First a picture from yesterday. Kevin’s kid said it was OK to post her picture in front of the only cherry blossoms we saw in Kyoto at Kiyomizudera.

We stayed at the edge of Dotombori last night at an APA Hotel and everyone agreed with me that it was tiny but clean and efficient. Everything you really needed in a room and it was only $84 per night. Somehow we all thought we got breakfast in Tokyo but no breakfast in Osaka but the opposite was true. I’m not sure what’s wrong with booking.com.

I forgot to mention just how happy I was to be back in Osaka. I’m not sure why because it was just as crowded and dirtier, but I used to live there and I just like it.

We had breakfast at the hotel and of course I forgot to take a picture until after I’d eaten a bunch of it. I had scrambled egg rolls, sausage, yakisoba, fish, and a croissant as well as salad but all you can see is miso soup, natto on rice, and my coffee.

Then I decided to take them back through Dotombori, which was empty at 8am. This bridge is packed with people later in the day with lots of people getting pictures with the Glico man in the background.

We walked to Hozenji where the Mizukakefudou is. Still all covered in moss.

Then we got a cab to Tsutenkaku (no picture, I forgot) which wasn’t quite open and after that we went to Sumiyoshi Taisha where the only picture I have is of the turtle pond and the arched bridge. It’s the oldest shrine in Japan and gets visits from sumo and the emperor so it’s a big deal. Very peaceful and I bought an amulet to avoid calamity and an amulet to deal gracefully with calamity. I know how the Fujinaka luck is.

After that they wanted to go up Tsutenkaku, but I said we should go up Abeno Harukas instead. I asked the taxi driver if it was full and crowded like Tokyo’s Shibuya Scramble Square, but he said, “It costs ¥3000. Osaka people aren’t going up there.” Hahaha.

I wish I had a picture of the Tsutenkaku from up here but I forgot to take a picture in that direction. At 103m, it looks tiny from Abeno Harukas which is 300m tall.

We didn’t have a chance to go to Shitennoji (see the pagoda in the middle?)

or Osaka Castle (the tiny white thing next to the two black buildings a little left and above center) but we did see them from here.

Kevin and his kid were getting a caricature drawn so Bill and I decided to walk to the edge of the top of the building. They’re very safety conscious and make you empty out your pockets and give you a strap for your glasses. After they run a metal detector over you, you put on coveralls and a harness.

We even leaned over the edge with some extra restraints, but it wasn’t very scary. Not like climbing radio towers.

We were going to Kuromon market or another shopping street for lunch, but we decided just to head to Shin-Osaka station so we wouldn’t miss ANOTHER shinkansen. Here’s my omurice/curry/katsu.

The trip back was mostly uneventful. I slept from Kyoto to Nagoya, as I do, and tried to take pictures of Mt. Fuji. It was too cloudy on the way to Kyoto. It’s not that easy taking pictures from a train going 300kph.

But enough pictures and you can get at least one.

We were pretty tired and were planning on eating combini food, but I convinced everyone to try Mos burger and luckily they liked it.

Back at the hotel I got all of my sister’s packages (and my repaired jeans) and it looked huge.

But it’s just Amazon packaging. No problem at all.

It’s a day of lists.

We’re in Tokyo to:

1. Visit my next door neighbor’s kid, who has an internship this term in Tokyo.
2. Allow my neighbor to train at the main Aikido dojo as he’s a second or third degree black belt and that was on his bucket list.

I tried to tell them that visiting Kyoto was bad, but they insisted so we took a day trip with an overnight in Osaka. I am not a fan of Kyoto and I have a bunch of reasons.

1. It’s always crowded and full of Europeans. I have enough on my hands being racist about other Asians and I don’t want to have to hate a bunch of Europeans too.
2. My dislike of Kyoto may be passed down from my father because he was married to a woman from Kyoto for two whole weeks. I guess she kicked him out and he had to pay a lot to get an international divorce.

Turns out many of my fears were for nothing – it’s an odd dead period between sakura season and Golden week and one taxi driver said there’s 10% of the crowds that are usually here. My cousin said, “There’s so many foreigners here,” which is true but it really seems that way because all of the in-country tourists are staying home before the big vacation week (Golden week). The roads were oddly clear and even though my traveling companions were saying it’s crowded, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I remember. At least the hotel prices are back to normal. I heard during sakura season they raised the prices to 6x the normal rate.

The day started off swimmingly. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep (jet lag still) and we made it to the shinkansen station early and my buddy’s kid said she was going to miss the train. Her subway would put her in the station at 8:15, our shinkansen left at 8:18, and she missed two trains because they were overfull. We would probably have to change the tickets so we waited for her downstairs from the actual tracks. Somehow she ran by us without our noticing and got on the correct train without telling us she was even on the way. So we had to make a mad scramble for a later train, find the train conductor, and hope we could get seats. After all that we were only about 10 minutes late to Kyoto. On the train they just scribbled new seat numbers on our tickets.

