only a narrow, single-lane bridge, and while walking across it we had to step precariously close to the edge several times as cars swept past.
Across the bridge we spied a pilgrim shelter. These shelters are roofed wooden huts, usually open on one side, that contain seats and benches for Henro hikers to rest in. This one was particularly nice because it overlooked the river and had a shelf under the window ... so we sat there, eating the food we'd packed for lunch and contemplating the sluggish flow of the Yoshino River. Then it was onward, through more suburban streets. Things were getting monotonous when I spied a small sign next to the road that read "Key Coffee." What? Coffee? Here, in this nondesript semi-industrial town? I looked more closely and saw a building that was no different from any of the houses we'd seen, except that it had another "Key Coffee" sign high up on the wall. The door of the place was made of glass and closed; we looked inside but could only make out vague shapes. What the hell, I thought, I want coffee, let's find out what's heppening here. I pushed the door open and stepped inside to find a cosy (but typically neat) coffee shop. There was a counter on one side with an old-style coffee siphon on it, trays of biscuits and a cash register. Three tables were on the other side. Two of the tables were pushed together, and several elderly ladies were sitting there drinking tea and nattering. The ladies were all so tiny their feet didn't even reach the floor. They stopped talking when we entered, and stared with wide eyes at these two giant Westerners filling the room with their tall bodies and bulky backpacks.
An elderly man detached himself from the ladies' conversation and came over to us with a wide smile of welcome on his face. "Konichiwa," I ventured. "Coffee?" I pronounced it "cohee" in the Japanese style.
"Hai," he replied, and bustled off to the third (vacant) table. He cleared it of a few things and gestured that we should sit. Karen managed to order green tea (or simply tea, called ocha) and I watched in fascination as the proprietor fired up the coffee siphon. He lit a burner beneath a spherical glass bowl containing water and then ground some beans. I looked away and didn't notice where he put the coffee grounds, but a couple of minutes later I saw rich, dark coffee dripping down a glass pipe into the spherical bowl. When the dripping stopped he extinguished the burner, poured the contents of the bowl into a cup and brought it over to me. Milk, as always in Japan, was provided in small plastic sachets such as the ones you get on a plane.
I took a sip and was immediately impressed. It wasn't espresso (nothing can top the taste of espresso-based coffee) but it was close. Better than filter coffee, certainly. So there I sat, in a nameless Japanese coffee shop on the outskirts of the unremarkable city of Yoshinogawa, enjoying excellent coffee. The Japanese ladies, none of whom could possibly have been even as much as five feet tall, resumed their gossiping with many sidelong glances at us. We exited the coffee shop with much bowing, scraping and utterances of origato.
We arrived at temple eleven (Fujidera) just after 3 pm. We had nowhere to stay, but we'd been told that a chap who lived a hundred metres down the road from the temple had set up a bunk-bed hostel for pilgrims. Hoping for the best, we turned up at his place to find him working in his garden with a wheelbarrow. The sign outside said "Vacant rooms." That was hopeful, and he confirmed that he did indeed have space for two that night. We grabbed them, and he kindly helped us plan and book our next two nights' accommodation as well. This chap, whose name is Henro no Sato, is a legend on the pilgrimage, and our experience with him and staying at his neat-as-a-pin hostel confirmed everything we'd heard about him. He was incredibly helpful, and I recommend most strongly that you pop into his place at temple eleven if you are doing the Shikoku Henro. His bunk beds were more spacious and comfortable than many hotel room beds I've slept in.
[Thursday 16 May : Kamiyama, Shikoku] We had prepared breakfast the night before - apples, bananas, nuts and yoghurt, all purchased in a supermarket down the road from our lodgings. We gulped it down at 6:15 am and by 6:45 am we were on the trail. We left at this unseemly hour because the walk between temples eleven and twelve is the toughest on the entire route of 88 temples and 1200 kilometres, largely because temple twelve is sited at the very top of a mountain. It starts with a severe climb of three kilometres, followed by a section that meanders up and down, then there is another climb which leads into a steep descent to a river, which (of course) means that the most brutal climb of all is after that. The total distance is only 11.6 kilometres but it took us seven and a half hours (including several breaks).
The entire route was in thick forest and very beautiful. The trees were mostly pine and juniper, but mixed among them were several other species we could not identify. Every now and then there would be a break in the trees and we would be rewarded with stupendous views. But most of the time it was a case of screaming thighs and straining lungs as we inched our way up the slopes. Often the incline was so steep that steps had been cut into the rock or built into the path. Finally I saw a line of stone columns ahead. It was the rather grand entrance to the temple, and meant that the end was in sight. At last! We dragged ourselves up the steps to the temple, dumped our backpacks on a bench and sat for a few minutes in a state of numb exhaustion.
But our problems weren't over. There is nowhere to stay near temple twelve because it is on a mountain peak. There were a few ryokans several kilometres down the road, but all were fully booked. The kindly chap who owned the bunk-bed lodge where we'd slept the night before had phoned around, and the best he could arrange was for us to stay in a luxury spa hotel about 12 kilometres away. There was absolutely no way we would be able to walk that extra distance, so he had advised we ask the temple office to call us a taxi. Of course, the person at the temple office could speak no English, but the word "taxi" is universal so we managed to make ourselves understood. He had to phone three taxi companies before he found one that was available, but eventually he succeeded and at 3 pm we found ourselves in an immaculate cab winging our way down the mountain. I watched with mounting alarm as the price on the meter rose and the driver showed no sign of pulling into a hotel. But the distance we drove was such that we knew we would never have made it on our tired legs at that time of the afternoon.
Four thousand Yen (five hundred SA Rands) later we climbed out of the taxi and walked into the foyer of Kamiyama Hotel & Spa, and five minutes after that we were revelling in the luxury of a HUGE room (by Japanese standards). The rigours of the day were forgotten as we showered and prepared for our first visit to an onsen. An onsen is a Japanese bath, often open to the public. It comprises a dressing area, showers, areas where you can sit and scrub your feet and/or body, and a communal bath filled with extremely hot water. No clothes are permitted beyond the dressing area. There are separate bathing areas for men and women. The procedure is that you go to the onsen wearing a yakuta (a belted cotton robe), get completely undressed, place all your belongings in a numbered basket or locker, shower and scrub until you are spotlessly clean then step into the bath naked. You must not swim or put your head underwater, just sit or lie somewhere, immersed in the near-boiling water up to your neck. Other people of the same sex will be coming and going, doing the same thing. It is bad form to stare at other bathers' bodies. You just look into space, contemplate life and slowly go red as you are boiled alive.
But the onsen experience was actually very soothing, and I can understand why it has become part of Japanese life. My weary legs certainly enjoyed the hot water treatment, and I returned to our room invigorated, ready for a multiple-course Japanese dinner.
[Friday 17 May : Tokushima, Shikoku] We left our luxurious digs at the Kamiyama Hotel & Spa with a certain degree of reluctance. Unfortunately the hotel was a some way off the standard Henro route, so we had a long walk on busy roads before we rejoined the trail. In fact, we walked for most of the day on roads with heavy traffic. Shortly after we left the hotel a car stopped on the other side of the road a little distance ahead of us. A phone call perhaps? Unusual - as a rule the Japanese don't pull over on busy roads except in cases of extreme emergency. As we drew opposite the car I saw the chap inside lift an expensive-looking camera attached to a massive lens and snap a few pictures of us. Then he put the camera down and screeched off at high speed. Who drives around with a camera like that in his car? A newspaper reporter? A bird-watcher? Maybe Karen and I are now featured in some Japanese magazine article about foreigners walking the Shikoku Henro.
A few minutes later I spotted another car that had stopped. It was a low-slung sports car, and the driver had carefully pulled into a lay-bye on the same side of the road as we were walking. He got out, opened the boot (trunk) and as we neared him he stepped up to us with two bottles of water. "For you," he said with a big smile. He also gave us each a plastic-wrapped piece of cake. These gifts from a total stranger are known as osettai and are quite common on the Henro route. It is a tradition on Shikoku Island that locals give pilgrims walking the Henro small presents as a spiritual gesture; these gifts should always be received with humility and never refused. We accepted this kind gentleman's offering with grace and thanks. He got back into his car and drove off, while we drank some ice-cold water and resumed walking.
Late in the morning we crossed a deep ravine on an impressive curved bridge, and immediately afterwards entered the Yose Tunnel. Japan is extremely hilly in places, but the busy Japanese do not like wasting time driving up and down steep mountain passes so there are bridges and tunnels everywhere. The philosophy seems to be "if it's deep, bridge over it; if it's high, tunnel through it." The tunnel was 531 metres long, and walking through it was eerie, smoggy, noisy and downright unpleasant. We were glad to emerge into the sunshine on the other side.
A 7-Eleven convenience store provided welcome respite in mid-afternoon. This one didn't have a seating area, so we just put our coffee and pastries on the recycling bin counter and ate while standing there. That may sound dirty but it wasn't - everything in Japan is so squeaky clean that we could probably have licked the counter tops and suffered no ill effects. Our tired eyes roved over, and did not take in, a sign that stated (in English and Japanese) "no eating or drinking in the store." It was only when I took my last bite of pastry that it dawned on me what a social error we were committing. Japan is a land of strict rules that people simply do not break, and here we were, flagrantly ignoring a rule of this store. But the Japanese are so polite that nobody came over to tell us off. We packed and scarpered as fast as we could, embarrassed and mortified.
Temple thirteen (Dainichiji) was nearby, and right next door we found Ryokan Kandoya where we'd reserved a room. The lady proprietor was welcoming, and after a hot shower we sat down to a typical 12-course Japanese dinner. The staples of every meal were there: rice, raw fish, soup, pickled vegetables and green tea, plus (of course) quite a few things we could not identify. Most of it was delicious.
[Saturday 18 May : Tokushima, Shikoku] Another Japanese-style breakfast sent us on our way. There's a limit to how much rice, soup and tofu I can eat before 8 am ... but I will admit that the fish served at Ryokan Kandoya (haddock) was absolutely superb. No coffee either; green tea just doesn't do it if you have a long day of walking ahead of you. Luckily the going was easy as we meandered our way through rice paddies and narrow, winding roads, despite already being within the Tokushima City limits. The temples in this area were very close together, and by 11 am we had visited four more: numbers 14, 15, 16 and 17. Finding the temples was easy, because by this stage we'd worked out the Japanese character for "temple" and could follow the Japanese signs rather than relying on the occasional sign in English.
