Month: February 2010

We zipped out to Nagoya in the Mie prefecture, with the intent of spending considerable time in that region. The city featured a few interesting buildings and lots of traffic, but we didn’t feel any particular charm.

Our plan was to crash for a night in Nagoya, then head up to Gero Onsen for a relaxing night or two. We booked into the Dormy Inn Nagoya, which was decidedly less impressive than Dormy Inn Otaru. But it is conveniently located near the Nagoya red light district, if that’s your thing.

That’s three new hotels we’ve visited on Honshu, and two red light districts. We’re on a roll.

Deciding to make the best of our time in Nagoya, we checked out the Nagoya science center. It was two buildings and a planetarium. Admission was $6 each, including our tickets to the planetarium show. Eat your heart out Science World. The annual pass ran $20.

So you would be fair in assuming that the Nagoya science world was pretty lame. Except you would be wrong. It was pretty darn awesome. I mean, everything was in Japanese, so it was pretty tough to understand some of the exhibits. But most of the things were interactive, and Jenn and I had lots of fun figuring out the rules of the games. Maybe a little more than we enjoyed the games themselves. And let’s be honest here: zapping things with electricity is fun in any language.

We also checked out the planetarium show. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe a similar script to the quickie 20 minute shows we get back home at our planetarium. Instead, we were treated to a 60 minute presenation on the cosmos, and a 10 minute intro on the NEW planetarium they are currently constructing, which will be a self-enclosed globe suspended between two buildings. It looks very cool.

The cosmos presentation was also pretty incredible, since I learned more about the constellations in a foreign language I could barely follow than I ever did back home. Which leads me to my current hypothesis: the Japanese are really sophisticated robots diguised as humans.

But I digress.

The second stage of our plan was Gero onsen. Unfortunately, after carefully navigating the Japanese language page of the onsen we wanted to stay at, it appeared they were not accepting reseverations anymore. At all. Ever. I’m uncertain if it was a glitch on the website, or if they were remodeling, or if they had gone out of business, but it was clear fate was not on our side.

It was about this time that we realized Nagoya wasn’t really a city for us. We looked at the itinerary of things to do and see and decided we wanted to go elsewhere.

The next day we headed south for Ise, to visit the Umbrella Shrine. The shrine itself is one of the most sacred Shinto shrines in Japan: so sacred, in fact, the priests knock the shrine down every twenty years and build it again a few paces over. When you visit, you don’t actually get to see the shrine, either, because it is that sacred. Instead, you get to view the sort of outer gate bits. And a sea of umbrellas as people wait their turn in the queue.

After the Ise Shrine, the drizzle became genuine rain as we searched for Samurai town. Several misadventures later, we realized that Mie was not for us and we left.

I thought I’d post a few random photos for my blog contribution today.

Almost every restaurant we’ve visited has had awesome jazz music playing in the background. All the classic standards.

The exception was the Dormy Inn in Otaru which had quiet string fugues playing in the hallways and – I kid you not – a room dedictated to the Bachs. The Bach Room was a small corner room with an ample supply of reading material, comfortable chairs, and 24/7 music by all the most famous Bachs.

If our vacation were a movie, it’s had a pretty fantastic soundtrack so far.

After three flights in five days, we paused in Osaka for some R&R. We hit up the same Hearton hotel we stayed at during our first trip, in the same semi-double rooms, and it felt a little like coming home.

Our ambitions for sightseeing in Osaka were minimal during our two night stay, and we succeeded admirably. We did take one morning to hit up Osaka castle and the surrounding park. The park was simply amazing.

There were plenty of foot paths through out the park. And, being it was a Sunday, there were lots of people out enjoying the fine weather. Did I mention the fine weather? After Hokkaido, it was positively summer-like. Clear blue skies, and a warm 10 to 15 degrees most of the day. And cute, fluffy little white clouds dancing in the sky.

We sauntered around the park for some time, enjoying the warm sun, before we decided to tour the castle museum. The castle itself is not original. Most of the feudal castles in Japan were torn down during the Meiji restoration, when a “One Castle, One Province” rule was put into effect. But the replica castle had a lot nicer amenities inside, and the space was put to good use as a museum. Not much to see if you aren’t into history, but all of the exhibits were in Japanese and English, making it a museum the two of us could appreciate more.

