Day 6: An unexpected delight of the food kind


It is very weird to wake up so close to the ground.  It is a long time since I  have slept on the floor and the last time I did, I had a much thicker mattress.  Despite that it was a very refreshing sleep.

Breakfast
After another soak in the onsen and a rinse, we went for breakfast.  This was another traditional meal with a dried fish which was delicious.  We also had  soup and a boiled soft egg to be eaten with some rice, and of course no meal is complete without pickles.  It was very delicious and certainly not something I would normally eat for breakfast. 

We left our baggage at the Ryokan and slowly walked up the hill to our train station with the hope that when we got to Gora (the station for the cable car) that the cloud may have lifted.  Big drops of rain suggested it would not be so.  On the way up the path to the station, we came across a little Buddhist temple  next door to a little Shinto shrine. 
The view outside our hot bath

Our train to Gora was full and we had to stand for much of the journey.  When we got to Gora the cloud was still very low and the rain persisted but lightly.  We decided there would be no point in going further up the mountain and instead wandered around the little town.  It was there that I spied a sign for a restaurant called Ibow Dining by Nobu.  Nobu is a famous Japanese chef with innovative food and as the other options were not great, we decided that a nice lunch was a good alternative.

Couldn't resist
The restaurant was beautiful and we were seated in front of the chef who cooked our food for us. It was a fixed price menu with a choice of either fish or Wagyu beef. There was a simple but delicious salad to start with,  the main which was sea bass for me and beef for Bev, followed by pasta with minced beef, finishing off with a delicious dessert and coffee.  It was a real treat and the best food that we have had while in Japan.  A fusion of western food done Japanese style. 

Once we had finished eating  it was time  to head back down the mountain to collect our bags from the Inn and return to Odawara to catch the Shinkansen to Tokyo.
Outside Itoh Dining

We had a few minutes to wait at our local Tonosewa Station and by chance discovered a rather pretty Shinto shrine  on the same site as a Buddhist temple.  They were lovely and  it felt very peaceful.  It was so nice to learn about the two religions co-existing  harmoniously.  If only humans were like  that all the time.

While at Odawara we had to wait a little while for our Shinkansen.  While we were waiting one came barrelling through.  The speed was unbelievable, it literally was through in a flash.

Our chef
We arrived back in Tokyo at about 5 pm and caught the commuter rush.  This meant the trains were packed. Our trip took us back to Shinjuku and we managed to find the wrong exit which resulted in us deciding to have a quiet drink before we went looking for the right place.  Our somewhat circuitous route took us through a rather amazing food hall which had both of us salivating despite having had a lovely lunch.

My fish dish
After a few minutes of being in our apartment we decided to go to one of our local restaurants only to find that it was full, so we tried a new one.  The food was good but it was almost double the price of the others with no discernible difference in quality.  We had a lovely interaction however, with a woman diner sitting next to us who worked for Cisco. As a result she had a good grasp of English and had travelled a bit internationally with her work. She said Cisco was family friendly in comparison to  Japanese firms which don’t tend to be.  By our standards however Cisco still isn’t  particularly flexible with long  working hours expected. 

So ended yet another different day. 

Dessert
A fountain of water for washing hands
Shinkansen barrels through the station
Shinto shrine - Tonosewa

A statue of Buddha by our path to the station


Leading to the Buddhist temple

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final thoughts

We both enjoyed our trip to Japan.   It was an unexpected experience.   The best way to explain Japan was that it is thoroughly modern, yet very Japanese in that they have not lost their culture.   Rather they have incorporated the technology into their culture.  As a visitor it makes it fascinating as everything is so different yet in some things there is familiarity.   There are not a lot of signs with English script we would recognise but they are in most critical places like railway stations and the airport.   Many of the restaurants have English menus and if there isn’t there are always pictures.   English is not widely spoken but pointing is very useful way of communicating.   The other noticeable thing or should I say it is notable that we did not see one bit of graffiti in Tokyo or Kyoto. There are no beggars that we saw.   We were told that there is not a homeless problem although we were told that t...
Read more

Day 2: A walk to Shibuya

Image
Cycleway just down the road from our place After the most delicious sleep I awoke refreshed and was ready to explore this new and different place.   A place where the language is almost foreign, the signs are mostly in an unreadable script and the place is clean, tidy and densely packed with houses and skyscrapers.   A truly new experience.   At one point I said to Bev that it seems to be largely a culture that has he wn its own place, that is modern without being western European.   It has   all the things we are familiar with - cars, iPhones, computers and so on, yet all done in a Japanese way. Parking: If you have a bike you have to park it.  It was very warm and quite humid.   Bev’s big idea was to go to the Shibuya crossing which is reputably the largest pedestrian crossing in the world.   We decided to walk there and to use Google maps as our guide.   It took us on a rather circuitous route and ended...
Read more

Day 7: Kyoto – city of temples, shrines and tourists

Image
The elusive Mt Fuji It was an early start for our day trip to Kyoto.   We were on the train to Tokyo station by a little after 5:30am arriving in plenty of time to find our Shinkansen.   It was our first really sunny day.   There was barely a skerrick of cloud in the sky so we held out hope that we might see Mt Fuji on our way to Kyoto.   We were not to be disappointed. The perfect cone was visible quite early on our journey once a few high rises disappeared.   It is so like Mt Taranaki only larger!   Statues beside a temple We travelled about 512 kilometres and while we were speeding along quickly, what became apparent was how crowded the place was compared to New Zealand.   NZ has vast areas of open farmland without a village or town nearby but this is   not   the case in Japan - at least not the part we went through.   While there is farmland it seems to be small holdings only.   The trip took 2 hours 40 minut...
Read more