Tag: Tsumago

Japan Day Five: Tsumago to Takayama, 24 October 2018

However much I try to be ready ahead of an earlyish travel day, it always seems like a bit of a rush in the end – this morning was no exception.

Of course there was bags of time when I rose, with difficulty, from the futon bed at 4.00 am to enjoy the onsen for one last time and relax myself sufficiently to go back to sleep again before 5.00. Of course there was loads of time to do some writing up first thing when I did rise properly.

There even seemed to be bags of time when we went down to breakfast at 7:45 with little left to do. Yet that Japanese style breakfast takes time even when you don’t want to eat all that much of it…

… so when I couldn’t find the version of the key that had the safe key on it, 20 minutes before our transfer bus, I did start to worry.

But of course I had only temporary mislaid the key and of course I was still downstairs and had settled the bill 15 minutes before the shuttle bus.

When Janie emerged five minutes or so after that, she was carrying not only her own bag but also that of “Mrs Tinker”, with “Mr & Mrs Tinker” following behind.

I must now explain about that couple, who were also staying at Fukinomori. To protect their identity we shall refer to them as Mr & Mrs Tinker. They clearly didn’t seem at all happy. We had heard Mrs Tinker grumble about her food and the fact that Hideo couldn’t speak English. We had heard very little from the Tinker table at meal times; he seemed to speak hardly at all. They didn’t seem at all friendly. I did hear them at the front desk the previous morning making their arrangements to leave, so I knew we would be on that shuttle together and I guessed they might be travelling our way.

It reminded both of us a little of The Taylor Couple Saga in Malawi (deep in those notes but eventually to be Ogblogged), where we noticed a disagreeable couple early in our trip and discovered that they were following us around for most of our Malawi holiday.

But unlike the Taylors of Malawi, the “Tinkers of Japan” turned out to be a pleasant, but unfortunate couple who had been blighted by her mobility health issues between booking the trip and setting off for Japan. Like us, they were using Audley travel. Like us, they were travelling next to Takayama. Naturally we compared notes.

Strangely, the Tinkers were scheduled (and reserved) on the express train from Nagoya to Takayama at 11:43, over an hour before our reserved train at 12:48 but only eight minutes after the local train arrives at Nagoya.

There were other English speakers on the shuttle bus (a nice Aussie couple) and on the local trains (a nice Scottish couple from Nantwich), which helped pass the time.

Meanwhile, I hatched a plan to try to get to Takayama earlier than expected, by dint of us helping the Tinkers to get to their train on time and us grabbing a couple of unreserved seats on said train…which worked.

In the unreserved car, Daisy and I snacked on the ginger snap-style biscuits that Janie bought in Tsumago for just such a snacking urgency. A Japanese family showed us how you can rotate seats to sit foursome style or airplane twosome style. As the unreserved car was not well populated, we took advantage of thus double-seating.

Not that sort of unreserved car

Why we were recommended a later train whereas the Tinkers were recommended the quick change is a bit of a mystery. The Tinkers had not gone through Tim at Audley and perhaps Tim felt that the eight minute turnaround at a big station was too tight to mention. Certainly Mr Tinker was worried about that aspect of the journey and for sure the Tinkers would have struggled to make it on time without our help.

Still, in the end, we helped the Tinkers and the Tinkers helped us. They seemed extremely grateful to us for our help and disappointed to discover that we wouldn’t be leaving Takayama on the same day.

So, here we were in Takayama with a bit of extra time on our hands. We checked in to the Best Western, efficiently picking up our forwarded baggage.

Janie was very keen to see the Yoshijima Heritage House, which was not scheduled on our tour and I thought, if we had time, would be an excellent short visit that first afternoon, followed by a stroll back through the Sanmatchi (Old Town) district. So it proved.

Janie took loads of photos in the exquisit and tranquil Yoshijima Heritage House, which had been the home of a wealthy money lender and sake maker.

We then strolled to the heaving Sanmatchi district – possibly not the best time of day to see it if you want a sense of tranquility there – it was heaving with tourists and schoolchildren fresh out of school- but certainly a good time to pick up on the vibe of the street food snacking that is the hallmark of this unusual Japanese town.

We decided to follow the lead of our Dutch friends in Tsumago and try the green tea (in our case mixed with vanilla) ice cream. Janie thought it tasted a bit like Odono’s green tea flavour, which made her realise why she sees so many Japanese people in Odono’s. So as we thought, not especially unusual for us – unlike the chestnut flavour which doesn’t seem to have made it to Takayama.

Then back to the hotel to plan our evening meal. After much research, we settled on Ajikura Tengoku which is only three minutes from our hotel and was well recommended not only by Tim but by the TripAdvisor community, including recent reviews.