After the castle museum, we toured the plum blossom orchard. A few trees were starting to come into colour, but most were still bare. It is a little early yet. We are visiting another plum grove in Kyoto late next week, and hopefully the extra time will give the trees a chance to fully bloom.

It was pretty good. Very impressive skills, coupled with impressive quantities of snow. Very cold. And crowded. The chocolate covered bananas on a stick the food vendors were selling looked interesting.

Yeah. That basically covers it.

We left Kiroro in the morning and headed back to Otaru, whereupon we caught a train to Sapporo, switched trains in Sapporo and headed north to Asahikawa, where we had to stop for further directions because I forgot the name of our destination.

What was our purpose in traveling three hours to an out of the way city in Northern Hokkadio in blizzard like conditions? A sake brewery, of course.

But not just any brewery. The sake they make is not available for sale outside of Japan. And they brew the sake in traditional ice houses, in small batches, with an emphasis on quality over quantity. In American terms, we were hunting for a micro-brewery.

Fortunately, the local tourist information office had maps of the area in English. And at the very edge of the map corner was our target: the Taka…something brewery. Okay, I’ve already forgotten the name again. Japanese is hard, okay?

The snow was falling heavily as we braved the icy streets of Asahikawa. The sidewalks were actually an accumulation of compacted snow, many inches thick; we figured we were walking almost a full foot above the proper ground.

After about twenty minutes on foot, we reached a building that could only be the sake brewery. It was a traditional wooden structure, with thick, traditional wooden doors barring entry.

It was closed.

So with heavy hearts and a sadness in our souls we turned around and..no, I’m just kidding. It was open. The real entrance was around the side.

The floor creaked as we walked inside and admired the rows and rows of bottles. All of this sake had been painstaking crafted. Some had been more painstakingly crafted than others, but we couldn’t tell. I couldn’t read a damn thing.

The nice shop lady came to our rescue. She didn’t speak much English, but she knew the only words we needed to hear: ‘tasting okay?’

Oh, hell YES! A dozen very generous pours later, we returned to the Asahikawa train station, warm in spite of the weather and weighed down with several bottles of extremely delicious sake. The two most expensive bottles will make the return trip with us to Canada, to share with our friends. The other bottles…will not be so fortunate.

Delicious sake soon to be consumed, we salute you!

First, a bit about the differences in finding and consuming alcohol in Canada as compared to Japan . . .

What Lance and I consider one of the best things about visiting Japan, is the proliferation of access to alcohol and the laissez-faire attitude towards its consumption. In Canada, you can only really get alcohol at certain licensed restaurants and specialty liquor stores. The liquor stores are really of two varieties: private owned and government owned. They usually suffer from at least one, if not several, of the following flaws: bad hours, poor selection, and high prices. Also, liquor cannot be consumed in public. At certain events it is permitted, but you can’t just crack a can of beer open on a train and go on your merry way.

In Japan, the situation is quite different. You can readily find alcohol for sale at convenience stores, in vending machines on public streets, and even at train station kiosks. While it’s considered rude to be walking around in the open eating and drinking, it’s perfectly acceptable to eat and drink while sitting down on a train or bus. In fact, many seats will have flip down trays and/or cup holders to make it more convenient for you. Also, many of the bottles that have twist off caps, now come equipped with little pull tabs, so you can very easily open your beverage.

Now, to set the stage for the wine review . . .

We were heading back from Asahikawa (where we had just visited a sake brewery, sampled, and purchased some bottles to bring back home) and it had been a very long day. We were faced with almost 2 hours on a train to get to the city where our hotel was (and we didn’t really know exactly where in the city our hotel was located, so there was that adventure still to come), we had done a lot of walking, and my ankle still hurt like hell. And did I mention we’d just been walking around in the snow in -10 degrees Celsius? Anyway, we got to the train station and had a bit of time before our train was set to arrive so we stopped for snacks and drinks. They had mostly beer and a few bottles of wine, so I decided to pick one up for the train ride ahead. Here are the basic details (keep in mind, this is what I could discern from reading the label, which was mostly in Japanese).

Now, the wine . . .

Furano wine. Lavendar fragrance. A white. 360 ml Bottle with a
real cork – no screw cap. Best served between 6 & 12 degrees
Celsius. A decent 12% alcohol. The little blurb on the front of the
bottle seems to indicate that this might be an expermental brew –> “Furano
viticulture and enology experiment station Shimizuyama Furano Hokkaido
Japan.”

