Every good story needs a montage. It’s the bit where you fast-forward to here, from there. Here is currently Otaru, Hokkaido. And it involves a great deal of luxury. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.
We flew JAL for this trip. The flight was nice and wholly uneventful. Air Canada did several things better, however. For starters, we travel light. One carry-on each. Air Canada lets you check in via the website and print your own boarding pass from home. Brilliant.
Secondly, Air Canada has movies on demand. Trust me, it’s better.
Thirdly (and admittedly this is Tokyo’s fault) immigration came before baggage. In Osaka, we jumped queue by not waiting at the baggage. Essentially we walked off the plane, right past the baggage turns, and straight up to two very confused immigration and customs officials. Not so in Tokyo. We got to stand in line again.
On a positive note, nobody moves a line more efficiently than the japanese. And an extra bonus: neither Jenn nor I were accosted by stern looking customs agents with white plastic gloves.
Our first two nights were booked at the Hotel Sky Court. The hotel was pretty nice – spacious for a Japanese semi-double and a very reasonable price. It just happened to be in the red light district. We were a little uncertain of the directions, but a very nice pimp gave us two umbrellas and confirmed the directions, and we reached the hotel without incident.
The next day we visited Kamakura, an hour south of Tokyo. The train ride was pleasant, the weather cloudy but dry. We explored the town with a great deal of inefficiency and photography. Viewed several temples, shrines, shops, and the second largest (second best?) Buddha in Japan. In fact, second-best sums Kamakura up rather well.
On the way back to the hotel, zagged and zigged and stopped in at Anato No Warehouse; a five story arcade building built to resemble a run-down Chinatown neighbourhood. The walls were brick, the floors concrete, the vending machines rusted. Everything had a dingy, dirty appeal to it. Except the ladies bathrooms, which were done in high Parisian style apparently. That’s understanding your demographics. The first floor was the entry, floors 2-3 were arcade and prize games, interspersed with darts and pool tables. We snapped pictures like crazy gaijin until on the fourth floor one of the staff finally had the nerve to tell us pictures weren’t allowed.
At the top was an internet cafe. We tried to use the internet, but apparently we needed a card. We asked for a card, and were told we needed a card. Evidently, something was lost in translation. That something was our internet, we returned to the hotel in defeat.
Which brings us to today, when we woke early and boarded another train, took another plane, to yet another train. And thus we reached the Dormy Inn.
Okay, silly name. But the hotel is literally 100 feet from the JR rail station. The room is excellent (and has complimentary internet), but it is the baths that seal the deal.
The men’s bath had three indoor pools (ranging from ice cold to lobster bisque), a sauna, and two outdoor baths. Nothing beats soaking in scalding water when the ambient temperature is -12 degrees Celsius. And after all the walking and traveling we’ve done the past few days, it was nice to scurry into the hot baths to soak for a few hours.
One of the things we learned from our first visit to Japan, was ‘when in doubt, follow the school children.’ It worked this time as well. The picture is a bit blurry because I was taking it while walking up the stairs of the Kamakura train station. It’s a smaller tourist spot and we didn’t really have a map of where anything was. But, when we got off the train and saw hordes of school children, we just started following them, and sure enough, they knew their way to all the different tourist locations already.
The second largest Buddha in Japan. I think it would look bigger if the original surrounding building were still there. But I guess they were only willing to rebuild it so many times after various disasters before they finally gave up. Did Lance mention that you could go inside this one? Yup, for a measely 20 yen per person (which works out to about 20 cents) you can walk inside. You go down super-steep unlit stairs and then you’re inside the Buddha. People were slapping his belly from the inside because you can’t reach it at all from the outside.