Thereafter it was a long slog on tired legs in the hot sun from the outskirts of the city into the centre, the afternoon broken by a superb lunch stop at a 7-Eleven. That sounds ridiculous, but in Japan this is quite normal. The coffee at convenience stores is self-service out of a push-button machine and is invariably excellent. You buy a cardboard cup at the counter, make your own coffee then sit there and drink it. In addition to coffee, we had egg salad rolls and apple danish pastries, all of which were plastic-wrapped but delicious. And cheap! The food at convenience stores costs way, way less than what you'd pay at a restaurant, even a fast food joint.
We finally checked into a postage stamp-sized room at the Washington Plaza Hotel at about 3:45 pm. I had rather expected a tired, budget-style place, but in fact the hotel proved to be quite fancy - twelve floors of rooms, a spacious reception area and soft carpets on the floors. Business people (which in Japan means business men ... sorry, ladies) abounded in black suits, white shirts and gleaming leather shoes. Our backpacks, boots and sweaty clothes did nothing to enhance the hotel's image of understated exclusivity, and the receptionist hurried us into the lift as fast as his excessively polite bowing would allow.
[Sunday 19 May : Tokushima, Shikoku] After seven consecutive days of walking, a distance of 99 kilometres and visits to 17 of the 88 temples on the Shikoku Henro, our ageing bodies were screaming for a rest day. In addition, Karen had aggravated an old hip injury and was having difficulty walking. So we holed up for two nights in the Washington Plaza Hotel and planned our next move. The hotel proved to be a winner because there was a push-button espresso machine in the lobby that was free for hotel guests. I was up and down between our room and the lobby numerous times. As it turned out, we chose a good day to rest up in a hotel - it rained non-stop all day.
We debated at length what we should do. We had planned to walk for two weeks so we had another week to go. But Karen's hip injury proved to be worse than she'd thought, and after a lot of discussion we decided to quit the hike. I really wanted to walk at least part of the way down the south-east coast of Shikoku Island, but the extreme difficulty of finding accommodation without being able to speak Japanese was also proving a challenge. Very few of the local inns and ryokans could be booked online - you had to phone them, and the owners never spoke English. The only way we had managed so far was by asking somebody at each place we stayed to reserve us a room for the next night. But that meant sticking to a very rigid schedule. All in all, while the actual hike had been fantastic, the hassle factor of buying food and finding accommodation detracted somewhat from the experience.
We had stored a bag at Hostel Paq a week before. It contained some spare clothes we didn't need while we were hiking, but now that we'd finished with that we had to collect it. At midday I donned my raincoat and headed out into the wet. First stop was Tokushima train station, where I endeavoured (with limited success) to get some help in deciphering the unbelievably confusing train pricing and schedules. Japan's public transport system is comprehensive, efficient and incredibly useful for independent travellers, but boy is it difficult to figure out. Multiple web sites provide detailed information but much of it is contradictory. Which site do you believe? Japan Rail (JR) is the national railway company and operates a country-wide network of trains that reach every corner of Japan, but there are several other railway companies as well. Their trains sometimes run on their own tracks via their own stations, and sometimes they share infrastructure with Japan Rail. Some web sites include details of some or all of these private companies, some don't. Prices across the different services vary widely based on whether trains are local, express or high-speed (Shinkansen). Sometimes supplements are added. After ten days in Japan I still hadn't got to grips with every nuance of this enormously complex system.
Trains to Takamatsu on the north coast of Shikoku Island (our next destination) appeared to leave Tokushima at 23 minutes past every hour. These services were printed in red on the timetable at Tokushima Station. Every few hours there was an additional train at 26 minutes past, and this one was printed in black. It also left from a different platform and was much slower. Some RED trains had higher prices than BLACK trains, some lower. How could that be? A slow train to Takamatsu could not possibly be more expensive than an express. Eventually, by relating what was on the departures board with what I'd read on the internet, I figured out that the RED prices were actually supplements that had to be added to the BLACK prices if you rode an express train. The black price was the base price; if you took an express then you paid the base price plus the red-listed supplement. And the supplement was a lot. By dint of writing train times, prices and question marks on a scrap of paper I managed to confirm from the Information counter that what I had deduced was correct. That meant, if we wanted to save quite a lot of money we should take the 12:26 slow train to Takamatsu the next day. It only arrived at 3 pm but it would give us a chance to see more of the countryside, and in any case we could not check into the apartment we'd booked until 3 pm anyway. Taking a fast train and arriving at 11:30 am would have meant a long wait before our accommodation was ready.
With that sorted I strolled round Tokushima Chuo-koen (public park). It was an attractive, wooded open space next to the Yoshino River, but in the rain it was deserted and gloomy. Inside the park I found the ruins of Tokushima Castle, home of the Hachisuka clan from 1586. The castle was destroyed in 1896 and all that is left today are a few stone walls, a moat and a low stone bridge. But the surrounding gardens were very pleasant, even in the rain.
A smiling young lass at Hostel Paq fetched the bag we'd stored there and I wheeled it back to the Washington Plaza Hotel. Karen was pleased to get some clean clothes and even more pleased to be able to pack her backpack and its contents into her wheelie suitcase. She'd had enough of hauling a heavy weight around on her back. I was a little less pleased - extra clothes meant my backpack was heavier ... I have not yet caved in and joined the "wheelie suitcase brigade."
[Monday 20 May : Takamatsu, Shikoku] The 12:26 slow train to Takamatsu was just that - slow and steady. It stopped at every station between the two cities, sometimes for minutes on end to allow other trains to pass by. The line between Tokushima and Takamatsu is single-track the whole way, but there are frequent trains of different speeds in both directions so the stations are used as passing places. The track splits into two just before each station, and our slow crawler had to wait on the parallel track at several stations for a train coming the other way or for a faster express to go past. But it was an ineresting trip and we saw more of the Shikoku countryside. Lots of teenage schoolchildren got on and off the train; we saw many of those who got off mount bicycles and ride away, presumably home.
Takamatsu at first sight was impressive. The station was modern and gleaming, and the square outside had been landscaped most attractively. We got our bearings and strolled to the block of flats where we'd reserved an apartment, but when we got there my nagging fear of what would happen was realized. We climbed the stairs to number 205 and knocked on the door. No response. Nobody was around to tell us how to get in. A combination-coded lockbox was mounted on the wall at the door, and I was pretty sure the key to the apartment was inside, but we'd received no message about how to open the box. What to do?
I left Karen at the apartment with our luggage and headed outside to find somebody who could call the number we'd been given. A couple of doors down from the apartment block I found an office that was open. Four people were inside - a manager-type (male) at a desk, two dowdy woman wrapping what appeared to be soap and a woman at a desk facing the door. I tried saying "Konichiwa. Reservation? Booking dot com?" to the receptionist lady. She looked baffled, so I pointed at the building next door, showed her a piece of paper on which I'd written the apartment's name and the phone number we'd been given by Booking.com, and made telephone-type gestures with my hand. She spoke some fast Japanese to the manager. He frowned and replied, after which she picked up her desk telephone and dialled a number. I was watching her fingers and the number she called was definitely not what I'd written down. And she didn't look the number up - she dialled from memory.
She spoke briefly then handed the telephone to me. I tried again with what I'd said before, but this time I added "Paul-san" (the Japanese write their surnames first and "san" means "mister", so "Paul Kilfoil" would translate to "Mr Paul" in this ultra-polite society). There was silence, then some incomprehensible talking, followed by silence from me because I had no idea what more to say. Then I heard "I come down." Maybe I was getting somewhere. I replaced the receiver and bowed to the receptionist who'd tried to help me. "Origato gozaimas," I said to her, and repeated it for the now-glowering manager. They managed limp smiles and I escaped onto the street again.
Back at the apartment's front door, where Karen was waiting, I told her what had transpired. But I was fairly sure our problem was not resolved. Who had that woman phoned? "I better wait on the street outside," I said. "You stay here with the luggage." I went downstairs and positioned myself so that I could see both the pedestrian entrance to the block of flats as well as the garage, and made sure I was visible to anybody approaching. A minute or so later I spotted a chap walking down the sidewalk towards me. He was untidily dressed, all in black, with slip slops on his feet and an inscrutable expression on his face. As he got closer he greeted me with a half-smile, half-grimace, and I surmized this was the guy I'd spoken to on the phone. "Reservation?" he asked. "Booking dot com? Show me."
I pulled out my phone and launched the Booking.com app. But I had no internet access, so it failed to show the reservation we had. "No wifi," I said, using the term that has become universally understood.
"Ah." He nodded and beckoned me to follow him. We walked fifty metres or so to a house with a front door that opened directly onto the sidewalk. "Wifi," said the chap. I scanned the signals and he tapped on one of them. I watched as he typed in a password of "123456789." I managed to refrain from commenting on how bad his internet security was - after all, this guy was helping me. Besides, he wouldn't have understood, plus he appeared to be a fairly humourless sort. Once my phone was connected I showed him the booking at apartment 205. He nodded again, and we walked back to the block of flats. In the elevator he pressed the button for the fifth floor. "No, second floor," I said. "Two oh five."
"Owner live on five," was his clipped response. I was now beginning to understand. On the fifth floor he knocked on the door of apartment 501, and a few seconds later a young woman opened up. The two of them had a fast conversation in a language which I assumed was Japanese. The woman showed me her phone, and there was my name, on a Booking.com background. At last! We WERE at the right place and we had found the owner! I was mightily relieved.
I pointed at my name on her phone, then at my chest. "Hai. Paul Kilfoil." She smiled, pulled her apartment door shut and all three of us went down three flights in the elevator, back to where Karen was patiently waiting at the door of 205. The woman set the combination on the lockbox attached to the wall, opened it and removed a key which she then used to unlock the door. She pushed the door open and handed me the key.
"Origato gozaimas," I said, and repeated it to the chap who had helped me. They both nodded in a rather abrupt, un-Japanese way, stepped back into the lift and disappeared from sight.
"I think they were Chinese, not Japanese," said Karen as we humped our gear into the apartment. That made sense - the Japanese were always gracious and polite, and these two, despite helping us find the right place, had been rather surly. Very Chinese, in fact.
