Tea, typhoons...and a lttle rugby

      It is the fall again which means it's time to go away.  Though, this year we did take the month of January and went out to Vancouver island.  It is fall now and that means holiday!  So, we decided after much waffling to go to Japan.  Why Japan you may ask?  Check out the title of this blog....Rugby.  Yes, four years have passed and it is Rugby World cup again.  Canada snuck in the back door and qualified, so off we went.  It was going to be a quick trip even though its a long way away as we had to be back for the Calgary Stampeders to unleash a little whoop ass on the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
     After a quick flight to Seattle followed by a 10.5 hour flight to Japan, the first stop on this whirlwind tour was Tokyo.  We were met at the airport by the first of many amazing guides.  She had all of our train tickets (this was about 30 tickets including reservation cards) as well as maps and tickets for us to get on a bus that would drop us at our hotel!  The hotel right in the heart of Tokyo was on the 25th floor of a business building.  It took up from the  25-34th floor.  The first night we had amazing gluten free shrimp tempura and to die for sushi.  This was the first sushi we had in Japan and can you say "wow"!  WOW, delicious.

     We had a tour the next day that took us up the Tokyo tower, which gave us a cloudy look at Mount Fuji.  Then through a Japanese garden and tea ceremony.  Followed by a yummy grilled lunch and then  a cruise on the river Sumida to the Asakusa market.  This is a famous market in Tokyo with Pagodas on either end and a market filled with vendors whose families have been in this market for hundreds of years.  Saw the entrance to the Imperial Palace.  Apparently they only allow commoners once or twice a year to come in.  The Emperor does not want to be disturbed, I guess.  We came all the way from Canada and we cannot come in, fine.  We started to learn about the Shoguns, Samurai and the Emperor.  Interesting history and creepy Samurai statues.

     It was time now to head to our next destination, Hiroshima which meant our first trip on a Japanese bullet train, cool, and our first experience with the Japanese "Cue", man do they cue in lines and can you say polite and clean?  Everywhere is clean even the railroad tracks.  Oh yeah and they do look like bullets, don't they?

     We took a train from Hiroshima down to the town of Fukuoka for Canada versus Italy.  Last RWC, Canada had a great match against Italy.  Sadly, this was not the case for this matchup.  It was Canada's first game and they were not at their best.  None the less, it was a great atmosphere and since we were at the stadium early we were interviewed by 5 Japanese TV stations. We are stars in Japan if nowhere else!

      The next day in Hiroshima we had a guide take us to the Peace Memorial Park and museum.  The A-bomb dome is the ruins of  the Hiroshima Prefecture Hall.  This was "ground zero" for the bomb that was dropped on August 6, 1945.  The ruins of this building have been preserved so that people do not forget how ~200,000 people lost their lives.

 The Hall can be seen through the archway at the end of the park.

 Behind this lies the museum that was originally built about 10 years after the bomb.  They have added to it through the years.  Our guides mother survived the bomb but will not talk about it or go to the park or the museum.  The museum was incredibly difficult to go through, to see the stories and pictures.  The piece of a bank building step with the carbon outline of a what was left of a person who was sitting on it, will stay in my mind forever.  Please, never again.
     After this difficult morning, we took a ferry over to Miyajima for the afternoon.  This island is famous for its Red gate that in high tide is under water.  Sadly, it was being renovated so it will be bright and shiny for the 2020 Olympics, bummer. There are many temples, shrines, pagodas, hikes and Buddhas face in the mountains as if he is lying down, as can be seen on the ferry over.

Definitely tourist central but we managed to hike up to some temples and shrines that were not so popular with the tourists.

Weird little very tame deer also wander the island and stick their noses into peoples pockets and bags looking for a snack.

Very Banff like.  Except for the little Buddha statues that the locals thought would have cold heads, so they knitted hats for them!! Hee hee hee!

      Kyoto was our next stop on the bullet train tour of Japan.  This city has 2,000 religious buildings including about 1,500 Buddhist temples (these have Buddha statues) and 400 Shinto shrines ( no statues).  We had a day long guided tour which started with the Nijo castle.  Amazing gates, temples and gardens.

     Check out the detail on these gates, amazing carving.  Our guide liked to take our picture.  We have more of the two of us than we did when we travelled the world for a year,  Ha!  There were gardens whenever they could put them in.  This one had a lot of volcanic rock, awesome for a couple of geologists.

     The next stop was the old Shoguns party palace called Kinkakuji temple (Golden Pavilion).  Yes, it is covered in gold leaf.  It is now a Buddhist temple which supposedly on one of the floors has some remains of Buddha.  No one is allowed in, you just look at it and ooh and ahh appropriately.

     After another delicious sushi lunch we wandered through  the Nishiki Market.  Interesting place with lots of food, sake sampling (oh yeah, did that and bought some too!) clothing and kitchen ware stores. 

      Last stop of the day was Sanjusangendo Temple.  This is Japans longest wood structure at 120m.  There are no pictures allowed inside the temple which houses in the center,  a wooden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, she has 1,000 arms (busy lady).  On each side of her are 500 human sized statues obviously helping her out cause she is busy!  Also at the center were Buddhist monks who will stamp your "book".  This book, I guess,  you take to family gatherings and show how many stamps you have gotten.  "I have been to more temples than you, nah nah", or something like that.  On the outside of this amazing structure are interesting gates, red or orange of course, a garden again of course and oh yeah archery practice.  You can see holes in the walls from Shogun time when they would practice shooting, too funny!

      The next stop was Beppu.  A bullet and then local train got us to this hot spring town.  There are vents everywhere in town so it looks industrial but its just vents.  We went up one of many mountains, Japan is 70% mountains by the way,  to our very new hotel.  We grabbed the hotel shuttle with 2 couples, one from Vancouver and one from New Zealand.  All of us were off to the Game in Oita the next day to watch Canada get slaughtered by the All Blacks.  This is the view from our hotel room and yes we had our own  tub on the deck filling with smelly sulfur rich spring water.  It could spill over and there were little "ditches" that would take the water to a drain.  Cool, ok Hot actually!

     We went into Beppu the next day, puttered around the town and found some interesting streets, I think the white things are lanterns, I think..... Go Canada!

     A local train took us to Oita where we took a shuttle towards the Stadium and then had to walk another kilometer to get there.  Again, we were in a "Cue" for the game.  Gates open at 4:15 and not a second earlier or later.  There were people lined up all the way back to where we got dropped off by the shuttle, so about 30,000 people but no, they did not open the gates.  Not in Japan!

The game was a slaughter as we expected BUT Canada could have lost by a 100 and they only lost by 63. Yeah, we consider that a victory.  Would have been better if they had scored but we will take it, we are ranked 22 in the world, New Zealand is number 1.  They did the Haka but their butts were towards us, so I took a picture of the big screen.  Speaking of the big screen, while Dwayne went to get drinks I ended up on the big screen with the Japanese man who was sitting beside me.  He was so excited to be on the screen, he took a picture of us.  Too funny!

     Another bullet train to Osaka for a quick tour at the "food" capital of Japan.  We are met by a guide at our hotel for a night time tour of the Dotonbori district.  It is a rocking, pedestrian only area full of food, nightclubs, old kabuki theater and neon lights.  Though there were other parts of Japan that reminded me of the movie Bladerunner, in this area I felt like we were in the movie!  



                                                                                            

We had our dinner cooked for us on open flames which is unusual in Japan.  Some of the food was alive before he grilled it, can you say yummy! 

   The last stop on our whirlwind train trip was the small town of Takayama.  It was cutoff from most of Japan for a long time as it is nestled in the mountains of the Hida region.  It is quiet and laidback town known for its traditional houses, temples and sake brewing.  It has retained much of the flavor of 200-300 years ago.  We had a day to walk around and explore at our leisure.  We did a 5 km hike around the town that showcased the old houses, temples and surrounding forests.

      We hiked up to the castle ruins which was a bit of slog.  Imagine our surprise when we found the only ruins was a castle wall!  However, like everywhere in Japan it was clean, even the little shelter to sit in, if it rains.  There was someone who came up there, I am sure, everyday to sweep,  Lucky for me, I found my ride home!  HA!

      A train back to Tokyo for our last day before we headed home.  This is a view from our hotel room. Japan was the cleanest country we have been to, no garbage, no smoking on the street (this may cause a problem with the Germans or French who are coming here for next years Olympics!), no people begging for change, no homeless people (ok only one in Osaka and that was it!)  The people are friendly, polite and always willing to help.  A fabulous whirlwind train trip around the southern part of Japan.  And we managed to miss the Typhoon that hit about 4 days after we left.  Canada's last Rugby game got cancelled because of it but the team helped with the cleanup!  Yeah Canada!