Tokyo Arrival

Arrival at Haneda Airport after 12 hours flight.

1. Activate JR Pass in advance at the JR counter + get a Suica card.

2. Rent a SIM card for the trip (5000Y for 5GB, 30 days, data only)

Paul picked us up at the airport coffee shop and we went back to see his place : ARK Hills Mori Tower Sengokuyama in Roppongi [Apt. 1607]

We then visited Roppongi (Roppongi-Itchome subway station and shops), where we bought essentials for breakfast.

After this we went to Newtown. When going back to the condo we decided to chill out the Orange restaurant to have a bottle of champagne.

Ended up at Cinq Senses French restaurant, where we had duck rillettes with pickles and mustard (wut) and plates with wine pairing. Really good, but hard to stay awake past 8:30 😅

Tokyo Day 1

Started off the day by trying to figure out the subway, not that hard to navigate!!

We went to visit the Meiji Jingu Shrine : wonderful and peaceful park dedicated to emperor Meiji and his wife. We forgot the city for a moment. Charles & I washed our hands with water before entering. When we got to the shrine, we were lucky to see a traditional wedding happening inside the main gate.

After that, we exited the park to be confronted with a total clash when walking through Harajuku’s Takeshita street, right at the corner from the ancient park! Bunch of teenage girls, lots of girly, pink, glittery weird clothes/accessories/beauty products. Everyone was eating dessert crepes at 10:45??!

We walked back to the station via the Omote Sando road, heading to Shibuya.

When we got out at Shibuya, we took a picture with the Hachiko statue, and then crossed the Shibuya crossing. Went to Starbucks 2nd floor to see the crossing from above. After, had lunch at Lonely Planet’s recommended soba noodles joint. We had a hard time figuring out how it works, no English spoken! Charles had cold soba with sesame sauce, I had hot noodles in broth with fried chicken on top.

After that we decided to head to to Akihabara, the official paradise for geek, gamers and nerds of all types. All the shop advertise anime, figurines, games and arcades.

We decided that after walking up and down the Electric town, we still have some time and energy left and decide to walk to Koishikawa Korakuen, a very nice Daimyo garden dating from the 1600s.

Went back to Paul and prepared to head out. We went to Shinjuku to have a drink at a tiny place Paul likes a lot, then tried to eat at the restaurant Paul wanted but it was full. We tried to find a Teppenyaki restaurant but there were none around, so Paul brought us to a place he knew, Seryna in Roppongi.

What a restaurant! First, it was nothing like the ones we have in Quebec. Here, instead of giving us a show with flamboyant trucs and fire, the chef was meticulous in all he did, paying much attention to small details and making sure that everything was cooked to perfection. Highlights: \240thinly sliced garlic that was flipped on both sides one by one very delicatel; live shrimps cooking was awful to watch, but oh so delicious; fried shrimp legs were surprisingly good; Kōbe beef was melt-in-your-mouth AMAZING, no sauce needed; beef fat fried like bacon was super good; service was A+++.

Thank you Paul for a wonderful dinner in great company!!

Tokyo Day 2

Second day in Tokyo started out with a weird fest: the Tsukiji fish market 🐟. We got lost again and again through the maze that is the outer market, navigating between hundreds of stalls selling fish, bizarre algae, dried shellfish, grilled/steamed/raw specialities and specialized equipment. We tried a giant oyster (surprisingly good given the size?!), shared a rice cake topped with fresh crab and had an incredible plate of shellfish (clam, crab, fish) for $10.

Once the inner market opened we ventured inside to see where the chefs come to buy their stuff, but everyone was already packing up for the day. We missed the big fish, but still got a feel of the place.

On the way back we passed a shrine that the fisherman pray to for good fortune, and found a real sushi place to have lunch. Fresh fish was delicious, the place entirely quiet except for the chefs to yelled at everyone who entered and exited.

We then walked through Ginza’s high end shopping district to visit Uniqlo’s 11 story store and see some of the most expensive brands giant stores. Had a coffee at the cutest japanesefied Starbucks, where we also had the best service a Starbucks has ever given.

After that we went back to Akihabara for a quick in-and-out to get a game, and then on to Taito-Ku, where the Kappabashi street sells the best food equipement. Found great knives for a costly bill as well as a lantern for Paul, who had been looking for one 🏮.