But all that was forgotten as we moved into a spacious apartment that overlooked a small harbour full of yachts and fishing boats. It had a separate bedroom containing twin beds and a fully kitted kitchen. The hassle of getting in was worth it. However, I couldn't help wondering why the woman had made things so difficult. The apartment was clearly set up for "contactless check-in" - it had the lock box on the wall containiing the front door key; all she had to do was message us the combination via Booking.com and we would have been able to get in with no trouble at all. But there had been no message. So we'd wasted time and caused irritation for several people. It was indeed odd [Aside: In fact, a message was sent via Booking.com, but only after we'd left Tokushima and were therefore out of contact and did not get it before we arrived in Takamatsu. The message was in Japanese but included a 4-digit number which turned out to be the code for the lockbox. So the contactless check-in system was set up and could have worked, if only we'd received the message in time].
[Tuesday 21 May : Takamatsu, Shikoku] A long and relxing stroll around the immaculate Ritsuren Gardens was about all we could manage today. These gardens, the largest in all of Japan at 750 000 square metres, are a haven of green tranquility amongst the busy city streets. Numerous ponds and waterways crossed by many small stone and wooden bridges, flowers, trees, shrubs and pathways were all moulded together in a typically Japanese mix of elegance and style. The biggest tree in the park, a Himalayan Cedar planted in 1899, was standing proudly outside the main exhibition centre. The gardens were a photographer's paradise, and the weather played along by providing bright sunshine.
The ponds were filled with truly giant koi fish, which swarmed in packs beneath the bridges whenever anybody passed over. The fish broke the surface in a frenzy to get food, their round mouths open and gobbling for any morsel that may be dropped. And the visitors obliged - we saw several people feeding them using special packets of fish food bought from the various shops dotted around.
[Wednesday 22 May : Naoshima Island] Naoshima Island, some 13 kilometres north of Shikoku, has come to be known as the "Art Island" because it is home to numerous artists, art galleries and open-air art exhibitions. Karen really wanted to visit it, so we were up early and at Takamatsu port well in time to catch the 8:12 ferry. After a 50 minute ride through the flat waters of the Seto Inland Sea, the ferry docked at Miyanoura on Naoshima. Forewarned about how popular electric bicycles are for getting around the island, we sprinted for the row of shops where the bikes could be rented and were among the first to arrive. Three stores in a row rented e-bikes; we chose the cheapest (1200 Yen for the day) and within five minutes we were on our way. The controls were simple, and whizzing up hills was even simpler. Electric bikes have come a long way since Karen first had one over ten years ago - these were light, easy to ride and the battery lasted all day.
We headed eastwards from the village Miyanoura round the south coast of the island. The roads on Naoshima are extremely narrow, but cars are infrequent and considerate towards the numerous tourists wobbling along on their e-bikes. We stopped to look at several outdoor art installations before reaching the village of Honmura. Honmura is the art capital of the island, and we spent a few hours wandering around the narrow lanes and popping into various studios. Lunch was rather overpriced vegetable curry at Cafe Konichiwa, after which we beetled inland to see a lake we'd spotted on the map. The lake turned out to be a small dam as well as a lake, both surrounded by a perplexing network of roads and paths. We took a road which we thought was going one way but actually went another, and popped out onto the coastal road in a state of mild confusion. But the island is so small and the distances so minimal that we still had plenty of time to get back to Miyanoura and return the bikes before the 5 pm ferry to Takamatsu.
[Thursday 23 May : Hiroshima, Honshu] After 12 days on Shikoku Island, we returned to Honshu Island (colloquially known as "the mainland"). First it was a local express train from Takamatsu to Okayama, a 50-minute ride that blitzed past multiple small stations and crossed the Seto Inland Sea. The two islands of Shikoku and Honshu have been connected by six impressive double-decker bridges that hop across the sea via five tiny islands; the top level is for cars and the lower level is for trains. The distance over the sea is 13.1 kilometres in total, with the longest single bridge being over a kilometre in length. We watched in awe as the train swept along at high speed, far above the ships passing by in the sea below. The public transport infrastructure in Japan is mind-boggling in its advancement, and allows people to live and work comfortably in densely populated cities without being overwhelmed by traffic congestion. Getting around Japan without a car is truly a pleasure.
And it got even more impressive when we changed trains in Okayama. The train from Takamatsu was fast, but it wasn't a Shinkansen (or "bullet train"), the famed high-speed trains of Japan. But at Okayama we boarded a Shinkansen bound for Hiroshima. It pulled into the station and stopped so that the doors were directly opposite a series of openings in a railing on the platform, with each opening corresponding to a specific door of a specific coach. We made sure we got on one of the three "non reserved seat" coaches, lest we fall foul of the strict rules that apply to Shinkansens. Then the train took off, and gradually built up speed until the scenery outside the window was a blur. Unfortunately we didn't see much of the scenery because we went through so many tunnels that half the time it was pitch dark outside. That is one of the issues with high-speed trains - you cannot have steep gradients or sharp curves, so if there are any obstructions in the way the rails have to go straight through them via tunnels or deep cuttings. You also can't have slower-moving trains on the same tracks; high-speed trains require dedicated rails.
We pulled into Hiroshima Station at exactly the scheduled time, not even twenty seconds late. The station was so huge that it took us several minutes to find the right exit and get out. This city, almost totally destroyed in 1945 by the first atomic bomb ever dropped during wartime, was rebuilt after World War II and is now a Manhattan-style grid of skyscrapers. We negotiated the shadowy streets between the tall buildings and across the Kyobashi River to the Valie Hotel (yes, I'm not kidding - they have a Valie Hotel in Hiroshima). A scrupulously polite English-speaking young lass apologised profusely, saying we could not check in until 3 pm, but allowed us to leave our bags at the hotel. We headed off and spent a couple of hours wandering around the gardens of Hiroshima Castle, which was completely flattened in the atomic bomb blast of August 1945 but has since been reconstructed exactly as it originally was in the 16th century. In the grounds there are several trees that survived the nuclear blast, including a few Japanese Holly trees, a Pussy Willow tree and an Australian Eucalyptus (gum) tree. They are all gnarled and misshapen, but appear healthy. I'm not surprized the gum tree made it through a nuclear furnace - these trees are extraordinarily tough and can live happily in the harshest of conditions. Indeed, they grow prolifically in the sun-blasted wilderness of the Australian outback, which tells you a lot about their ability to survive. In fact, in 2010 I saw healthy-looking gum trees at an altitude of over 4000 metres above sea-level on the island of Isla del Sol in Laka Titicaca (Bolivia), in an arid, low oxygen environment where nothing else above knee height was growing.
[Friday 24 May : Hiroshima, Honshu] Hiroshima seems to be very busy for some reason. It was really difficult finding a place to stay - most hotels on Booking.com seemed to be full. Tourists? Business people? A conference? Who knows, but we eventually had to cough up way more than we've been accustomed to paying and now find ourselves in a swanky business hotel. Unfortunately the high price and overly obsequious staff has not translated into good amenities; the router in our room is defective and either won't connect to the internet or drops the connection frequently, my bedside light doesn't work, and there are only two hangers in the postage stamp-sized cupboard. We don't need hangers to hang clothes for the simple reason that we have so few clothes, but they come in very useful to hang up our hand-washed laundry to dry. But we're not overly concerned - the water is hot, the beds are comfortable and we are conveniently located between the train station and the Peace Memorial Park. Best of all, the hotel had a push-button coffee machine in the reception area that was freely available for guests to use ... which we did, for our early morning coffee at 6 am every day and at regular intervals thereafter.
The Peace Memorial Park is a green and sombre oasis in the centre of Hiroshima, dedicated to the memory of the people who died during and after the atomic bomb explosion of August 1945. The bomb detonated in the air about 600 metres above the ground and completely devastated the city around it within a radius of about two kilometres. Nobody knows exactly how many people died, but it is estimated that at least 80 000 perished in the initial blast with a further 60 000 dying in later years from radiation poisoning or radiation-related illness. Or perhaps more - other estimates place the total number of deaths at closer to 200 000. And the shocking thing is that the US military dropped a second bomb three days later on the city of Nagasaki! After that the US president intervened and ordered that no more atomic bombs would be deployed without a presidential decree. Thankfully the Japanese government finally realized what an utterly hopeless position they were in and surrendered, thus ending World War II.
The Industrial Promotion Hall in Hiroshima, a building that was located almost directly below the epicentre of the nuclear explosion, was not destroyed because the impacting force on it was downwards, not sideways. But the windows were vapourised, the walls were shredded of paint and the building's woodwork disappeared so it remained standing as a skeletal hulk. Hiroshima's city council has purposely not rebuilt it, but has left it exactly as it was after the explosion as a symbol of the devastating effects of nuclear weapons. It is now called the A-Bomb Dome.
The Peace Memorial Museum was an outstanding and deeply moving exhibition of the brutal effect of atomic weapons on human life and the environment. The many stories we saw of people who died in agony, or who survived the initial blast and died later of radiation poisoning, or who witnessed the devastation, were heart-wrenching. And the display at the end of the world's progression to near global destruction at the height of the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union (USSR) was depressing. At least that danger has been averted, and these days the number of nuclear weapons in existence is but a fraction of what it was in the mid 1980's. That, of course, assumes that some unpredictable madman like North Korea's dictator, or the megalomaniac who heads the Russian government, won't decide to start their own private war. Let's hope and pray that that never happens ...
[Saturday 25 May : Hiroshima, Honshu] A relaxing stroll round the delightful Shukkei-en (garden) occupied a couple of hours in the morning. The Japanese are master gardeners, and always seem able to construct parks that are in perfect harmony by using a balance of manicured trees, wild bushes, grass, stones, water features and pathways. This particular park was originally created in 1620 as the garden of Hiroshima's feudal lord, but it was razed to the ground in the atomic bomb explosion of 1945 and only re-constructed in 1970. There is a large central lake populated by some enormous koi fish, as well as streams, waterfalls and numerous stone bridges. A miniature bamboo forest was enchanting to walk through.