Not many pictures from me because, well, it’s Kyoto and plenty of people have pictures of Kyoto. We went to Fushimi Inari, Kiyomizu Temple, and Nishiki market and then took the train to Osaka and stayed near Dotombori. We went to dinner at Kura Sushi which was the WORST sushi I’ve had in a long time. Absolute trash. Absolutely avoid.

And that’s the day. Oh, I did get a partial picture of our snacks at Nishiki market:

And yet another day of eating too much. I didn’t have any lunch but I’m still feeling like a pig.
Didn’t sleep all that well last night because that’s just what happens with jet lag. I tried to stay up until at least 9pm but I was lapsing in and out of sleep starting at 8pm. I finally took some melatonin at 9pm and really went to bed. The first time I woke up I saw flashing lights around my curtain and I peeked outside to see trains running. I wondered what time it was and it was only 11:30pm. I kept waking up and going to the bathroom and finally set the alarm for about 5am so I could walk over to the aikido dojo with Kevin and Bill. Well, they left early, so I just walked over by myself.

Aikido practice looked like a bit of a mess. There were around 100 people on the mat! There was a small wood-floored area where we could watch and we had to stay seated. Unfortunately the hard wood floors made it hard to sit for the whole hour. Kevin, who was the only one actually participating in the practice, was getting his ass handed to him as we expected. Bill and I had to leave early because the wood floor was taking its toll on us. My leg started cramping and that was it for me.
Kevin looked quite sweaty and had to rest at the hotel for a bit before breakfast. We ate at the buffet on the first floor which was a bit expensive at ¥2500, but it wasn’t bad. Probably the one and only time we’re going to eat down there.

Then it was off to walk around a bit. We bought Shinkansen tickets for our trip to Kyoto/Osaka and I suggested we go to Shibuya to see the famous crossing that I hate so much. I’m not sure why a crosswalk is so famous but I’m kind of annoyed at all of the foreigners who have to video their walk across the intersection. It’s busy enough without all the people staring at their phone and people stopping to take a picture. It’s a goddamn crosswalk. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We went to Hanazono Shrine, which is nice and kind of standard shrine in Shinjuku. To get there we walked through Golden Gai, which was very quiet in the morning. I may have the order wrong, but Kevin said he wanted to sit down and have a beer and that was our lunch. I stuck with a ginger ale and a Coke, but Kevin and Bill had beers.

Then it was off to Sekaido stationery store in Shinjuku which I found to be a bit underwhelming. After that we got on the subway to see Takeshita Street in Harajuku which was oddly less crowded than I expected. We walked down to see the Shibuya Scramble which was further than I remembered and it was, as I said, still just a crosswalk. We tried to see the view from Shibuya Scramble Square but the tickets were sold out for the day. We did go up to the 14th floor where we couldn’t get a seat at any restaurants with a window view, but there was an NHK exhibit and they were trying to get people to enter and told us one of the windows in the exhibit had a view. So here’s Shibuya Scramble in all its glory (but it’s still just a crosswalk).

I think at some point Bill and I went shopping and I asked Kevin if he wanted me to buy him a tarantula to eat, but he probably would’ve thrown it out.

By that time it was almost dinnertime but we went back to the hotel for a bit. I told them about the steak house I liked and I kind of hoped it would be full because I still wasn’t that hungry but we made it into Satou Kichijoji Steak House for dinner. It was great, they had Matsuzaka beef that they only get in a couple of times a year (my favorite), and one of the regulars even gave us some fried garlic rice as a gift.

And that’s about it for the day. We went to the only two fancy restaurants I know of and we’ve been here two days! Now what?

Not a complete day but pretty close since we got into Tokyo around 1:45pm. But I think I’ve been up for most of 24 hours so my brain isn’t functioning that well. Got up at 4am for a 7:30am flight to Seattle, and then flew from Seattle to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. We wandered around a bit and had dinner at my favorite tonkatsu place in Shinjuku, Katsukura.

I can’t even remember all the movies I watched on the flight from SeaTac to Haneda. I remember Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, Spiderman: Homecoming, and Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse but there must’ve been one other movie I watched. Oh yeah, Mortal Engines. Kind of a weird but interesting movie. Not great but entertaining.Anyway, my brain is pretty shot so that’s about it for today. We wandered around Shinjuku for a bit but towards the end we were all sleepwalking through the stores. Honestly, it’s probably more than I usually do on my first day in Japan!

This is mostly a travel day, going home!  I had this grand plan to start out early, get a morning set, pack, do some last-minute shopping for my sister, and then check out. It all worked out but the plan failed. Turns out it’s Labor and Thanksgiving day and a lot of the coffee houses are opening later. I ended up at Starbucks because they’re always open early and actually it wasn’t that bad.