After going back to Roppongi, we headed out for a farm-to-table restaurant Paul wanted us to tried near his place, but it was hosting a private event so we tried a Singaporean restaurant that Paul’s friend recommended.

Tokyo Day 3

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Kawaguchiko

Woke up to a beautiful morning after the typhoon. Cleaned up after Paul left (😢) and packed our things. Left Tokyo very afraid there would be no trains running after the typhoon, but everything was working as usual and went super smoothly!

(Altough riding the subway with carry on luggage on a weekday morning was a liiiittle intimidating 😳.)

We boarded the JR Chuo Line to Otsuki, where we transferred to the private railway Fujikyu to Kawaguchiko. Beautiful scenery on the trains + first glimpse of Fujisan, as the Japanese call it.

Once there the ryokan pick service game to get us, so we dropped our luggage at the hotel and took a cab to the restaurant as the room wasn’t ready yet. Restaurant (Hoto Noodles) was beautiful, modernized traditional japanese style with an amazing view of Fujisan! The octopus with wasabi is the WEIRDEST thing we’ve ever eaten, but the soup was delicious.

After that we went back to the ryokan to enjoy our private Onsen and take a quick nap. After another soak in the Onsen, we took a walk to the restaurant by following Lake Kawaguchiko’s shore. 20 min walk to Sanrokuen, where we got to grill stuff on a charcoal brasier while sitting on the floor. Owner is super friendly and speaks really good English! Tried cold a sake when he offered it on the house, doubtful at first but we found it very light and enjoyed it a lot!

After eating so much stuff, we walked back to the ryokan and had a final soak before going to sleep on our futons.

Fuji to Kyōto

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Kyoto Day 1

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Kyoto Day 2

Today is the day we try to navigate Kyoto’s bus system. Efficient, but quite hard to figure out 🤔 One lesson we learned : Google Maps hates bus stops...

We do end up in the right place, to visit Kinkakuji Temple (along with a million school students, what’s up guys it’s Saturday?!). While the golden pavilion is impressive and beautiful, the rest is a little underwhelming and we don’t get much explanation about anything.

Since we didn’t have breakfast, we end up at a cute coffee shop on the street corner for a latte and, believe it or not, ham and cheese toast 👾.

We then take the bus down to Kyoto Station, where we find a tiny Uniqlo in the surprisingly nice mall beneath the station, and then Charles tries a McDonald’s Teriyaki burger 🍔, it’s good!

Finding the right bus from huge Kyoto Station to Fushimi Inari has been a total nightmare, but in the end we find it and arrive in minutes.

Our tea ceremony at Maikoya starts off with the lady telling us to go get fitted in kimonos at another store. What? When we get there, they make us choose a kimono from their selection and then proceed to dress us and even do my hair! They make us wear the full kit, including tabi socks, wood sandals and kimono umbrellas to match.

Feeling inordinately touristy, we walk back to the tea salon in our kimonos like two western weirdos, but then feel kinda excited it all!

The tea ceremony is wonderful. Our hostess is very kind and solemn, and explains what she is doing all the way through. We especially appreciated that she explained the 4 virtues of tea making (wa/harmony, kai/respect, purity and appreciation of the moment). She gets super flustered at any mistake she makes, which makes it all the more authentic and enjoyable. We speak with her afterwards, about tea and traditions, her kids, our itinerary and Canada, and we are kinda sad it’s over once we leave.

After taking a couple more pictures in our kimonos we give them back and head for Ramen Factory for a cooking class! Very nice staff, the owner Shin is great and offers to take pictures and even record a time lapse of the experience. We enjoy making our own ramen noodles, and enjoy the soup we made at the end, super delish.

When then took a stroll around northern Gion and near the Kamo river, where we ended up at Pizza Salavator & Grill for drinks and dessert.

After that, we explored the streets around and visited the shops street, went to Uniqlo (AGAIN), which was in a strange mall selling all kinds of different stuff. Also, discovered the Cat Cafe was in there!