After that Karen went off to the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art on her own, and I explored the streets of central Hiroshima. Our hotel could only give us one key to our room, but the practice was to hand the key in at reception when you went out so we could easily split up and return to the hotel separately. One of the places I visited was the Sogo department store. This shop contains 11 floors of exquisitely presented merchandise, from fresh food in the basement to women's fashion, men's fashion, books, toys, video games, homeware and lots more. The bookstore was a huge space containing tens of thousands of books, 90% of them in the format loved by the Japanese - picture stories. And in a moment of madness I walked through the hell of the cosmetics and make-up department, where rows and rows of counters were set up to flog the over-priced merchandise made by brands such as Estee Lauder, Givenchy, Lancombe and Chanel. The counters were "manned" by young women with perfect make-up, nails, clothes and posture, their eager eyes roving over the customers ambling past for any sign of their next victim. I did not match their target profile, of course, and they completely ignored me as if I was invisible.
On my way back to the hotel I walked past a rather posh-looking apartment block. A Porsche pulled up on the wrong side of the road and stopped opposite a row of parking spaces in front of the building. There was a low metal fence between the parking spaces and the sidewalk, supported by steel uprights on each of which was mounted what looked like an electronic keypad. A young woman got out of the car that had stopped, walked over to one of the keypads, typed in a code, and I watched in amazement as the nearest car behind the fence started to rise! The whole parking space was a series of car elevators, and each keypad operated one of them! As the elevator rose it revealed another car beneath it. It kept going up until there were two cars high above the ground; the third level down was empty. When the vacant space was level with the sidewalk and road, the elevator stopped and the metal fence in front of it started rising. The fence stopped when it was high enough for a vehicle to pass beneath it. The woman climbed back into her own car, drove into the road and reversed back into the empty slot. I thought she was going to scrape one of the uprights, but she'd clearly performed this manoevre many times before and went in perfectly straight with no mishaps. She got out, typed another code into the keypad and walked towards the apartment block entrance as both the metal fence and the elevator started descending. A minute later her car had disappeared into the bowels of the earth, the fence was firmly in place and the scene was exactly as it had been before.
Remarkable. The Japanese are masters at making the best use of the limited space they have available, and this apartment block's car elevators allowed for twelve vehicles to be parked off-street in a space that was only big enough for four. A brilliant solution ... unless you have to leave in a hurry; the whole procedure of opening up and parking took more than five minutes.
[Sunday 26 May : Kyoto, Honshu] I had discovered that the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Hiroshima, the Memorial Cathedral for World Peace, was only about five minutes' walk from our hotel. One of the Sunday Holy Masses was at 7:30 am, which suited us well because we were heading to Kyoto and had to check out of our hotel by 10 am. After coffee and breakfast at 6:30 am we strolled round to the cathedral at 7:15. Mass was in the crypt to the side of the cathedral and was celebrated by a very young priest who we initially thought was Japanese, but subsequently decided was more likely a Filipino. The Order of Mass was (of course) the same as in every other Catholic church in the world, but there were some minor differences; for example, there was no kneeling (the congregation stood up when I was expecting to kneel).
Back at our pretentious hotel we packed, checked out and whiled away a little time in the reception area before strolling round to the train station. We were going to Kyoto, but the hotel we'd booked into had let us know that we could only check in at 2:30 pm. They could not store luggage and nobody would be available before 2:30 pm, so there was no point in getting there early. Trains from Hiroshima to Kyoto took about an hour and three-quarters and they left every 15 minutes. So we commandeered two chairs in the hotel foyer until about 11 am, drinking the hotel's free coffee and catching up on news. Loads of other hotel guests were doing the same thing, including a pack of young Japanese girls in their early 20's who sat in the foyer doing their make-up, preening and staring at their cell phones. These girls were stylistically identical in tall (but chunky) platform shoes, baggy trousers and neck-high blouses that showed a few inches of bare midriff. Each of them had a sturdy metal wheelie suitcase and they teetered around the foyer in their high heels, comparing nails and (I suspect) making snarky comments about the two old fart Westerners (us) sitting in the corner.
The queue to buy train tickets at Hiroshima station was long but the Japanese are supremely efficient and before we knew it we were clutching two Shinkansen express tickets to Kyoto. We boarded the 12:03 train, and (as before), it left exactly on time. We retraced our route from three days previously via Okayama (where the branch line to Shikoku Island connects with the mainline) and then blasted eastwards through a blur of apartment blocks, offices, factories and houses. We were now heading into the industrial heartland of Japan and there was precious little open country to be seen. Almost all of the Shinkansen railway line is elevated, so from our lofty position we had a good view of the congestion. One city merged into another with no break, other than areas of single-storey houses that indicated what might be called outskirts. But you could not tell where the outskirts of one city ended and the next began. The city centres extended for miles, and comprised closely packed, gleaming skyscrapers and shadowy roads at street level, criss-crossed by commuter railway lines and streets empty of cars on a Sunday afternoon. Fukuyama, Himeji, Kobe and Osaka flashed by as the train swept along.
The train made brief (very brief) stops at the major stations on the way. Announcements in English and Japanese exhorted passengers to be ready to disembark before the train stopped. We noticed that passengers got up and moved towards the exits while the train was slowing down, and as soon as it drew to a halt they exited and new passengers climbed on. There was no delay, and no provision made for tardy, unprepared people. But three young Japanese (two men and a woman), who we'd observed getting on the train in Hiroshima, didn't seem to understand the Shinkansen efficiency. When the train stopped at Kobe they blearily stood up and proceeded to haul their hefty wheelie suitcases down from the overhead rack. In the meantime people were filing off the train. "They'd better hurry," I murmured to Karen. "Otherwise they're not going to make it." By the time these three idiots had got their suitcases down and were ready to head for the exit, new passengers were already boarding and streaming down the narrow aisle. The three of them struggled to get through against the flow of people, and we lost sight of them in the crush at the doorway.
A moment later the train pulled smoothly away. We saw one of the guys standing on the platform, staring at the train as it swept past with a bewildered expression on his face. The crowds at the door cleared and there were the other two, still on board! They hadn't managed to get off in time. They came back down the aisle, simultaneously looking both furious and sheepish, found empty seats and got busy on their phones. Karen and I shook our heads in amazement. What idiots. They'd actually missed their stop through their own lack of awareness. And they were Japanese, not foreigners! Luckily for them the next stop (Osaka) wasn't too far. This time they made sure they were ready to disembark well in time, and the last we saw of them was the sight of them arguing hammer and tongs on the platform at Osaka station. They had 15 minutes to find the right platform for the next train back to Kobe, and the sluggish way they were moving suggested they'd need all of it if they wanted to make it in time.
Kyoto station was bewilderingly huge. Multiple levels of railway tracks converged here, with the elevated Shinkansen line at the top, several local railways in the middle and two Subway lines deep below. We negotiated steps, escalators, turnstiles and throngs of Japanese trundling along with their wheelie suitcases, staring at their phones as they walked. But once we'd managed to find the north side exit it was easy - Kyoto's streets are laid out in a grid pattern, almost exactly north-south and east-west. We simply walked north from the station and took the sixth street west and voila!, there was JP Inn. Their reception only opened at 2:30 pm and we arrived at the door at 2:25 pm, a testament to how well we'd planned our move from Hiroshima to Kyoto.
JP Inn was a marvel of Japanese technological automation. The young chap at reception explained the procedure to get in and out of the front door, get in and out of our room and operate the shower, all of it done via keypads and codes. But in the end it was pretty simple and we moved into a room that was more spacious than the cramped box we'd had in Hiroshima.
[Monday 27 May : Kyoto, Honshu] Rain dripping onto the tiny balcony outside our room greeted us in the morning. Undeterred, we headed south, under layers of elevated railway lines, to To-ji (properly named Kyo-o Gokokuji), a Buddhist temple that Karen wanted to see. By sheer good fortune we stumbled on an exhibition by renowned artist Hashizume Ai Yuzen in an annex next to the temple. Master Hashizume (as he is called) creates his art by imprinting a bleached white design on an indigo-dyed fabric background. He uses a 400 year-old process and the leaves of the Indigo bush (Persicaria tinctoria), a plant endemic to Japan, to create the rich colours of his backgrounds. No artificial colourants or chemicals are used. Material dyed with natural indigo in this way has several beneficial properties, including being anti-bacterial and insect repellant. The artworks were beautiful, but also very expensive ... as one would expect of such a labour-intensive process.
In the grounds of To-ji we found the highest pagoda in all of Japan, but in the unrelenting rain everything was grey and gloomy. Instead of exploring the gardens of the temple, we repaired to a Family Mart convenience store, where we dried off, drank coffee and ate custard pastries (me) and apple danish (Karen). While sitting in the store we spotted a sign across a busy intersection that read 2nd Street Reuse Shop, which had to be a second-hand clothing store. Second-hand (or reusable) clothing is very popular in Japan, where the notion of throwing something away that is still perfectly serviceable is anathema. In addition to their generally responsible attitiude, the issue of what to do with the all the waste generated by 125 million people is a serious problem, so the Japanese have put a lot of effort into the promotion of recycling, upcycling and reuse. The clothes and shoes in 2nd Street were in fairly good condition and not expensive, and Karen came out with a very elegant pale green raincoat and a shirt. I tried on a pair of shoes, but even the biggest ones in the shop were too small for me.
Late in the afternoon we walked to the nearest Subway station and caught a train to the Gion district of Kyoto. This area is renowned for being where modern-day Geishas still live and work, and it was thronged woth tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of these mythical women. We didn't see any of them, but we strolled round the beautifully kept streets and enjoyed the atmosphere [Aside: There is a general misconception in the West about Japan's Geishas. These women are NOT prostitutes, but highly skilled and respected members of society who spend years learning arts such as conversation, acting, dancing, singing and music. Geishas are regarded as the custodians of traditional Japanese culture. Their unfortunate reputation possibly stems from the fact that they do not give public performances but rather hold small, private and very discreet shows attended by only a few (as in, rich) people].
The restaurants in the main tourist streets of Gion were eye-poppingly expensive. The menu at one place offered dinner for 8800 Yen (over one thousand SA Rands)! But we followed the standard technique of walking two blocks away from the tourist zone, turned down a dimly lit lane, and there we found a local diner. The menu was entirely in Japanese (as was the clientele), and the prices were reasonable. We went in and enjoyed a fantastic meal that did not break the bank.
