Last morning in Kyoto. I feel fine today but my nose keeps running and I have the occasional hacking cough which is quite spectacular if rather alarming for passersby.
Another warm and sunny day which we decided to spend exploring the old Japanese capital of Nara. It hasn’t been the capital for over a thousand years so it’s a long time to still be milking it in my view.
Having checked out, we had to get to Nara with our suitcases in tow. We took separate taxis to Kyoto station and then a train which took around an hour. Painless as usual, and paid with the extremely useful suica app on our phones. It cost 720 yen which is around $8.
We skirmished with a bunch of fast moving Italian tourists to access the luggage lockers but sadly they beat us to it. There were only a few available and we needed at least four big ones so we graciously gave up the fight. We got the last laugh however when we found a whole other section of them, cheaper and much easier to access, a couple of floors down. Paid for by suica of course.
Nara is easy to walk around and is full of parks, temples, and shrines but it also has another distinctive feature – deer, roaming everywhere. They are tame and mostly well behaved, although warning signs around the place suggest they aren’t always so. Tourists are encouraged to buy special round biscuits to feed them, and they look well fed although a bit mangy. To me they seem strangely lifeless, and dead behind the eyes. I can just imagine them feasting on the brains of tourists in a zombie apocalypse.
By early afternoon we were sick of the heat and the crowds, and we set off to see the mechanical toy museum which was in one of the quiet back streets. It was pretty small, just a couple of rooms with old toys you could play with, run by an elderly couple who were very enthusiastic about getting us to try everything. It was a pleasant way to spend 20 minutes, plus the bathroom facilities were excellent.
We said goodbye to Kirsten and David as they are heading off on other adventures whereas Simon and I are heading back home tomorrow.
We walked back to the station to pick up our luggage and then tried to work out the best way to get to our hotel at Osaka airport. Simon’s route was very complicated involving several train changes and/or taxis, but I found a bus that basically took us from door to door. It turns out Simon had turned off the bus option on Google maps. We got on the bus with five minutes to spare, and I made Simon say “Oh you are so clever and wonderful” in return for a promise that I would stop crowing. Note there are two airports in Osaka which I imagine could be a source of much anguish if you were unprepared. Luckily the bus I’d found went to the correct place, and 90 minutes later we were trundling along the streets to our hotel on the outskirts of Osaka.
By the time we’d settled in, it was past 6, so any idea we’d had of heading into town to explore evaporated in favour of getting sushi somewhere nearby. Once again I was in charge, and I found a cute neighbourhood sushi bar 20 minutes walk away. I enjoyed the walk through the nearby suburban streets, which had a real hodgepodge of different types of houses on them, although all tidy and well kept.
The sushi bar looked like a converted house, with small tables in cute little rooms. The staff were very friendly, and thought we’d be alright just speaking Japanese because I said hai when they asked if we wanted a table for two. They weren’t bothered when we asked for an English menu, though, and they were right – google translate worked perfectly, even for the hand written Japanese characters. We had sashimi, sushi, plum wine and beer. They even took credit cards, which was a pleasant surprise because a lot of places over here only take cash.
I memorised a phrase to say at the end gochisosama deshita (thank you, that was delicious) and they were so pleased I was just sorry I hadn’t bothered trying to use it before now. All the staff waved and bowed when we left, it was lovely. Can you imagine anything similar happening in France? They’d be more likely to pretend not to understand you. Or maybe I’m being unkind?