Kyoto Day 3

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Hiroshima & Miyajima

Left Kyoto early this morning for Hiroshima. Once we got there, we got on the tramway that goes to the Hiroshima Memorial Park, but before visiting we decided to have the city’s famous Okonomiaki, a local dish with noodles, eggs and various fillings grilled teppenyaki style on a big hot plate. Nagata-Ya, right besides the park, is one of the best places and was packed. We got in line for a 5-10 min. wait and got seated at the “bar” right in front of the chefs who prepare many dishes at a time in front of us. It was delicious, especially with mayo on it (WTH?!), but BIG!

After that we walked through the memorial park, where the solemn ambiance of the place made us feel quite subdued. The Atomic Dome (one of the only buildings that survived the blast since it was nearly right under the detonation) was especially moving.

Travel from Miyajima to Kii Katsuura

We woke up from a great night’s sleep at Miyajima Villa. The breakfast included with our stay is buffet style again, but with tons of options and quite good!

After that, we decide to go up to the top of Mount Misen. The only things we forgot to factor in is that the ropeway is much more expensive than we thought (only brought ¥2000, which is the price of only one-way for 2), and that we have to check out by 11:00... Needless to say, we were quite sad to have to rush to get back down because the view is breathtaking! We didn’t even have time to make it to the summit, which is an additional 30 min. hike, instead we rushed the way down by foot in... 30 min.! Got in the hotel at 11 flush and had the quickest shower/packing marathon ever.

After that it was JR ferry to Miyajimaguchi Station, then train to Hiroshima, Shinkansen to Shin-Ōsaka, finding the damn baggage room to leave our carry ons, and the train of eternity to Kii Katsuura.

We arrived at our hotel, Kosakaya, at night and our host was suuuuper friendly. He showed us around the place and finally got to our room, which is the first room we’ve had that is tatami style. No showers after 9 here, so we got a small bite to eat from the convenience store in front and went to sleep... On the futons 😐.

“A Soaking Rain” Day

Today, we were supposed to hike the Ogumotori-goe pass on the Kumano Kodo’s Nakahechi route, but as the weather is planning to rain buckets all day (111mm to be precise), we decided to rearrange our plans. Instead of hiking from Nachi to Koguchi, and the following day from Koguchi to Hongu (Yunomine), we decide to skip today and do only one hiking day instead.

After an interesting night (not a fan of futons really.........), our host graciously offered to take us to the station by giving us a car ride (you get a better review this way my friend 😙), and we take the train to Shingu.

Once here there is not that much to do, especially since it’s raining nonstop on a week day and lots of shops are closed, but we decide to go see the Sessha Kannokura Shrine, which sits 100 ft up on a rocky mountain slope. Just the 15 min. walk to get us there has us drenched. We escalate the steep stone steps (so steep, so slipperyyyyy) and get to the shrine, which is still very pretty even in a downpour. This is where the gods are believed to have descended to earth, and the unbelievable rock that sits above the shrine kinda makes us understand why people would believe this.

Before walking back down, Charles has the GREAT idea to hike a little in the pathway besides the Shrine, which can get you either to the top of the mountain or to the neighbor shrine. After an hour of sloping through an unused trail with sandals, getting lost, nearly walking on a snake (!!!) and narrowly avoiding walking through a million spider webs from hell, we turn back and get out of there before somebody gets eaten OR we drown in our own wet clothes.

With some time to kill until the 4:15 bus to Koguchi, we have lunch at a sushi place where we meet a fellow Canadian who was born and raised in Japan and talks fluently with colleagues at the table behind us. The owner of the sushi place seems to find this funny as anything and asks for a picture of us 3 Canadians 😂.

After this we get to our Minshuku, where our host speaks really nice English and we eat dinner with a couple from New Orleans who have hiked the trail for 3 days now, and heading down to Nachi tomorrow, except they’ll take the bus because they’ve had enough. What have we gotten ourselves into 🤔

AND the dinner was amazing, too bad I didn’t think to take a picture 🤦‍♀️

Kumano Kodo

Today we survived the Kumano Kodo Nakahechi trail’s toughest pass, the Ogumotori-goe.

After waking up to a huge breakfast prepared by our host, we set off from the Minshuku and started with approximately 1,000,000 steps up to 870m high. The beginning wasn’t so bad and actually quite pleasant, but halfway up the slope it started getting pretty steep and the stairs where nonending. The forest canopy was so thick high up there that the forest seemed almost pitch black below, with the odd cloud rolling in through the trees giving it a creepy and ethereal atmosphere.