[Tuesday 28 May : Kyoto, Honshu] The weather forecast for Kyoto was "heavy rain, all day." And the swines were right. It bucketed down during the night, thrashed onto the rooftops in the morning and swept across the drenched city in the afternoon. Our plans to walk the (apparently beautiful) Philosopher's Path were thwarted, and we cancelled a visit to the ancient Imperial Palace, which would have entailed lots of walking round the palace gardens. Instead we packed on our wet weather clothes and hiking boots, borrowed umbrellas from JP Inn's reception and took the Subway to the Nishiki Food Market. The market turned out to be several narrow roads, roofed over, that housed untold numbers of fresh food stalls, from fish to meat to vegetables to chocolate to tea and coffee. Further on we wandered into the vast and confusing Teramachi Mall, which was a similar series of covered roads but with a greater variety of stores. We found the Samurai and Ninja Museum hidden away among the retail assault, but they could only take limited numbers of visitors at a time and the next available slot was at 2:20 pm. We didn't want to wait three hours, so we headed back to the Subway and on to Nijo-jo.
Nijo-jo was the residence of the former Shogun of all of Japan (Tokugawa Ieyasu), who established a military government alongside the emperor in 1603. While the emperor may have been nominally in charge, to all intents and purposes Japan was ruled by the Shogun. This odd separation of power was reflected in the overwhelming opulence of the Shogun's residence compared to the drabness of the Imperial Palace (and, in modern times, by the vast crowds of people visiting the former as opposed to the few who go to the latter). The grandeur of Tokugawa's Kyoto pad was impressive, with room after room of exquisite art, beautifully constructed woodwork and gardens that were a delight even in the rain. The whole place was surrounded by truly massive walls and a moat wide enough to deter even the most determined of attackers.
[Wednesday 29 May : Hakone, Honshu] After some easy travelling days which typically entailed one train ride and a short walk, today we had to do a little more work. From Kyoto we were heading for the mountain village of Moto-Hakone, supposedly one of the best spots in all of Japan for views of Mount Fuji, Japan's highest mountain [Aside: Moto-Hakone is in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, which extends over a wide area about 90 kilometres west of Tokyo. The village is on the eastern shore of Lake Ashi (Ashino-ko), about a kilometre north of a slightly bigger town called Hakone-Machi. Mount Fuji itself is about 50 kilometres north-west of Moto-Hakone]. But getting to Moto-Hakone wasn't so simple. First we had to take a train to Mishima, and from there a local bus into the mountains. After that things were a little vague, but we had a Google Maps pin of Koi Hakone (the "private hotel" we'd booked into for the next three nights), which, according to the Big G, was 550 metres from a bus stop in Moto-Hakone. The map itself was scarce on detail and the bus stop where we needed to get off was only listed in Japanese. But it was the 44th stop from Mishima Station, so we knew we had a fairly long ride.
Koi Hakone had a remote check-in procedure. We wanted to avoid a repeat of the trouble we'd had in Takamatsu, where the code for the lockbox containing the key to the apartment we'd rented was only sent after we'd lost wifi access. So we'd arrived at the place and couldn't get in (see the entry above for 20 May). This time I'd messaged the manager of Koi Hakone well in advance and explained that we needed the lockbox code the day before we checked in, and he was happy to oblige. So we had the address, the map pin and the lockbox code; we just had to get on the right bus and get off at the right stop.
But, of course, this was Japan, where public transport is almost unimaginably efficient and organized ... The train was easy, the bus was simple and the right bus stop proved to be the last stop on the route, in the centre of Moto-Hakone village and even closer to Koi Hakone than we had thought. We arrived at the place we'd booked, which proved to be a small block of four apartments, opened the lockbox for apartment 102 and moved in. Piece of cake. Why can't all travelling be this simple?
The only interesting interaction we had during the smooth train-bus-check-in procedure was at Mishima Station. We had ridden the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Mishima and exited the station, looking for bus number N65. And there it was, amongst a slew of other buses at a circular bus stop right outside. There was a wait of about 45 minutes for the next bus to Moto-Hakone (it was, after all, a fairly remote mountain village), so we enjoyed coffee and a French pastry at the Vie de France bakery in the station (Vie de France was clearly a chain of coffee shops that specialized in station outlets, because we'd visited one at Tokushima Station on Shikoku Island a few times when we'd been there). Ten minutes before the bus was due to leave we boarded, and sat waiting as other people climbed on in one's and two's. With a minute to go, two older Americans appeared at the door of the bus. The man stepped up to the driver and held up his phone; obviously a Google Translate of something like "Is this the bus to Hakone?" The driver nodded vigourously, at which point the man stepped back out again. He didn't bother with any niceties like "konichiwa" or "arigato." I was momentarily puzzled - if this was the right bus, why hadn't the two of them just boarded?
A moment later the answer appeared, in the form of a truly GIANT suitcase that the man tried, unsuccessfully, to haul up the steps into the bus. it was obvious that the case was way too heavy for him - he couldn't even get it onto the first step. The driver came out from behind his enclosure, reached down and pulled the case up, then manhandled it down the aisle to an open space in front of a door at the back that was clearly not in use. The case was so big it could barely fit down the narrow aisle. As if that wasn't enough, the driver then returned to the front and hauled up another huge suitcase, identical to the first. This second suitcase also landed up at the back door after a sweaty journey from the front. The two Americans then climbed onto the bus themselves, checked where their luggage was and sat down. "Wow," I thought to myself. "How can you not even be able to lift your own suitcase? If you can't manage all the stuff you've brought, bring less stuff!"
An hour later the bus reached Hakone-Machi (the town before Moto-Hakone, our destination), and by dint of further Google Translations, the couple indicated they wanted to get off. I heard the name of a very posh hotel mentioned. The driver pulled over at the next bus stop, came out from his cubicle again and manually unlatched a bolt keeping the back door shut. He then went back to the front, pressed a button, and the back door opened automatically. By now the American couple had stepped off the bus and were standing helplessly on the sidewalk, watching the poor bus driver (who was none too young himself) running himself off his feet because of their oversized luggage. I took pity on him, stood up and lifted the two suitcases down through the open back door to the sidewalk. Boy, were they heavy. The American man actually nodded his thanks to me; his wife just stood there, her expression indicating that she fully expected (and was entitled to) such help from nobodies like me. Carry my own suitcase? You're kidding, right? I have flunkies who do that for me. The bus driver, on the other hand, bowed and smiled at me, and said "Arigato gozaimas" at least three times. He, at least, was grateful that I'd helped. American arrogance and self-entitlement vs Japanese helpfulness and respect for others? You decide ...
[Thursday 30 May : Hakone, Honshu] At 5:30 am we were up and drinking coffee. 5:45 am found us striding down the lakeshore path on the way to Onshi-Hakone Park, a verdant green oasis on a small peninsula jutting into Lake Ashi. Why so early, you may wonder? Well, the weather forecast had predicted heavy rain (again), but only from 10 am. Before that there would apparently be intermittent cloud cover. So if we wanted to have any chance at all of catching a glimpse of Mount Fuji then we had to get going early. And various online blogs as well as our trusty Rough Guide guidebook had said that the best viewpoints were in Onshi-Hakone Park.
The park was indeed gorgeous, despite having to climb 211 steps to get to the highest point (and best Mount Fuji viewing spot). And lo and behold, the famed mountain (actually volcano) WAS visible, but only just - the very tip of the peak was poking up above a thick bank of clouds that seemed to be moving slowly northwards. We found the best spot we could and sat down to wait. The clouds moved very slowly, sometimes allowing more of the mountain to be seen, sometimes less. But gradually the edge of the cloud bank inched past, and suddenly we could see all of it. It was quite hazy (after all, we were 50 kilometres way), there were several wisps of cloud around and a range of low hills on the western shore of Lake Ashi obscured the lower flanks of the mountain, but still - it was Mount Fuji, in (almost) all of her glory. Being late May, the peak was no longer snow-covered; instead there were several streaks of snow running down the flanks with rock showing between them. Amazingly, nobody else was around! We had the entire park to ourselves.
After about three minutes the clouds seemed to reverse direction and rolled back ... and the magical view was gone. We had risen at 5:30 am, walked for 15 minutes and waited for 45 minutes for that brief glimpse of Japan's most iconic natural feature, but it was worth it. We explored the rest of the park then headed back to Moto-Hakone, where we bought takeaway coffee at 7-Eleven and drank it while sitting on the steps overlooking the lake. Even from that vantage point we could see glimpses of Mount Fuji's flanks through the clouds.
Back at our digs we ate breakfast and waited for the expected "heavy rain" to start bucketing down. But nothing happened. In fact, there were times when it was quite sunny and warm. We prepared for the worst by donning boots, jackets and ponchos, then strolled through the village to the path that runs northwards along the shore of the lake (the park we'd visited earlier in the morning was on the south side of town). The path was roughly cobbled and wound its way close to the water's edge through thick forest. Luckily the rain stayed away, and every now and then the foliage thinned out and we had a view of the lake. Quite often we saw the two Lake Ashi "pirate ships" steaming past. These are tourist boats, decked out to look like old-style pirate sailing ships; they cruise round the lake, stopping at various sites along the way. One of their stops was a pier at Moto-Hakone. We'd seen them arrive and depart, and the speed with which they disgorged one load of tourists and took on another was an impressive feat of efficiency and man-management. The company that runs these ships does some serious hard-selling of their ludicrously expensive tickets - at their office near the Moto-Hakone pier they repeatedly played a loud and irritating advertising jingle over loudspeakers. An American woman's nasal voice exhorted people to buy tickets on the boat, because the trip was "very gorgeous." Over and over, ad nauseum ... and it worked; the crowds of people who boarded the ships were huge.
About a kilometre from Moto-Hakone we came to the kind of high gate or entranceway that is typical of Shinto shrines. This one was bright red and actually in the lake shallows. A long line of people (Japanese and foreign) was waiting to have a photograph of themselves taken in front of the gate. We stared, bemused. It was a photogenic gate, admittedly, but there are thousands of such gates in Japan. Why would people wait for half an hour to get a picture of this one? The Rough Guide had the answer - this particular gate is very popular as an image for postcards and prints from the Hakone area. But we had no interest in standing in the queue so we walked on. After another kilometre the path ended abruptly at the edge of the road that follows the shore of the lake. There was nowhere else to walk but on the road, but, most unusually for Japan, this road had no provision for pedestrians on either side. The road was narrow and wedged tightly between thick vegetation on the lake side and a rocky slope on the other side. Luckily there weren't many cars, and the drivers were extremely cautious when they spotted two foreigners ambling along ahead of them.
Shortly after that we saw the cables of the Komagatake Aerial Cableway ahead of us (or "ropeway" as the Japanese call it. In Japan a "cableway" is a funicular railway - a coach on rails pulled up a steep hill by a cable). A cablecar was swaying its way into the sky to a distant station at the top of a mountain. We bought tickets at the lower station then joined hordes of package tour Japanese tourists on the next car up. We were packed in like the proverbial sardines, and it was hard even to see out because I was hanging onto an overhead handle much like in a crowded commuter train. There were lots of "oohs" and "aahs" as the car traversed each pylon. Mount Komagatake is 1356 metres above sea level and at the top station it was icy cold. Mist was swirling around us as we followed the gravelly path that looped round the flat, grassy area on the summit. The views down and across Lake Ashi were superb, but there wasn't a great deal else to see and before long we were back in the queue for the next car down.
Moto-Hakone village is a rather odd place. Most of the shops and restaurants only open at 11 am, or, in some cases, even later than that. In fact, some shops just didn't seem to open at all. And at 5 pm every day there is a loud jingle of music over some well-concealed public address system, followed by an announcement, at which point everything shuts. After 6 pm the entire town is dark and closed, apart from the perennial activities at the 7-Eleven and Lawson convenience stores. We strolled round town looking for somewhere to eat at about 7 pm, and every restaurant was shut! Nobody was about and no lights were on. It was eerie. In the end we had instant noodles and some pre-cooked spicy sauce for supper.
[Friday 31 May : Hakone, Honshu] Our last day in Hakone was also the first truly relaxing day we've had in Japan so far ... mostly because of the weather. It rained virtually the whole day. We enjoyed some excellent coffee at a swish place called Bakery & Table that had fantastic views over Lake Ashi from its second floor cafe. It was comfortable, warm and cozy, and best of all the coffee was espresso-based, not drip. It was the first espresso Karen had had since we were in Tokyo three weeks before, and she sighed with pleasure when she took her first sip. My Americano was a little weak, but mostly because the barista used a cup that was too big. It was certainly a double shot and better than any of the drip coffee I've had in Japan so far. However, in the afternoon there was enough of a break in the rain for us to take a walk to the village of Hakone-Machi, a liitle way south of Moto-Hakone. Hakone-Machi was far more tourist-oriented and boasted loads of souvenir shops and tacky retaurants catering to large tour groups. But the walk was magnificent, along a muddy track through an avenue of 400 year-old Japanese Cedar trees. We were both glad we'd worn our hiking boots.
[Saturday 1 June : Tokyo, Honshu] We returned to Tokyo today, completing our approximately clockwise route round the south-westerly part of Japan. It felt like we'd seen lots of places, but the reality was that we'd only scratched the surface of this fascinating country. We had only been to two of the five major islands (Shikoku and Honshu) and had not visited Hokkaido, Kyushu or Okinawa, or anywhere north of Tokyo. And, as always in Japan, the potentially tricky trip from the backwoods of Hakone National Park to Tokyo proved to be simple. We thought we might need to endure several changes of train to reach our hotel in the Shinagawa area of Tokyo, but there are always so many different public transport options here that we simply picked a route that entailed only one bus (from Moto-Hakone to Odawara) and one train (from Odawara to Osaki Station in Tokyo). The walk from Osaki Station to our hotel was easy; acually getting out of the cavernous station building was not. I think we spent longer trying to find the right exit from the station than actually walking to the hotel.
The hotel we'd booked in Tokyo, Hotel MyStays Gotanda, proved to be a find. It was in the Shinagawa area and only a short walk from either Gotanda or Osaki Stations. In Tokyo you cannot expect to walk everywhere, or even anywhere - the city is so huge you have to take trains to get around. As long as you're near a train station you're in a good location. And Gotanda, our local station, was on the Yamanote Line, a circular route that more-or-less encloses central Tokyo and stops at all the major sights, such as Shibuya, Shinjuku and Ginza. That meant we could get around without too many tedious changes of trains. In addition, our room was more spacious than the cramped cubicle we'd stayed in on our first visit to Tokyo three weeks before. Although the hotel's entrance was on a busy road, our room overlooked a narrow alley and was very quiet. The fittings in the room were cleverly arranged to make best use of the space available. And it was very reasonably priced, way less than the insanely expensive hotels in Shibuya, Shinjuku or Ginza.
It was only 2 pm, so after settling in we headed for Gotanda Station and grabbed the first train to Shibuya. This area boasts one legendary sight that is a must-see for all visitors to Tokyo - Shibuya Crossing (or Shibuya Scramble as it is sometimes called). Shibuya Crossing is an intersection of seven roads directly in front of Shibuya Station that boasts a somewhat unusual traffic light configuration. Instead of allowing vehicles from alternate directions to proceed (and pedestrians to cross only on those streets where traffic is stopped), every few minutes the lights stop all vehicles from all roads leading into the intersection. Pedestrians can then cross the intersection from any side, in any direction, even diagonally, something which is almost never allowed in Japan. And thousands of people do, in massive, uncountable numbers. In the couple of minutes while cars drive through and pedestrians cannot proceed, the numbers of people waiting to cross at every one of the several corners swells rapidly. And when the lights turn green for pedestrians it is like a swarm of locusts invading a wheat field. A huge empty space of tarmac disappears under thousands of feet.
We saw the Crossing for the first time from the windows of the overpass from Shibuya Station to the Mark City shopping complex. It was eye-popping watching hordes of people converging from multiple directions into the empty intersection, then merging into one indistinguishable mass of humanity. Shibuya Crossing is apparently the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world, with as many as 3000 people at a time using it. We joined those numbers a few minutes later, and tried with great difficulty to take photos as the masses of people surged all around us.
The rest of Shibuya was a crazy madhouse of people, going in and out of restaurants, bars, night clubs, gaming venues and manga and anime stores. The usual conservative dress of the Japanese clearly didn't apply to Shibuya on a Saturday night - we saw plenty of weirdly dressed people who would have raised eyebrows in any rural area of Japan. Amongst the mayhem, one slightly different place called Mandarake caught our eye. We descended several flights of stairs to a deep basement that was filled with rows and rows of shelves containing Japanese picture books of every possible kind. Most were new and sealed in plastic to prevent people from standing in the store and reading for hours. They even had a section of English books on sale for only 110 Yen (about 13 SA Rands). Amazingly, these books were erudite, academic tomes, mostly hardcover, covering subjects such as Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, history, literature and the arts. How did these scholarly volumes end up in the basement of a manga comic-book store in Tokyo, I wondered?
[Sunday 2 June : Tokyo, Honshu] We took the train to Akihabara, an area of Tokyo renowned for being the home of discount electronic shops. We did indeed see lots of shops selling lots of stuff, but none of it was particularly cheap ... and whatever we bought we had to carry through Customs in South Africa. Far more interesting were the gaming plazas, manga shops, maid cafes, cat cafes and dog cafes that lined the streets. One building comprised FIVE FLOORS of maid cafes, with waiting times at each cafe posted on a digital screen on the ground floor! In case you don't know what a maid cafe is (I didn't, until today), it is a restaurant where all the waitresses are extremely young girls dressed in cute maid outfits (read: short skirts, frilly blouses, high heels), and they treat the customers as their beloved master (or mistress) as if they were servants in a private, well-to-do house. They act all cute and girly-girly, often speaking in childish voices. And for this privilege, customers have to pay through their noses. All of the maid cafes had an entrance fee that varied from 780 Yen to 2 000 Yen, and on top of that you also had to buy at least one drink over a certain value. The cafes with very high entrance fees generally threw in one "free" drink. Whoopee whoo.
Sounds a bit seedy, right? Yes, we thought so too, and moved on without sampling their dubious wares. I looked up at the building with five floors of maid cafes, and every window was curtained or covered over. What exactly goes on inside that they feel the need to stop people looking in?
The cat and dog cafes were slightly different. You didn't eat the animals, but rather sat in a room full of, well, cats and dogs. You could pet them, stroke them or feed them (of course, you had to buy food in the cafe for this). Prices in these cafes tended to be a certain amount per ten minutes, typically around 250 Yen for the dog cafes and 400 Yen for the cat places. Why were the cat joints more expensive? Do cats cost more to keep? Or are they just regarded as more exclusive? Beats me ... we looked through the windows of a couple of these cafes, and saw customers looking bemused as fluffy cats lay all around them on perches, utterly ignoring them (as cats do). I could imagine people sitting there, checking their watches as the cost ratcheted up, while the cats treated them with disdain.
Then there were the gaming stores. Most of these only opened at 10 am, and when we arrived in Akihabara at 9:45 we saw long lines of people waiting outside various places. Most were older teenagers or young men in their 20's, and all had huge bags of stuff. Not just backpacks containing a sweater, laptop and wallet, but carry-bags of things we couldn't identify. We surmised that these bags contained the paraphenalia they needed for the games of their choice. And every possible kind of gaming experience was catered for, from online digital games to old-style military war games played on miniature landscapes using plastic soldiers, guns and tanks. One place we went into called Warhammer Store & Cafe was filled with tables on which complex fantasy world landscapes had been created, such as Dungeons & Dragons, Lord of the Rings and Transformers. Many of the landscapes featured dinosaurs, robots and other make-believe creatures. Several of the tables were in use as gaming arenas, surrounded by groups of young men consulting thick books containing (presumably) the instructions or rules for that game. Each player had a tape measure, and they used them to measure the exact distance they could move their pieces (such as soldiers or dinosaurs) on the board. It was fascinating, weird and innocently childlike.
Next up was the national Sumo Stadium. This most Japanese of all sports, in which truly giant men wearing nothing but skimpy loin cloths attempt to wrestle each other off a circular arena, was in a dormant phase between tournaments, but we hoped to be able to see inside the stadium or perhaps get a glimpse of the massive behemouths practicing. Both were possible, but at a cost of 10 000 Yen (1200 SA Rands). That was just too much to cough up for nothing much more than a quick look round an empty stadium. So we retired to a nearby noodle bar and slurped down some ramen with a boiled egg for lunch instead.