But that place turned out to be full and you cannot book – you simply have to turn up in good time – we planned to try again tomorrow. So, all dressed up with no place to go, I reverted to TripAdvisor and Google, to find what I thought was a highly-recommended pub-restaurant named Hu.

We ate a splendid simple pub meal of pork ramen, gyoza, fried chicken, fried rice and sake. Served well and efficiently – the owner-chef seemed delighted when I let him know we thought the food was delicious. We turned up at just the right time as the counter filled up soon after we arrived as did, briefly, the low-level eating area which would not have suited us.

Anyway, the meal was a success by any measure…

…but there seems to be some confusion about the place. On re-Googling, while finishing our sake, we discover that Hu is a cocktail bar nearby – no mention of food – whereas we had been eating in a tavern named Nanairo. As good fortune would have it, Nanairo is also highly regarded by the TripAdvisor community and quite rightly so.

Thus we had found exactly what we had been looking for through a flawed method. We’re on holiday – who cares? – the bit that matters is that we had a good meal and a good time.

All the pictures from Day Five can be seen by clicking the Flickr link here or below:

Japan Day Four: Fukinomori, Tsumago And Magome, 23 October 2018

The centrepiece of our day was a walk from Magome to Tsumago.

First thing in the morning though, before breakfast, what else does one do other than take a quick onsen at a place like Fukinomori? This time I braved the outside onsen as well as the inside one, although only briefly in the morning. I met a nice (Canadian I think) gentleman who was trying to persuade his young son to try the facilities. They braved the outside onsen together once I returned unscathed. Daisy didn’t brave the outside in the morning but had a peaceful time in the ladies onsen.

A very fancy-shmancy breakfast with lots of different nibbles to try and an element of “cook yourself” which seems to be the signature of this place. I’ll let these pictures tell most of the story:

Then we took the 9:50 hotel shuttle into Tsumago, which is designed to link up near-perfectly with the local bus to Magome. That local bus was very crowded and/but helped me to get my bearings a bit for the hike back – not that you need bearings because the hiking trail is incredibly well signposted.

Still, when we got to Magome I wanted to get hold of a better map than the one the hotel issued, which doesn’t actually cover the Magome bit. In any case, Magome looked like a beautiful little old-style village.

Along the way to the tourist office I was foolish enough to be tempted by a sweetmeat vendor’s offering (see pictures) which promised a secret sauce on the rice ball thingies. Daisy and I agreed that the lady is welcome to keep that recipe secret as far as we were concerned.

No, really our culinary mission and reward for hiking all the way to Tsumago was to be the chestnut ice cream, which Tim had promised to be absolutely delicious. Whenever Daisy dawdled a while, I reminded her that all the Tsumago shops tend to run out of chestnut ice cream and or close for several hours in the afternoon.

In the end, Daisy stated that the promised chestnut ice cream was probably not going to be worth the effort, so she dawdled as much as she wanted anyway.

In Magome, we did fancy looking around before hiking, so after successfully getting a map from the tourist office, we both liked the look of the Toson Memorial Museum, just across the way and something a little different. Shimazaki Toson was a famous Japanese writer who was raised in Magome for several of his earlier years. The old family home, which was destroyed by fire over 100 years ago, has been faithfully restored and turned into a museum and library. It was a very good way to learn more about that village, that sort of village life and Shimazaki Toson himself in one easy visit.

We met some nice Japanese gentlemen in the museum who gave us some fruits from a tree, we thought they were kumquats but we latter found out that the bitter, orange-coloured fruit of that region is actually persimmon and that we were probably given those, not kumquats. Both are indigenous to Japan, so who knows?

Then off on our hike. So well signposted, I really didn’t need the map, other than to Identify some of the landmarks along the way. The first part of the walk is predominantly up hill and quite arduous, but the majority of the walk this way around is a rather gentle decline into Tsumago. That I’m sure is the main reason why the recommended leisure hike is in the direction Magome to Tsumago. We encountered a few people walking the other way; not many.

Walking seems to be reasonably popular with Japanese people, though; as we neared Tsumago we encountered several Japanese tour groups walking, although we suspected that they were not doing as long or intensive a walk as ours.

The Magome to Tsumago trail is a small part (7.7 km) of the historic Nakasendo highway, which dates back to the Edo period joining Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto – one of five such historic Imperial highways in Japan.

But none of that bothered us as we walked. We had three concerns. Firstly, to enjoy the glorious countryside and vistas on this trail.

Secondly, to be on the lookout for Asiatic bears; a rare sight in that forest by all accounts but that hasn’t stopped the authorities from placing bells to frighten off the bears at regular intervals along the trail. People seem to love ringing those bells for some reason and I took pains to try and growl like a bear whenever I heard one of the bells ring.

Is that a bear in them there woods?

Thirdly, our mission to find chestnut ice cream in Tsumago, which, by the time we were getting close to the town, had revived in Daisy’s mind and was most certainly back on the agenda.