After the climb should come the easy part, going down, BUT IT WASN’T TO BE! Nearly as steep on the other side, with slippery rocks and uneven stairs, going down was nearly has hard and slow as going up, maybe harder. But as we descended, the creepy atmosphere gave way to luxurious forest and streams.

We came upon a part of the Kumano that’s been inaccessible since 2017 due to a landslide. The original Ogumotori hike was 14.1km. We soon realized that the alternate route (which quite a bit less scenic tbh), would make it around 4km longer, for a total of 18km total...

After the detour, it started raining instead of misting and we ate our lunch at a rest area near a tea house remains. Some hikers we had passed at the beginning started to arrive when we where just finishing our lunch, and not seeing us, a lady decided to change clothes right outside the little building we were in. Let’s say Charles got quite an eyeful, and they seemed pretty surprised to see us come out 5 minutes later 😅.

We resumed our walk on a section of paved road that went up forever, and later reentered the forest, where a lot of the roads were being flooded by the overflowing rivers running besides them. FUN TIMES!

Koyasan

Today we woke up early to catch a glimpse of Kii-Katsuura’s tuna auctions at 7. We think they fished a shark?? ☹️

After that we got a quick breakfast and embarked on the long journey to Koyasan. 4 hours by train to Tennoji, then a quick transfer for another hour on the Koya Limited Express. Because of the storm we couldn’t get all the way to the cable car station by train and had to disembark early to get a bus instead. What a ride! The most sinuous road ever, on steep mountain ridges with a bus driver that really did not look afraid to drive there. The road was so narrow in the turns that cars going the other often had to stop to let us pass. Thankfully everybody got to keep his lunch 😒.

We finally get to Koyasan after transferring to another bus, where we check in a beautiful Ekoin shokobu, a traditional monk temple lodging. The room was spacious, the monks super friendly (and they all spoke good English too!) and the vegetarian meal we got for supper was different but delicious.

We then did the night cemetary tour of Okunoin, guided by one of the Buddhist monks. Very nice and interesting! He told us some stories about the cemetery, as well as explanations about various traditions or tombstones. In numbers: 1,200 year old cemetary, over 200,000 tombs, gigantic trees over 800 years old (these are gouvernement protected), and the home of Kobo Daishi’s mausoleum, where he is believed to sit in eternal meditation.

Koyasan to Nara

We woke up at 6 sharp from a pretty good rest, even though the two stupid Chinese girls in the next room played music until 10:30 🙄 Gotta get dressed for the morning ritual that starts at 6:30 every day: the monks give thanks to Buddha by chanting sutras. They also pray for the spirit of the dead, and invite the people attending to do the same by dropping incense to burn.

After that we leave the main temple to go in a different, tiny room for the fire ritual. We arrived just in time as the room is packed with tourists from other hotels. The blackened ceiling and little piles of wood, which contains our wishes from the day before, ready for burning. This time, only one monk is there to chant sutras and play a resonating drum that gives a magical touch to the experience. Piles after piles of wood burn in a complicated sequence before the fire reaches around 3 or 4 feet high. Again though, no photos allowed to commemorate the event.

We end our stay with a vegetarian breakfast (it’s as good and weird as you must think it is) and, as we get ready to leave, get roped into an interview for a local Japanese show? Wth right?!

We go back to Okunoin to see it by day, and enter the lantern hall near the mausoleum at the end. It has a very different aura by day, and it seems to look even bigger, the trees taller and the tombstones much older. We pass through the modern part of the cemetary on the way back and find some pretty funny monuments, all things considered.

The bus ride back to the train station, which takes us 1:30hrs through sinous roads again, is longer than yesterday but quite a bit less rocky. When we got to Kyoto station it is PACKED, and we finally arrive in Nara before dinner. We stroll around the Main Street and through Nara Park, this city is beautiful!! The deer though, not so much 😒. We end up having dinner at XXXX, where we order courses one at a time and everything is delicious! The raw fish is super fresh, the grilled eel melts in our mouths, and we really enjoyed the sukiyaki! After that I finally got my matcha ice cream, and found the little sake barrel I was looking for, great day!!!

We end it by visiting the arcade, where the weirder Japanese spécimens dwell at night..... 🤫

Nara to Tokyo

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