Our plan was to visit Yoyogi Park later in the afternoon. Apparently there are regular impromptu musical performances in the park on Sunday afternoons, but the weather decided otherwise. It started pouring with rain and did not let up until late that night. Instead we borrowed umbrellas from the hotel and sloshed through the wet streets to Gate City Plaza shopping centre, where it was at least dry. This multi-level mall proved to be quite unlike any shopping centre I've ever seen before. It featured a huge atrium that allowed natural light to flood in, and galleries round the side that contained shops and restaurants. The basement level, beneath the atrium, was open and strewn with tables and chairs at which dozens of young people were working with books, notes and laptops. One side of the first floor gallery was devoted to tables and a long counter where more people (presumably students) were working. The whole place was extremely quiet. Amazing - rather than watching sport or hanging out with their friends on a rainy Sunday afternoon, the industrious Japanese break out the books and study. And tycoons who own properties such as the Gate City Plaza provide free facilities for them (the mall had free wifi too). No wonder this country has advanced so rapidly since the ruins and destruction of World War II.
[Monday 3 June : Tokyo, Honshu] Monday morning, no rain and the start of the working week in Tokyo. The trains were packed with dark-suited office workers hurrying to their corporate cubicles as we traversed the tunnels to Shinjuku via the Yamanote Line and then to Gotokuji via the Odakyu Line. Gotoku-ji (temple) was a short but confusing walk from the station. Popularly known as the "Cat Temple", Gotoku-ji is a Buddhist temple at which cats are revered. Not live cats though - these are tiny cermaic cats that all conform to the same design: a white cat with red ears, red whiskers and a red collar, sitting on three legs and holding its front right paw up in a "hello there" kind of way. There are different sizes of cat, and you can buy them at the temple shop. The idea is to dedicate the cat to something (such as your family's health) and place it on one of the shelves provided for this purpose outside the temple. The shelves already hold thousands of these ceramic cats, most quite small, but among them were quite a few of the bigger version (which obviously costs a lot more). Karen bought a medium-sized cat to take home and a tiny one to dedicate; we signed our names on it and placed it on a shelf with great solemnity and ceremony.
On the way back to the station we stopped at a small local coffee shop called Rarasand Art Gallery and Cafe. We ate cat-shaped pastries and had coffee in china cups with milk provided in a jug, stirred with a metal spoon. I nearly fell over in surprize. In Japan tea and coffee is almost always provided in disposable cardboard cups, even in speciality coffee shops like Starbucks. And if you want milk you have to add it via those small plastic sachets of milk you get on aeroplanes. No spoons either - throwaway wooden stirrers are the norm. But at this tiny neighbourhood coffee shop on a nondecript side street away from the bright lights and frenzy of Tokyo, there was no plastic and nothing disposable except a couple of paper napkins. Amazing.
The rain that had been threatening stayed away, so we headed straight on to Tokyo Station. This massive meeting point of multiple railway lines and hundreds of thousands of passengers per day and the plaza in front of it that leads to the Imperial Palace, is the dead centre of Tokyo. It is the busiest station in Japan in terms of trains, with more than FOUR THOUSAND trains arriving or departing per day. We stumbled our way through the crowds, looking at the signage for the various connections you could make, and eventually found the west exit. We emerged into the sunlight in front of the station, and were quite surprized to see what a venerable old building it is ... the small part that is above ground, that is. The station is a red face-brick building, gracious and dignified in comparison with the concrete, glass and steel we had become accustomed to. The original station was built in 1914, but since then there have been multiple extensions and enhancements that have quadrupled it in size and capacity. But thankfully the top brass of Japan Railways have not demolished the fine old building but have kept it intact, and today it still stands facing the Imperial Palace as it has done for the past 110 years.
The Imperial Palace itself only permits entrance via pre-booked guided tours (in Japanese), but the outer and inner gardens were apparently free. We strolled to the nearest gate to find it closed. A notice announced that the palace gardens were open and free to anybody ... but not on Monday or Friday. Just our luck that we came on a Monday. I had checked in our guidebook and on the internet, and nothing had been mentioned about the Imperial Palace grounds being closed two days a week. Rats. We looked around the outer gardens, but they were merely an open expanse of grass and carefully trimmed pine trees surrounding a wide moat and walls. The walls of the palace were high and massive, but built at such a gently sloping angle that it appeared as if they could be climbed quite easily by determined attackers. If they could cross the moat, that is ... The water in the moat was filthy and choked with some kind of weed. We saw a guy in a motorboat slowly chugging through the water, and every fifty metres or so he had to stop, raise the engine and clear the propellor of a thick clutch of weeds that were snarled up in it.
Instead of going into the inner gardens we walked round the whole palace, which turned out to be a LONG way. By the time we'd completed our circumnavigation of the emeperor's pad our legs were shaky, our stomachs were grumbling and the tall buildings of the Ginza district were looming ahead of us. Ginza, the most quintessential area of high class shopping and dining in Tokyo, was unlikely to provide a reasonably priced lunch option, so we dived into a burger joint we spotted called Lotteria. It was deep below ground (perhaps the business leaders of Ginza were deliberately hiding it out of sight) and a rip-off of American chains such as McDonald's and Burger King, but the chicken burgers we had there were surprizingly good.
The famed streets of Ginza proved to be exactly what we expected - steel and glass skyscrapers, brand name stores such as Chanel, Rolex, Ralph Lauren and Jimmy Choo, stylishly dressed women carrying designer shopping bags swaying along the sidewalk, and sunglass-clad hip older men cruising the streets in Porsches and Aston Martins. A few photographs and we were back at Tokyo Station, looking for "Character Street" in its vast underground shopping mall [Aside: Most major Japanese train stations contain shops or are adjacent to shoppimg malls, for the simple reason that getting around by train is so much part of Japanese life that stations have become the hub of the community. Almost everybody passes through train stations, so having shops there makes sense]. Character Street is not an actual road but merely a corridor of shops selling toys representing the multitude of comic-book and TV characters that have become famous in Japan. Fluffy toys are big in Japan, and people were buying them in droves in Character Street. It was peculiar - even grown men seemed to have a fetish for fluffy toys. What's up with that? I hadn't heard of most of the characters; Pokemon was about all I could remember, but he (or perhaps "it") was old hat from what I could see.
[Tuesday 4 June : Tokyo, Honshu] Tokyo Tower, a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris that for many years was the tallest structure in Tokyo, was our target for the morning. On the way there we visited Zojo-ji (temple) and were fortunate enough to arrive just before a service was about to begin. We sat at the back and watched. The signal for activities to begin was a drum intoning loudly, it's rhythm getting faster and faster until the beats were almost indistinguishable. A family with three children was sitting in front of us, and two little girls thought these drumbeats were very funny. Every time the drum was struck, they jumped and giggled. Their parents were getting exasperated and eventually the father had to speak sternly to them.
Three shaven-headed monks came in, one of whom knelt down in the front and began chanting. The other two sat on the side and clanged bells at various times. One of the monks then called an elderly couple up and they sat down on chairs on the alter. They appeared to receive some kind of special blessing; perhaps it was a 50th wedding anniversary? After about ten minutes of chanting the elderly couple was escorted back to their seats with the rest of us, and five minutes after that the three monks stood up together and walked out. And that was it. The few people who had attended the service stood up, bowed and left. We did the same.
Tokyo Tower, just round the corner from Zojo-ji, proved to be a monstrous red and white construction that dwarfed the tall buildings around it. It is 333 metres tall and was built in 1958, during a time when Japan was still furiously rebuilding after the war. It remained the tallest tower in Japan until Tokyo SkyTree surpassed it in 2012. We rode an elevator up to the main observation deck and walked round, marvelling at the views of Tokyo's skyline. There were several "skywalk" windows built into the floor that provided a scary moment the first time you walked over them. These windows were simply parts of the observation deck floor that were made of glass (very thick glass), so you could stand on them an look straight down a LONG way.
In the afternoon we took the train to Harakuju. This area is renowned as the cutting-edge fashion centre of Tokyo, and the streets were indeed filled with young people wearing outrageous clothes. Cat Street was lined with second-hand clothing boutiques, which may sound tacky but in Japan that is not the case. The Japanese people have an admirable mindset of zero waste and reuse, and when somebody no longer wants an item of clothing they sell it or donate it. Second-hand stores, or "reuse shops", are common. They generally contain clothes in very good condition and are well patronised. There is no snobbish "second-hand clothes are beneath me" attitude in Japan.
Chicken burgers at Mos Burger, a Japanese fast food chain that knocks spots off their mediocre American equivalents, gave us the energy to tackle an evening visit to Shinjuku. Shinjuku, the pulsing heart of Tokyo's nightlife, was an overwhelming assault on the senses. Even getting out of the station was difficult - there are over FIFTY exits from Shinjuku Station, and we visited way more of them than we planned just trying to figure out how to get to the street. Eventually we found our way to Omoide Yokocho, an area of impossibly narrow lanes crammed with tiny restaurants. The lanes were not much wider than one person's shoulders, and the restaurants were only a little bigger than that. People, mostly tourists, were jammed in, shoulder to shoulder, at rough wooden counters barely big enough to hold their plates of food. The kitchens of these places were simply the area behind the counter, where a couple of unshaven men were typically cooking meat on skewers over fires in a space that was so cramped they could hardly turn around. It all looked pretty grim, but there were lines of people waiting to eat at many of these tiny eateries. Cheap food or just the "in thing" to do? We couldn't tell.
We wandered into the Kabukicho area, where the glaring neon lights, bars, night clubs, love hotels and strip joints were cheek-to-jowl down both sides of the crowded streets. Cars could barely move through the throngs of people, most of whom seemed to be tourists simply taking photographs. Many of the businesses had somebody outside on the sidewalk trying to cajole customers into their establishment, but these hard-selling touts weren't having much success. One road that boasted unusually wide sidewalks was lined with young men and women standing on the kerb. The women were mostly dressed like some kind of childlike fantasy of a maid - high heels, knee-length stockings, short skirts and ruffled blouses. The men wore black clothes head to foot, with long black trenchcoats that reached almost to their ankles. Each of them was holding a cardboard sign on which was written what appeared to be a price for some kind of service they were offering. They were obviously prostitutes, but it was all very low-key and nothing overtly provocative was on display. This rather mild Red Light District in Tokyo was a reflection of Japan's orderly and very conservative society. The area wasn't even very seedy. In fact, there were a number of smart, high-end hotels all around.
[Wednesday 5 June : Tokyo, Honshu] Our last day in Japan. Our flight out was only at 9:15 pm, so we had most of the day to explore. But four days of hectic touring of Tokyo's sights via multiple trains and loads of walking had taken their toll on these ageing legs of ours, the result of which was that we didn't leave the hotel until we checked out at 10:45 am. Down into the tunnels we went, to emerge near Hie-jinja Shrine. This temple was famed for having a staircase leading up to it that was lined with red archways. We dodged a family having pictures taken by a professional photographer and walked up and down the staircase, which was a lot narrower than the pictures we'd seen of it suggested. Then we strolled round to the park opposite the Imperial Palace and ate a picnic lunch. On the way we saw stacks of armed policemen, manning barricades and looking watchful. Some of the roads round the palace were closed. We guessed the policemen were probably there to guard the route for an official foreign delegation, but we saw no big black cars with tinted windows sweeping past, so whatever it was remained a mystery.
One of the sights we had missed when we'd first gone to Shibuya Crossing was the statue of a dog outside the station. This dog, named Hachiko, was adopted as a puppy in the 1920's by Eizaburo Ueno, a professor at Tokyo's Imperial University. The professor went to work by train every day and always returned at the same time in the afternoon. Hachiko used to wait for his master at Shibuya Station and they'd walk home together. One day in 1925 the professor died while at work and thus did not come back on the train. For almost ten years after that, Hachiko continued going to the station every day to wait for the professor to return ... which, of course, he never did. A statue was erected in honour of Hachiko's extraordinary loyalty, near the exact spot at Shibuya Station where the faithful dog used to wait so patiently. We found the statue easily enough; today it is both a favourite meeting place and a much-photographed tourist sight.
And then it was time to collect our bags and make our way to the airport. On the way back to the hotel we bought sushi and some snacks at a supermarket. It was a good opportunity to get rid of all the Yen coins we had, so when the price appeared at the self-checkout till I started popping coins into the slot. The total cost was 708 Yen. I had one 5 Yen coin and three 1 Yen coins, so the total came down to 700 Yen. I inserted a couple of 50's and then started putting in 100's, and as the total reduced I began to realize that I had the EXACT amount we needed in coins! I put in my last 100 Yen coin and the total was zero. Incredible! What are the chances of that? We had what was needed in coins with not a single Yen over! Now we only had banknotes, which are easy to convert into any currency (you generally cannot convert coins from one currency to another outside of the country whose currency it is).
The train to the airport was swift and efficient, but it still took TWO HOURS to get there. Narita International Airport is a long, long way from Tokyo. We used our multi-use Pasmo cards to pay for the trip, and when we scanned them for the last time at the airport station turnstiles I saw we had 600 Yen left on each card. The cards were expiring that very day (the ones we'd bought when we arrived were only valid for 28 days), so the 1200 Yen on them was going to be wasted ... except that you can use Pasmo cards to pay for many things in Tokyo, not just train and subway rides. So we checked in for our flight then went in search of a convenience store (all convenience stores accept Pasmo cards). We found a Lawson outlet, bought coffee and a pastry each then Karen disappeared to do some shopping of her own. I bought another coffee and a sandwich at Lawson and settled down with my laptop. After that there were only 60 Yen left on each card, and I failed to find anything in the shop for that little. So those unused 120 Yen (about 15 SA Rands) were our (small) donation to the Pasmo card system in Japan.
Our flight back to South Africa was the reverse of the one we'd endured to get to Japan - Tokyo to Seoul in Korea, Seoul to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Addis Ababa to Cape Town. The first leg of the ordeal was fine, but after we'd gone through the mandatory (and paranoid) security check at Incheon Airport in Seoul we sat waiting, and waiting, and waiting to re-board the plane. Eventually we did, but we took off about an hour late ... which was a real problem because our connection time in Addis Ababa was only 45 minutes.
[Thursday 6 June : Addis Ababa, Ethiopia] Despite crazed sprinting through Addis Ababa airport at 7 am we were unable to make up for the time lost because of our flight's delay in leaving Seoul. We had not even landed in Addis Ababa when our connecting flight to Cape Town was already boarding. Then we spent ten minutes sitting in the stationary plane on the tarmac while the ground operations crew thought about sending a bus to fetch us. After that it was the usual paranoid security check, including taking off your shoes, belt and watch. FINALLY we got into the departures area to find that, predictably, the gate for our flight to Cape Town was at the other end of the airport. By now I'd more or less given up on making it, but still we tried. Breathless and sweaty, we arrived at the gate to find it closed, the doors locked, and nobody about. The plane had gone.
Now what? We eventually found one of the cunningly hidden departures boards, but our flight wasn't even listed - it had scrolled off the top. A chap directed us to the Ethiopian Airlines customer service counter, where a girl examined our boarding passes and quizzed us about why we'd missed the plane. Like it was our fault. THEIR flight had left Seoul late, and THEIR ground staff had been unable to arrange a bus to meet the plane when it landed so we'd all sat in the plane for ages, waiting to disembark. Then the girl said "All Cape Town passengers on your flight were rebooked on the 8:15 plane to Cape Town. Did nobody tell you?"
What? There were TWO flights to Cape Town in the morning? Why were we even on the earlier one in the first place, given that the connection time was an impossibly short 45 minutes? "No," I replied. "How were we supposed to know? The flight from Japan was late and we ran from one end of the airport to the other. Nobody said anything to us."
She looked disgruntled at that. Our fault again, I guess ... "Go downstairs to the Transfers desk," she said, and handed our documents back. By now we'd been through so many irritating security checks that we could not face another one. Instead we slipped through the barriers to get out, half expecting to be shot at any moment. Nobody stopped us and down the escalators we went, to the Transfers desk where we joined a long line of clearly disgruntled passengers. The overly polite and respectful attitudes of the Japanese was a distant memory as the tempers and frustration levels of both the passengers and the staff helping them heated up. Eventually a thin young employee of Ethiopian Airlines listened to our story and checked our details on his computer. "There are no other flights to Cape Town today," he said. "The best I can do is get you on the 8:15 tomorrow morning." He must have seen our expressions of dismay, because he then immediately said "But we'll put you up in a hotel for the night. Five star. No charge."
That didn't sound too bad. The chap printed new boarding passes for the flight the next day and gave us accommodation and food vouchers for the SkyLight Hotel (one night, three meals each). We went outside and waited with several other people for the bus to the hotel, which turned out to be a rather battered minivan that took a convoluted route through the streets around the airport before pulling up outside an orange multi-storey building. Ethiopian security paranoia continued unabated - to get into the hotel we had to walk down the side and through a back entrance via yet another x-ray check. An airport-style x-ray check to ENTER a hotel? Was this country at war? Perhaps ... Somalia, Eritrea and the Horn of Africa always seem to be affected by one kind of trouble or another. And just across the Red Sea was Yemen, where internal conflict has been raging for decades. Never mind South Sudan to the west, a country that has never known a moment's peace since it gained independence in 2011.
But eventually we moved into a huge room that overlooked a swimming pool and the airport; the airport was so close I could have walked to the hotel faster than the bus. It was nice to have such a big room, although we had no luggage to put into it - our main bags were somewhere between Tokyo, Seoul, Addis Ababa and Cape Town, but we had no idea where. Nor, it seemed, did Ethiopian Airlines. All they could do was assure us that our luggage would be in Cape Town the next day. That meant we had no clothes except the ones we were wearing, which had already spent a day trawling round Tokyo followed by a sweaty night on the plane.
Lunch at the hotel proved to be an all-you-can-eat buffet of rice, lentil stew, chickpea stew, salad and an array of desserts that were both mouth-watering and waist-thickening. The food was simple and excellent. Stuffed to the gills and tired from our ordeal via three airports across six time zones, we slept the early afternoon away. We managed to rouse ourselves at 3:30 pm, asked the concierge at the hotel to arrange a taxi to collect us, then rode through the chaotic, traffic-snarled streets of Addis Ababa to the Holy Trinity Cathedral. This church, the centre of Orthodox Christianity in Ethiopia, is the burial place of Haile Selassie, Ethiopia's much-revered last emperor. It was built in 1942 to commemorate the Ethiopian victory over Italian occupation. Unfortunately we couldn't go into the cathedral because it was undergoing extensive renovations, but we did visit the adjoining museum, which contained a number of artifacts from the life of Haile Selassie [Aside: Haile Selassie was the emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He was overthrown in a Communist-backed military coup and murdered by the military regime in 1975. It is believed in Ethiopia that Selassie was a direct descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba].
A quick workout in the hotel's fitness centre after we got back was enough to confirm what I already knew - I was really, REALLY unfit. It didn't help that I packed away another big helping of rice and chickpea/lentil stew for supper, followed by several even more delectable desserts. They even had real Italian tiramisu! The chef at the SkyLight Hotel in Addis Ababa really knows his stuff.
[Friday 7 June 2024 : Cape Town, South Africa] Breakfast at the SkyLight Hotel in Addis Ababa was a mad scramble at 5:30 am. Loads of people, who all seemed to be stranded airline passengers like us, swarmed all over the buffet. I managed to grab a couple of boiled eggs, a croissant and coffee before we walked up the road to where the hotel bus was waiting to take us to the airport. There must have been many passengers booked on early flights because it was just past 6 am and the bus filled rapidly. An argument ensued when one chap was unable to find a seat and elected to stand. The driver told him that standing wasn't allowed; he had to get off and wait for the next bus. The man refused, saying that two outrageously dressed woman had boarded the bus after him and one of them had taken his seat. These women, both sporting long green fingernails, fake hair and skimpy outfits, showed no interest in moving. A man at the back of the bus called "Somebody has to get off, otherwise we're all f****d." The driver simply wouldn't proceed while the man was standing, and a minute or so later two security personnel turned up. I thought for a moment the confrontation was going to get physical, but before it became ugly the guy grudgingly agreed to get off the bus.
At the airport we endured several irritating security checks before boarding the plane. And finally we were on our way ... Cape Town, six hours and one time zone later, was icy cold but welcoming to two weary travellers. Our concern about whether we would ever find our luggage again was unfounded - our bags had arrived the day before and were waiting amongst a huge pile of unclaimed bags delivered by Ethiopian Airlines. It was clear that many other people had missed flight connections in Addis Ababa; one wonders why the airline persists with layover times that are demonstrably too short? It must cost them a fortune to accommodate so many stranded passengers at the SkyLight Hotel in Addis Ababa every day.