Holidays are good! Too bad I had to be back in the office last Thursday.
In two weeks me and a friend did Tokyo -> Matsumoto -> Takayama -> Kanazawa -> Osaka/Kyoto/Koya-san/Kobe -> Tokyo. A lot of places that I hadn't been to for a long time plus some cool new stuff.
The highlights (in no particular order):
- Matsumoto castle. Stunning, loved it. We got a tour by some goodwill guides which was pretty funny. We were wondering if we should give a tip or not (and thinking that we wouldn't need to, 'cause it's Japan) but before we could even do any such thing both of them got away from us as soon as they could at the exit (and the lady even before that to chase another gaijin for a tour!). Problem solved.
- the 'living room' in Takayama. Imagine a space of at most 14 square meter, a counter with maybe 6 seats, behind that the chef with his complete kitchen (1x2m) and us walking in: ぁ、英語分からない！('don't know English!') was our welcoming greeting. After my reply that that was no problem as I speak Japanese, the cook and his 2 customers seemed quite disappointed... A bit of a change from the usual いらっしゃいませ-callings! Nevertheless, the food was excellent and the cook started warming up to us when he saw that we could eat our food flawlessly with chopsticks!
- Mt. Koya - an overnight stay at the temple Eiko-in, with lovely buddhist vegetarian food (but yes, spongy tofu and seaweed), and a service in the morning. After that an early morning walk across my favourite cemetery which surrounds the Oku-no-in temple... My second time to go there but the whole stay was again amazing.
- Osaka (and the rest of Kansai)... what can I say, it is just a much more comfortable city than this enormous place that is Tokyo.
etc etc... good trip!
So far for the touristy stuff, I'll be coming back with more serious posts later!
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