The very nice girl at the check out was kind enough to ask if we wanted cups, to which I responded in the affirmative. As I said, it had been a long day, and when I grabbed the bottle, I hadn’t really given any thoughts on HOW I would drink the wine, just that I wanted to try it. Once we were settled on the train, I pulled the cool bottle out of the bag, and my heart sank a little when I realized that it had a real cork. My husband came to my rescue though and pointed out that the girl at the store had also put a little corkscrew in the bag. Yup, they provide tiny cups and a corkscrew too. Oh, and did I mention the price? It was 480 Y, which works out to around $5.

As for how it tasted, I thought I could actually detect a hint of Lavendar in the wine. But, it might have simply been the suggestive power of the bottle. since it was one of the few English words on it, and it had a picture of a Lavendar field on the front of the bottle too. It was a fairly sweet wine, and I found it pretty good after the long day we’d had. Probably not something I’d serve with dinner, but to kick back and relax a bit while travelling back to the city on the zoo train filled with hyper children and life sized stuffed animals at the front of every car (I kid you not), it was very much worth the price. I’d give it a solid 3 out of 5. Oh, and it paired pretty nicely with the Pocky too.

On a purely side note, I’m quite glad I opted for the white over the red variety, as you can’t see at all where I spilled the wine all over the front of my pants when the train zigged just as I was pouring another cup for myself (did I mention they were tiny, jello-shooter size cups?)

Should I feel so inspired, I may pick up another variety at some other locale on our trip and post another review.

We found your snow. It was in Hokkaido. Evidentally, it had been drinking heavily; it certainly kept falling down the entire time we were there.

Ha ha. Ha.

But seriously, folks. We left the comfort of the Dormy Inn and caught a bus to Hotel Piano at Kiroro resort. We arrived mid-morning, too early for check-in. Instead we stuffed our bags in lockers, rented snow equipment, and went skiing. My wife is a wicked awesome ski demon. Zoom zoom! Away she went. I ran into a sign.

It was a good thing, really. The sign was the only thing I could find to prevent me from entering the speed mogul ramp. That would have ended very, very badly. Jenn did the moguls later, just to prove she is more awesome than me.

After a few runs, they closed down the course we had been skiing and opened up the night runs. We decided we’d had our fun and went back to the hotel.

Remember when I said food was cheap in Japan? If you don’t, you should go back and read the old blog posts. You obviously weren’t paying attention the first time. It turns out, you can find an expensive restaurant if you look really, really hard at the top of a remote mountain. And it’s french cuisine.

Our table was on a balcony that overlooked the hotel lobby. Below us a grand piano had been retro-fitted into a player piano and we dined to the sound of jazz piano classics. The meals themselves were a set course: you could chose big, bigger, or biggest, and you could choose your drink. (We opted for gin and tonics).

The amuse bouche was a light carrot mousse. This was followed by seven courses, each artfully arranged upon our plates. Each course was small, and very delicious. The entire meal was choreographed over 90 minutes, and involved a supporting cast of 11 different utensils, and equal number of plates, one very attentive waiter and two very satisfied Canadians.

And, yeah. We forgot our cameras in the room so no pictures.

Otaru was a lovely city. The highlight of the town is the Otaru canal district, which features several old buildings. The city has worked hard to maintain the historic ambience of the port. A very nice stroll, though not a long one.

To make up for that fact, we did the stroll about six times. Because we were not looking for the canal district. We had come to Otaru with a purpose. We were looking for a long lost cousin.

Ages ago, Vancouver sent a steamclock to Otaru as a gift. It is an exact duplicate of the steamclock located on Granville street, except that it is slightly larger in all dimensions, and it actually functions as a steamclock.

The steamclock is located in front of an orgel music box shop, at the very end of a picturesque boulevard. We probably would have appreciated the boulevard more, except it was -10 C. and we’d been walking for a very long time. We went inside the orgel shop to warm up.

The shop itself was an old brick and frame warehouse building, about three stories tall. The entire interior was one large room. And everywhere you looked were music boxes. We stayed for about a half hour, admiring the quality of the workmanship – both of the music boxes and the building itself. Eventually, we’d warmed enough to brave the trek back.