Packing was easier than expected because things fit nicely into my sister’s REI duffel bag. Going to the store that opened at 10 and checking out by 11 seemed to be pushing it so I just did that in the opposite order. They’ll check your bags and return them on the day you check out so I did just that. Then it was a two hour wait for the taxi.

Oh, check out this long line for SOMETHING at the NEWoMan Food Hall.

The taxi driver turned out to be a very chatty woman who moved to Japan from Shanghai 30 years ago. She was late because of traffic and I guess a lot of travelers get mad but I gave it some leeway and I was fine. She told me I should move to Japan and get a job in Tokyo as a translator. She was pretty funny and went on and on. Work until you’re 70 and THEN move to the countryside.

Anyway, went to the Delta Lounge and had a mini-bowl of ramen and some other snacky foods. I forgot to take a picture of the mini-ramen because I inhaled it.

Then it was onto the plane where I watched Blade Runner: 2049, John Wick 4, Shazam Fury of the Gods, and since I didn’t have enough time for another full movie, the rest of Central Intelligence that I started on the way to Japan.

I had a 7 hour layover in Seattle but had it changed to a four hour layover. I guess there aren’t that many Delta flights from Seattle to Portland. Sat in the lounge for the most part. My stomach was feeling weird so I only had a couple of snacks and, of course, clam chowder.

And that’s pretty much it. The flight from SEA to PDX was on a very small plane. I passed out immediately after sitting down and didn’t wake up until we got close ot Mt St Helens.

My sister gave me a ride home. Didn’t have Thanksgiving turkey pot pie with her because my stomach was still feeling a bit iffy. It’s fine now but my dinner was a frozen burrito and some Japanese Pringles that they gave me in the lounge. It’s nice to be home.

My last full day in Japan. I thought I’d take it easy today because I really overdid it yesterday and my leg hurt more than usual this morning. But did I succeed? Of course not.

I had breakfast at Hoshino Coffee, my favorite. Unfortunately this year the close one doesn’t open until 9AM! And I also forgot one of the features of the store:

Yeah, it’s in the basement. No elevator. But they did have Egg Slut back on the menu! Mashed potatoes and a brown sauce with a coddled egg on top. It’s so good. Unfortunately I think I could eat three of them without much trouble. But they’re so good. And they have these weird half-booths for single patrons. There’s a little sign that says something like, “Please only stay for two hours.” Coffee shops are a place to rest and hide. Luckily this one has good coffee and pretty good food.

And then I limped my fat ass over to the tourist information bureau in the bus terminal and asked if he could recommend a train or a bus I could just ride on for a while. He had to think about it and kept telling me to ask someone else, but finally he said, “Did you think about the Toden tram?” That’s a small tram that I’ve been meaning to ride eventually. It’s the only one left of an extensive tram system that covered Tokyo and goes from Waseda in northern Shinjuku City to Minowabashi in Arakawa City in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Also it was a bus ride from Shinjuku Station to Waseda which not only took a while, it took me 45 minutes to get 50 feet because off all the construction in the old Odakyu department store.

I also found that there are a LOT of old people riding the tram and even though it hurt my leg, I had to give up my seat because the guilt of sitting while little old ladies were standing would’ve killed me. I saw a young woman just pretend to be asleep but I can’t do that.

Once I got to Minowabashi, I felt like I was back in the middle of the countryside of Japan. There was nothing there. I decided to take a bus back because that sounded more interesting. What didn’t seem interesting was a 20 minute ride to the Akasaka area, so I took the bus the opposite direction on a nice 1 hr 46 minute ride to Nakano station with two transfers. Fortunately there were enough seats on the buses that I didn’t have to give up my seat, but lots of old people riding the bus in the middle of nowhere too. First bus took me from near Minowabashi to Oji station which was much more lively and even had a McDonalds. Then it was on a bus to Koenji but I transfered near Kita-Nogata station to a bus directly for Nakano.

I didn’t do all that much in Nakano (like go to Nakano Broadway) but I did see a Yakiimo festival going on!

Huge lines for some of the food but I got in a shortest one to get just plain yakiimo.

But they said I could get french fried yakiimo and that was more like a snack.

It was honestly quite good but so starchy and sweet! I couldn’t finish all of it.

And then it was back to Shinjuku for more frustration. I usually save my shopping until the end because I don’t want to carry a bunch more stuff around with me. I should’ve done more in Osaka. The Muji on the whole other side of the station has split off into two stores. One with stationery and home goods (where they had everything stuffed into one building before) and a new one with clothing. And the big signs are on the side where you can’t get in because it’s just a loading dock. They were out of the pajama color I wanted in my big fat guy size too. At least the guy at the Tax Free counter was funny. He had an accent but he kept using American idioms. Turns out he lived in Utah for ten years!

Then I went to Kinokuniya to buy some calendars. The one I wanted was the only one that sold out, of course. And then I found out that the store wasn’t even Kinokuniya. They’d given up selling calendars and left it, and the dry goods like pens, to someone else. I should’ve done this shopping in Osaka as well. Then it was across the street to the Bic Camera/Uniqlo complex which WAS NO LONGER A UNIQLO. The Uniqlo used to be huge, too. So I resigned myself to trying the one in Takashimaya later in the day.

I went for dinner at Katsukura on the upper restaurant floor of Takashimaya and the line was huge. But it started moving quite quickly. Turns out I mis-ordered and the fancy pork is from Yamagata and the stuff I got was from Chiba. I wondered why it wasn’t as good as last year (not that it was bad). They were out of the Yamagata pork filet anyway. The whole thing was confusing but it’s definitely worth eating there.

Uniqlo was a couple of floors down and not that large, but they had what I wanted. They were quite nice as well.

And then I got the bright idea to buy another power bank because my iPhone 15 Pro tends to eat battery. I spent about an hour and a half looking for Daisos that weren’t where google said they were and finally gave up and bought one at Bic Camera.

And that’s about it for the day. I didn’t end up packing because I was busy being an idiot and I might’ve walked even more than I did yesterday. Double idiot. We’ll see how that affects my plane ride home and my short SEVEN HOUR layover in Seattle.

Oh boy, I think I overdid it today. I’m OK now though. Better take it in order.

Got up this morning and I got out of my room a little later than I wanted to. Too much cursing at my computer. But my sister and I had been discussing a cafe around the corner from the hotel and I decided to try it out. It turned out to be OK, but not nearly as good as other choices. I think Drip-X-Cafe in Osaka has been the best so far and Tully’s is still a strong standby. I usually just go to Hoshino Coffee when I’m in Shinjuku and I might try that tomorrow. But today was Cafe de Crie.

The ham and egg sandwich was kind of stale-ish. The toast wasn’t quite crisp. The salad had a dab of mayo and that was the only dressing. And the coffee, while strong, started to taste sour as it cooled. Anyway, I’m being picky. It was fine.

I didn’t know what to do in Tokyo, and I kind of decided today was the day to go to the “east” side. My sister had suggested I get a decent kitchen knife and I’ve been looking. I saw one in Umeda, but I didn’t buy one there. So today I went to Kappabashi, the kitchen supply area. The trip there was a bit of a mess for me. Lots of stairs without escalators or elevators. When I got there I was OK, and by the end of the time my leg had loosened up a little. Anyway, I went to one store with a lot of stock and they wanted to sell me a stainless knife. They said the stainless knives were just as good nowadays.

Then I went to a store that has been around for generations and it was full of foreigners buying knives. According to them the best knives were carbon steel and require a lot of maintenance. Wash them right after use, dry them, and coat them in a layer of oil. No cutting frozen things or bones (I told the guy I had Henkel knives for that and he laughed). I ended up buying a knife for ¥59,800! It was actually less because they gave me a form to get the 10% consumption tax refunded and while I went 4 or 5 blocks away to get that done, they engraved my name into the blade. I’m excited to cut up some onions. That’s all I ever seem to do.

The Kappabashi kitchen good area is near Asakusa and the Sky Tree.

As I headed back towards the station (and towards Asakusa) I decided I wanted to try the melon pan (melon-shaped bread). I’ve heard rumors that it was first made in the area, and I’m a big fan of melon pan, so off I went. Google maps told me the second store of Akasaka Kagetsudou was close by, but when I got there I found an empty lot. The woman at the funky clothing store next door told me to try the main store, all the way through the crowds. So off I went.

So many people.

When I got there I got in line. I figured if there was a line it was the right place.

What I got was a very fresh melon pan with matcha soft ice cream inside! Not only was it the best melon pan, it had green tea soft ice cream! It was much bigger than a regular melon pan too.

I decided to get some of the croquettes I saw on the way and that meant going back through the same crowds to a side street.

First I got a regular one, beef and potatoes. It was the best.

I noticed people were all getting one of the options with cheese, so I asked what the most popular one was and got that. It was menchi (minced meat) and cheese. I think I liked the regular one better, but this was good as well.

It was only about 1pm so I decided to keep going and went to Akihabara to check out the few electronics stores that are left. There were even fewer than last year, and the ones that were left seemed to have less stuff. And as long as I was here, I went to visit the Kanda Myojin shrine like I do every year (it’s also close to a train station that takes me back to the hotel). I suppose it’s a tradition.

And finally it was back to the hotel.

When I got back to the room around 3pm I realized I had overdone it. When I sat down my leg started cramping up a bit and wouldn’t stop. The pain was pretty bad.I  took a short nap and lay around a while and it calmed down. I decided I’d better stay close by for dinner and just headed over to Shake Shack even though there’s one in my neighborhood in Portland now.

All at the southern end of Shinjuku station.

When I got back I picked up some packages that are going to be difficult to get home, but I guess we get them every year. The big box is rice crackers from Niigata, the smaller box is youkan from Toraya, and the bag is something my sister bought and needs me to bring back. The socks are FamiChiki socks that I bought for myself. Family Mart socks are generally pretty comfortable so I’m hoping the FamiChiki ones are as well.

That’s about it for today. Not sure what I’m doing tomorrow but I’m hoping it involves a lot more sitting and a lot less walking around.

OK sorry I’m late. I was off seeing my old co-worker Suzuki-san and when I got back I was kind of tired. I didn’t sleep well the previous night because of the overeating and my leg is hurting more. Fortunately, after breakfast I just got to sit on the Shinkansen for a few hours (on the Green car!) from Okayama to Tokyo.

Packing got much easier. I brought less clothing on this trip (as my mother always instructed me to do) and since it suddenly dropped in temperature I didn’t have to do laundry as often. Also, I packed all my weird Uniqlo Airism underpants that take up much less space than boxer shorts. And finally I dropped off my second pair of jeans for repair. They had a hole in the crotch so that definitely needed to be fixed before I wore them. I’m not some weird hipster and I’m too old for that kind of fashion. One thing I did pack was a second long-sleeved shirt (my usual Montbell shirt). Good thing too because I’ve been wearing three shirt layers every day since the temperature dropped.

Same Greenberry as the day before.

And then it was off to the station. The Green car was fairly empty and I fell asleep around the Kyoto stop. But after Nagoya I was just watching the builidngs go by. When I reached Fujieda I was afraid I missed Mt Fuji! Fortunately, I hadn’t. It was a fairly clear view today.

I got to Tokyo and I was in a bad mood. Wondered why I even bothered coming. But it didn’t take long to realize I was just hangry. I looked around for lunch and even went into the new Kabukicho tower.

After wandering for an hour I decided to make my third trip to Mos Burger. It’s comfort food for me.

Checked into the hotel and they were fairly insistent that I use the machine to check in. I think it was almost ten years ago when we found out that the “search by name” function wanted the EXACT spelling and the EXACT NAME ORDER or something and we wasted a bunch of time trying to check in with the machine. I’m not sure how booking.com gives them the details but it’s a bit odd. I just went to the desk.

I guess this is the one hotel that I didn’t pre-pay. I like pre-paying so I don’t have to think about how much I’m paying for the hotels. ¥70,643 for three nights! It’s $163 per night and since I never stay in hotels in the US that’s expensive to me! But they did put me on the top floor and here’s my view.

Now I can hit the top button on the elevator and think, “peasants” on the way up. Really, the room seems smaller than I remember so it’s not a big deal. At least I slept fairly well.

Oh, and I did head out to meet my old co-worker Suzuki-san. We went to a fish restaurant and had sushi and tempura. He’s still doing his “not leaving the apartment” thing and said he hadn’t left for 21 days! He buys enough groceries for three weeks at a time. And that means when I see him, he ends up eating things that he’s not used to and gets a stomach ache. It happened again. But we did get to talk for quite some time before we called it quits and I didn’t get back to my room until after 9:30pm.

That’s about it for that day. Now to decide what to do today…

Oh boy, I ate too much. But that’s at the end of the day.

Today I met my friend Yumi and since she knew about my back she suggested going to an onsen. I had no idea she’d drive so far. But first, I had breakfast at the Greenberry’s just down the street from the hotel. The yogurt even had granola in it! Quite tasty.

Then Yumi came to get me for the hour-and-a-half drive up to Yubaru Onsen. On the way we stopped at a soba shop that’s only open on the weekends and is quite popular.

We arrive just before opening so we got in right away but the lines formed soon after. The lady kept saying their tempura was said to be tasty and she totally undersold it. It was better than the tempura-only shops I’ve been to. And it was “shin-soba” made from recently harvested buckwheat just two days ago!

Picture from Yumi of some old guy with his soba.

Then it was on to Yubaru Onsen. There’s even a free open-air onsen there which was full of naked dudes including one who was just standing around smoking. If you zoom in (and I don’t suggest it) you can see him when he was being more modest, holding a towel in front of him. But when he grabbed his cigarette he threw the towel over his shoulder. There was a woman there too but she was wearing something close to a bathing suit from the olden times.

Yumi’s picture that shows the bathing suit which looks like a green blob in the lower middle. Haha.

Yumi’s picture of some old guy after getting out of the onsen and having some strawberry-flavored water.

So on the way back we stopped at a city with a famous sake brewery and it was an old town with castle ruins. They were having a sake festival and I had some kuromoji ice cream. I think kuromoji is a kind of wood. Too lazy too google it right now.

It was a quaint old town and since we were both sleepy after the onsen, we stopped at a random coffee shop. At first we thought it wasn’t really open, even though there was a sign outside, because it was full of records and knick knacks. I had a great peach soda and Yumi said the coffee was surprisingly good. He even brought us tea and rice crackers and the whole thing only cost ¥1000!

And then it was back to Okayama, where we went for yakiniku. I overate, but even worse I proved to myself that I shouldn’t EVER eat garlic. Woo, the gas. The meat was awesome and the restaurant has a Showa theme. Or it sort of did. It’s been around that long!

We even went for dessert (where my guts started to complain) and luckily Yumi gave me a taste of her creme brulee.

And that’s it for the night. Fortunately my stomach feels much better now!

Not many pictures today. Slept OK, I’d probably give it a B-. In any case, I got up, ate some breakfast at Tully’s again, and realized I was very early for my train ticket that I bought yesterday.

I went to try adjusting it to an hour earlier and they pointed at this sign:

I did not read it but they said the Marine Liner is stopped. That’s the one that goes across the Seto Ohashi to Okayama, and it’s stopped due to heavy winds. I think it also says the Uzushio from Tokushima to Matsuyama is stopped as well. I asked if they had any other trains and they said not at the moment. I asked if my fare went poof and they said no, they’d refund the whole thing. That was about 9AM. OK, so time to figure out what else to do.

I went to the bus terminal and asked about buses to Okayama and they sent me to the local bus terminal. I guess there’s two buses each day, one around 8AM and one around 5PM. No other options. So back to the highway bus terminal with me to find another way off of Shikoku. I found two companies side-by-side. The first one told me the 10AM bus was full and the next one was 11AM. I saw there was a 10:30AM on the other side and they were nice and told me to try that first. Open seats were available but only sitting in the middle (a weird seat that blocks the aisle). Nope, back to the first counter and now I have a couple of hours to kill.

There are some good parts to taking a bus. I wondered what going across the bridges to Awaji Island were like and almost drove across the southern bridge yesterday. It’s better to ride the bus since it let me look out to see if there were any whirlpools (there were not). And the northern bridge was just a bridge. Nothing really special.

Since I didn’t trust my online sources (one said the Shinkansen was delayed as well), I stood in line at the Shin-Kobe ticket to ask at the ticket counter. And I figured I could buy my Okayama to Tokyo ticket at the same time. Met a guy in line who owns a packaging company up in Seattle and he was a hoot to talk to. He’s married to a Japanese woman from Kobe. Then I got my short ticket to Okayama (30 minutes) and my long ticket from Okayama to Tokyo (more like 4 hours). I also bought an ekiben because I was hungry. I hoped I’d have space to eat it and the train wouldn’t be packed.

It was pretty good. Probably not “kobe beef” good but meh. I’ve been suckered by tourist stuff this whole trip. I didn’t need to worry, I got an aisle seat and the window seat was not taken.

I got to Okayama just after 2pm, about two hours late. It was freezing. I checked in since this hotel starts checkin at 2pm and sat in the room for a bit. I did walk around the neighborhood and took my expensive Momotaro jeans in for repair again, just like last year. And the Mister Donut is back! Not sure why they closed but it seems to be in the same spot. I bought a silly donut and it wasn’t great (wasn’t expecting it to be) but it also wasn’t awful.

And the I wandered around the station underground and the coin flip app told me to get the same ramen I had last year.

The broth I tried this year has a flying fish base, I think, and it was a little on the light side. I like it a bit more salty. The fatty pork char siu was great and I even got a rice bowl with seasoned char siu on the side. Next time I’m probably back to the one soy sauce flavored broth that is flavored with fish, pork, and chicken.

And that’s about it. I’m meeting our friend Yumi tomorrow and we’re going to hit some onsen. I’m having dinner with her brother and his family too. Should be fun!

More mistakes were made.

I decided it was time to sleep in. Being an old man, I usually am in bed by 10 and get up at 6, but with my spotty sleep I’ve been pretty tired when the alarm goes off. I set the alarm for 7 but of course I first woke up around 5:45. It was pretty nice except that my room is 26.5°C according to the A/C and that’s 80°F. I woke up in a sweat and got the worst cramp in my inner thigh. I’m so lucky I have that massage gun. It took some doing to get that worked out, but I was able to get back to sleep. I also found some Ca/Mg/Zn “with BioPerine” today so I’m going to take some of that as well.

But first, breakfast at Tully’s. It’s no Drip-X-Cafe but it’s also not that bad. It’s a sad tiny eggamuffin but I think they used Camembert cheese which is very flavorful. And the coffee is large and at least not completely weak.

Another reason to sleep in was the tourist information office didn’t open until 10am. I thought I gave it enough time but they weren’t open when I first got there so I went to buy a train ticket for tomorrow. Then back to ask how to get to Isanagi-jingu Shrine, which kind of looks a little overdeveloped for the middle of Awaji Island. I also thought I could hit the amusement park but the weather forecast was iffy and the tourist bureau guy told me I should probably just head to Iya Gorge and the scary vine bridge that Chris Broad had on YouTube. It’s about time for the fall colors.

So then I started walking for an HOUR looking for a car to rent. JR Station Rent-a-car looked so tiny and iffy that I just kept walking. The paper map I was given wasn’t that great and it took forever to find Nippon Rent-a-car who said they were all booked out. Yeah, I’m still flying by the seat of my pants and didn’t even call ahead. They told me Toyota Rent-a-car had the most stock and modified the map for me crossing out places that no longer existed. Off I went. Toyota was the least friendly and just sent me on to Orix. Orix said they were pretty booked out but they might have a car if I waited. I got a kei car, which has a 550cc engine, I think, and once I found out that it could drive on the expressway I took it. Not that I had any other options.

When I looked in my wallet my AMEX card was missing! I thought about taking a taxi back to the station because the only place I used it was the JR ticket counter. But they completed the transaction with my Apple credit card and convinced me to drive to the station, a rather busy part of the city. Adventure!

Luckily traffic wasn’t all that bad and the parking lot was mostly empty. And my AMEX card was at the ticket counter! Phew. Even better, I was there such a short time that I wasn’t charged for parking.

Off I went through town to the expressway.

It’s about an hour and a half on the expressway and a lot of it looked like this. One lane in each direction and a truck in front of me. Which is good because the speed limit was 70kph (45mph!) or 50kph in the construction zone (31mph!). Yeah, I got it up to 100kph a couple of times which is still only 62mph.

There were passing lanes and it did widen to two lanes for a while. Of course there were speedsters but I was in a kei car. I tried to keep it at about 85kph (53mph). I’m not Moriwaki, who said he got his Jag up to 300kph once. No way around it, that sounds sketchy.

So an hour and a half on the expressway and another 50 minutes or so on country roads. The navigation system kept telling me to watch my speed and I wanted to tell it YEAH, I’M SPEEDING BUT I’M TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH TRAFFIC.

Holy hell I was in the middle of nowhere. But I kind of knew it was a tourist area because the one rest stop I found had a Lawson and a Montbell shop!

Nothing else for miles! Or I should say for kilometers! Not even a vending machine.

I wasn’t that hungry so lunch was from Lawson. I would recommend a hard pass on the snow cheese chicken.

The GPS took me to a railway station that wasn’t close to where the rope bridge was, but I used my phone with Google Maps and also the signs on the road that told me which way to go. And when I got there I saw ¥400 parking and I kind of knew it was a tourist trap. Well, I’m a tourist so whatever. There was a giant hall which looked like a US grocery store but was a Japanese gift store. Then it was off to the bridge.

The Abroad in Japan YouTube channel showed a scary vine bridge that looked like it could fall at any moment and Chris Broad acted frightened to cross it.

In reality it costs ¥550 to cross and there was a bus full of elderly Chinese tourists ahead of me crossing the bridge.

And it’s pretty obvious that there’s vinyl-covered steel cables holding up the bridge with decorative vines wrapped around them.

I talked to a Japanese couple who crossed at the same time and we had a chuckle. Here’s a view from the middle of the bridge.

The worst part is that I came up to see the fall colors and there’s a chance that they aren’t happening this year. I saw lots of trees with brown leaves and the parking lot attendant told me that most of the leaves just turned brown and fell off this year because the temperature just suddenly dropped. I did find one single tree with red leaves.

Then I drove back through the rain and it was starting to get dark at 3:30pm. But when I got back to Tokushima the weather was pretty nice. The only hard part was the minimal rush-hour traffic and the GPS driving me around in circles. Oh, and then trying to find a gas station.

I got back and I still wasn’t hungry. I decided just to give Lotteria a go and DON’T TRY THE BACON CHEESEBURGER unless you want a ham cheeseburger. And a tiny ham cheeseburger at that. It was, um, bad? Well, not bad, but not good. Mos Burger is still at the top of my list.

The fries were surprisingly good, though they were over-salted. And I got a melon soda because that’s not a typical thing in the US.

I went up to the bath early and I kept thinking I smelled like shit. Then I thought it must be the onsen water. Then I looked at the drain and found a present someone had left for me. Ugh. Well, I reported it on the way out but yeesh. And yes, sometimes onsen water does kind of smell like that.

So, there’s Tokushima for you. Pluses and minuses and dumbass me not planning ahead making things harder. And the food, in general, was underwhelming. And my weird Japanese skills are getting weirder and weirder. The guy at the tourist trap parking lot asked me if I was from Yamaguchi. Hahaha. And here I thought I had my Kansai-ben down.

Mistakes were made.

I started out the day with breakfast! I didn’t sleep as well as last night because early on I was getting up a lot to go to the bathroom. (TMI section: why is it that when I wake up at night I actually have to go to the bathroom, but during the day it seems like I want to go but there’s no volume?) I thought back and realized I tried not to drink anything after dinner, but I did get sobayu after I finished eating and drink all of the soba tsuyu. (You can google that if you want, it’s not TMI.) Oh, and as I packed up i noticed this by my garbage:

No wonder I was getting up all the time.

Anyway, the Daiwa Roynet buffet was fantastic, in a huge room, and had an omelet bar! You can see from the selection that I am Japanese-American. I kind of loaded up because I kind of knew I wouldn’t get lunch.

It was another beautiful day and the first thing I did was got a taxi to the ferry. Then an hour wait for a two-and-a-half hour ferry ride that was hot and quite boring. Once I looked out and thought, hey, I know some of those landmarks, we’re almost there but my watch showed we had another hour to go. The only excitement was during my hour-long wait to get onto the ferry. One of the workers was wearing Hanshin gear. I wondered if he is a megafan or if he lost a bet.

Once I got off the ferry it was a long bus ride to the train station and the Hotel Sunroute Tokushima. I dropped off my bag and limped myself over to the tourist information bureau to ask about seeing the whirlpools at Naruto where the ocean meets the inland sea. They told me to get on the bus right away so I could get on one of the last boats out to the whirlpools. I had to get a all-day ticket, and the bus took AN HOUR. Remember when I said it was a long bus ride to the train station? That was only about 15 minutes.

I asked the driver about where to get off for the boat ride into the whirlpools and the guy told me about the two boats from one dock but didn’t really say which stop it was. Then after I sat back down the bus made several English announcements telling me to get off at the Otsuka Museum of Art. When I got off I saw a big sign for cars that said THIS WAY TO THE BOAT RIDE. Well, it said something in Japanese but it translated to something similar to that. So I started walking. And walking. It was another 20 minutes, often down a narrow (and sometimes busy) Japanese road. And then I hit construction! One of the flaggers had to walk me through the construction area where they were repaving the road. Once I saw the boats I jogged over to the ticketing area because it looked like they were getting ready to leave.

At the ticketing booth they told me the small boat was about to leave and the big boat would leave later, but I was about an hour late for the peak whirlpools and sooner was better than later.

I was one of the last ones on board, but there were only about five other people on board. We had to sit to leave port, then we walked around while we motored quite quickly over to the area under the bridge, which is where the whirlpools form. Then they made us go below decks and we watched the whirlpools from below! I don’t have a good picture but here’s looking out while we were under way.

And then we went back through a couple of times while we were on the upper deck. It was kind of fun to watch the water swirl around.

You could see the step where the inland sea met the ocean.

I think it was worth it. After we headed back to port I had nearly an hour to wait for the bus. There’s nothing to do there other than the boat so I had some ice cream out of a machine. I’ve seen this machine at a lot of the ferry terminals and I finally tried it because I was getting hungry.

It was a tiny freezer ice cream and it wasn’t bad. 

I looked around the souvenir shop and the boat schedules and realized if I had a choice I would’ve taken the faster, smaller boat (which I did). I really lucked into that one.

Then it was another hour back to the hotel.

When I got to the hotel it was full of women who looked like they were on a pilgrimmage of at least part of the 88 temples of Kyushu. When I checked in and asked the woman at the counter said something like, “I’m not sure they’re that serious.” But I put my stuff in my room and immediately went looking for dinner because I was starving.

OK, so for dinner I made even more mistakes. I went to a restaurant that served the local specialty of chicken. One famous dish is the chicken leg served on a hot plate and cut up with scissors. Well, YOU cut it up with scissors. Anyway, I always spend too much money at these places and never know what to order. I overdid it and one of the things kind of made me queasy.

In case you’re wondering, it was the chicken namban that made me queasy. Too much sauce. It wasn’t even hot when it came out. Honestly, though, it was all just oversalted chicken that needed pepper or some other seasoning. They should also give up on the local chicken namban and get the recipe from Miyazaki. I’m sure I could get used to it but I think I’d rather make a special trip to Nagoya for roast chicken and Miyazaki for chicken namban.

Oh, and you can’t tell but that chicken leg is giant. I ate way too much. So much chicken grease and salt.

After that it was drizzling out and while I did make a stop at the Can Do for more cables (which they didn’t have) I got back to the hotel and went to the onsen on the floor above me. (I’m on the 20th floor.) The TV kept telling me the men’s bath was full so I did wait in the room for a bit but eventually I just gave up and went. It wasn’t packed but goddamn the old Chinese guys were loud. I was mad until I realized they were OLD KOREAN GUYS. They were of the age that usually hates Japan, but whatever. I gave them a pass, which shows that I am a racist Asian (and don’t any of you other Asians tell me you’re any different.) I just wished they would keep it down a bit in the bath.

Oh, and speaking of which, while I was bored waiting for the bus I asked one of the drivers where the bus was from. He said, this bus? It’s all Taiwanese people. Just got off the plane, then off to see the whirlpools and then onto a five day tour of Shikoku. Sounds like fun. And Taiwan is the one Asian country that seems to really like Japan. They get a pass too. Yes, I am an awful person.