Without too much difficulty, we found a chestnut ice cream vendor in the centre of town, together with a nice Dutchman to take our photo for us.

He told us that chestnut ice cream was no big deal to a Dutchman because they can get that in the Netherlands; he and his mates were obsessing about green tea ice cream, which, we explained, is a commonplace in the UK – well, our part of London anyway.

If chestnut ice cream in the Netherlands tastes like this, I’m a Dutchman

Revived by our ice cream but realising that Tsumago is really quite a similar town to Magome, we took a few nice photos and decided to taxi back to the hotel, ahead of those who would prefer to wait another 90 minutes or so for the hotel shuttle.

That way, Daisy cleverly surmised, we’d probably have the onsen to ourselves at one of the nicest parts of the day. She was right and we both took full advantage of the outdoor onsen at that hour, only encountering other people as we were leaving.

I did some early evening blogging and then we took our evening meal – another marathon effort this time served by Mede – a very sweet young Moroccan fellow who had also served our breakfast.

I hope this isn’t one of the ducks we photographed earlier…

I won’t list all the dishes again and we weren’t given the running order this time, but we pretty much enjoyed everything we ate this evening apart from a savoury custard inbetweeny dish that seemed a bit weird to us and apparently pretty much always finds disapproval with the western diners. We settled on one of the sakes from last night which had pleased us the most and stuck with that for a couple of rounds.

Another really lovely day.

All the pictures from Day Four can be seen by clicking the Flickr link here or below:

Japan Day Three: Journey To Tsumago And Fukinomori, 22 October 2018

An early start today, finishing the packing, forwarding our baggage, breakfasting and checking out of the Park Hotel.

Frankly, we allowed far more time than was strictly necessary because the hotel was so incredibly efficient at doing its bits of the above process.

I was pretty efficient at doing my bit, which was to route us through a pretty complicated-sounding journey without mishaps and in good time.

We are now on our railcards so we cannot use automated barriers. This enabled me to use the (apparently non-male) technique of asking an official each time we went through a barrier which platform we needed for our next destination; just saying the name seemed to be enough but pointing to it on my piece of paper always sealed the deal.

Daisy took loads of photos on this journey, including one picture of Mount Fuji as we zoomed past it which I really cannot believe she managed to get that way – especially as she almost missed it and came rushing over to snap the icon at just the right moment.

We took a cab the last leg of the journey (this time aided by Daisy who spotted a tourist information booth at the railway station which I had missed – the lady in there called us a cab which came straight away – I think we might have waited a good few minutes otherwise). They don’t seem to expect tourists to be willing to fork out for cabs in that sort of remote part. They must have told us five times how much it cost (which was also clearly displayed on the taxi rank in English) to cab to Fukinomori – about £35 – which seemed worthwhile to me rather than wait hours for the local bus.

We got to the Fukinomori ryokan ahead of check in  time, although we did blag our way to our room early after a few minutes waiting. There we relaxed, taking advantage of the afternoon sun on our terrace and I spent some time also fiddling about with the photos to make sure they were all backed up in the cloud in the way I want them.

Then, as the sun was setting, we braved the onsen – hot spring bath – located within Fukinomori. A false start as we had not put our yukata on properly, nor had we donned our tabi (socks), so a rather anxious member of staff took us back to our room and showed us what to do.

Ryokans are traditional Japanese inns and all guests are expected to comply with the traditions in these charming, rule-bound places.

Second time lucky in the onsen. I chatted for a while with a lovely older gentleman from Brooklyn, Ron, who was full of interesting stories about his life and eventually suggested that the onsen might make an excellent mikveh.

Ron left before me, but by the time I got out, Mrs Ron was sending out search parties for Ron and Janie was wondering where I had got to. I really enjoyed my long soak and for sure will be back for more.

Then down to dinner soon after that for a fabulous Kaiseki meal:

Superb food, served gracefully by Hideo, who had also been our orienteer when we first arrived. Hideo’s English is not great, but he tries very hard and I was able to understand him. Some of the other residents seemed less patient with him at dinner and kept asking for the waitress, who had better English, to explain the dishes to them.

We saw Ron and Mrs Ron after dinner, who expressed great delight at their meal. They are strictly Kosher and they felt this was the one place that had really taken care not only to adhere to their restrictions but to prepare a well-balanced and delicious meal within their constraints. No horse intestine for those two, then. Tofu instead, perhaps? Even I might have preferred the tofu ahead of the horse and I’m no fan of tofu. We chewed, oh yes, we chewed. Strong meat too, horse intestine. But we absolutely loved all the other dishes.

An early night on our futon mats. I’m not entirely sure I am cut out for those – he says, writing up between 4.00 and 5.00 the next morning!

All the pictures from Day Three can be seen by clicking the Flickr link here or below: