Kholakat.net Dissociative Ramblings

Green Tea Frappuccinos are at Australian Starbucks apparently!!! I must test this theory…

After a good nights sleep (and another quick jump into the spring bath), we were served our breakfast in our room, with the help of the lovely Maiko. Not as many courses this time, but just as lovely and filling. We wanted to make sure we had enough time to travel back to Osaka, so we had reserved some seats on the shinkansen the previous day, but didn’t leave any sight-seeing time for us. We checked out of the ryokan, promising ourselves to return one day. Then we made our way back to the train station and went back to Odawara. Luckily it wasn’t too busy yet. While waiting for the train, we had a couple of fast trains pass us by, travelling fairly quickly. Within a few seconds they were gone, but while they were there you could feel the platform vibrate, and the air being forced aside by such an incredible machine. Awesome! We then hopped onto the shinkansen and travelled to Shin-Osaka.

Once there, we decided to head straight onto the airport, where we found another internet cafe place where we could chill out and wait for a couple of hours. We picked the massage chair booths (of course!), and I let the chair do its thing. Once check-in was opened, we went to the departure area and stood in line, hoping that Star Class was not yet full. Luckily for us, we were able to purchase the upgrade for going home too. Yay! We then went to do some last minute shopping, and had our last Okonomiyaki dinner (with ume-shu) before going through customs/immigration to board our flight home.

We got up fairly early today in order to grab some brekkie, check out and make our way across town to Shinjuku – me with a broken suitcase, people still running around everywhere. I think the rainy weather had something to do with it! On the way, I heard someone call out my name. It was our lovely waitress from last night! So we then continued to swim clumsily upstream, up and down stairs and escalators, until we reached the first train loop….only to have it terminate a few stations too soon for us. So we changed trains and continued…only to have our tickets to the Romance Train (to Hakone) rejected! I went to the station guard who proceeded to refund our money. We found out the train was cancelled (rain or accident, not sure which)! After the stress of getting to that point, I started thinking that our trip to Hakone would have to be cancelled too!

After some Bach flower essence, we found out that we could take a different train or the shinkansen (but from Tokyo). So we took the Limited Express Train, which was basically a commuter train that took 1.5 hours, and since it was busy, we were standing for about half of the way, holding onto our suitcases so that they would not fall over onto anyone. Not happy Jan!!

We finally got to Miyanoshita, the recommended station for our ryokan, and then we couldn’t find the place (Hakone Ginyu). Luckily I had my phone so we called them, and a few minutes later we saw a man running towards us – it was less than a minutes walk down the road from the bottom of the train station. Once we were there, it felt like things were back on track again – And once we went into our room, it was like we had stepped into a whole other world. There are 2 sitting rooms (one converts to a bedroom when they put the futon mats down), a bathroom, separate toilet, separate shower that joins to the outside balcony which has a hot spring bath etc. There also seems to be a mini kitchen type area near the entrance with hot drinking water, mini bar and snacks for sale.

While we were loathe to leave the room, we did need to eat some food, and we did want to check out some of the scenery in the area before leaving Japan! So we continued on the railway, and up the cablecars until we reached Owakudani, where we had an awesome view of Mt Fuji, and we got to wander around some bubbling hot springs (complete with the lovely sulphur smell). They were selling some eggs, saying they would give you an extra 7 years of life. But we were too chicken to try them!

We made our way back to the ryokan and sat in the hot spring bath for a while, looking out at the beautiful scenery. Around 7pm, our room hostess, Maiko, knocked on our door and came in to serve us our dinner. We sat in the sitting room (with the heated wooden floor under the table), and was served the most amazing meal we have had in Japan! It was a kaiseki dinner that had about 10 courses, each one served in beautiful bowls and plates, with pretty little garnishes. Each time Maiko would come in, she would kneel/bow at the door entrance, come and serve each of us, and then kneel/bow on her way out. We counted over 40 of those just for our dinner. Poor little thing! I felt sorry for her knees! She was so lovely though, and we were able to communicate with her thanks to Nathan’s Japanese skills and my phrasebook. One of the dishes we could choose had ‘firefly’ in it. We tried to get clarification on that, but in the end, decided to try it anyway. Thanks to google, I now know that the ‘Firefly’ in this instance was a firefly squid, and not the insect. We also rediscovered our appreciation of ume-shu, Japanese plum wine.

During our dinner, our futons were set up in the other room, with nice warm fluffy doonas. We hopped into the hot spring bath again, and then sat out on the balcony for a bit, appreciating our last night in Japan.

Since today was going to be our last day in Tokyo, we wanted to squeeze in some last minute shopping and last minute sight-seeing. We ended up doing a little bit of both! In the morning, after a bakery brekkie at Vie De France, Nath headed back to Aki while I stayed at the hotel, trying out their ‘foreign aromatherapy special’ massage. You know, after all that hard walking and shopping

Nath picked up a metallic pink DS Lite with this cool Japanese print material cover. Very cool! Plus, now I can stick on my Stitch pictures on the DS. Hehe. After that we headed out to Shinjuku to wander around for a bit, and to check out the transportation regarding how to get to Hakone for tomorrow. The weather had just started to get cold and rainy so we didn’t get to see that much of the area, but we did manage to find another Taito arcade so we played some games in there for a bit – making sure to avoid those UFO games which we are sooooo not good at!

For our last dinner in Tokyo, we wanted to find a nice place to eat at so we wandered around the Shiodome area, and decided upon the ever-useful Caretta building. We went up to the 47th floor and went to a place that served lovely Japanese cuisine. Our waitress was so helpful, although we needed the trusty Lonely Planet Japanese phrasebook to help translate some of the culinary masterpieces. The restaurant did provide us with a print out of our courses, which was helpful too. Pics to come through later (hopefully they turned out ok in the low lighting). We had a gorgeous view of the city too, including the Tokyo tower. So romantic!