Kobe: Where Man Is Dog's Best Friend

We arrived in Kobe and finally got a taste of urban Japan. I'd only ever heard of Kobe in the context of its 1995 earthquake (6000+ killed, one in five houses destroyed) so was pleasantly surprised by the laid-back harbourside city we discovered.

We left the train station to the tune of some truly bad hostel directions: 'Go northwest from the station. Find a shrine. Turn left.' Because street names are for wimps. The hostel, once found, was quite lovely in a converted family home way. We dumped our stuff and beelined to the supermarket for supplies. 

I have inherited a fascination for foreign supermarkets from my mum. While Maddy filled a basket, I bounced from aisle to aisle taking photos and ignoring my assigned task [find cereal]. Here, bananas that smell extra bananary! There, sushi rolls the rough dimensions of a child's arm! Cereal does not exist! I was especially intrigued when the cashier placed certain feminine products in a special opaque bag before sticky-taping it closed. Such wanton disregard for our privacy. Where's the padlocked titanium briefcase chained to my wrist? Try harder, Japan. 

We took a train to the city centre and found ourselves in the middle of bright and bustling Chinatown. Despite having just left actual China, we felt compelled to join the milling locals and grab some noodles and steamed pork bun. But we couldn't forget the local specialty. Oh Kobe beef, how I adore your luscious juicy tenderness. All the rumours were true. 

Speaking of food, how about the plastic meal displays outside restaurants? Bit unappetizing. We flew straight from a country that embalms its politicians to a country that embalms its food. But I really shouldn't complain, as these shiny counterfeits are often our key to a meal. I've worked out the ingenious system of taking a foodstagram photo of Desired Meal and thrusting it in the waiter's face. Most respectful tourist ever. 

Sunday morning was all about anti-rush. I found a park and joined the local dog walkers for some exercise. 90% of these dog walkers were old men with serious faces holding leads attached to very tiny dogs in very tiny dog coats. Blotchy faced from jogging slowly in circles, I cooed. The dog-walkers stared. They seemed as bemused by my behaviour as I was by theirs. 

Tiny dogs are serious business here. I'll cite two examples to back up my case. Firstly, I have seen more dogs in prams than babies. Secondly, down by the harbour we watched an unsmiling middle-aged man take photo after photo of himself with his hoodie-wearing chihuahua happily lodged under his arm. Serious business. 

Kobe's harbour is a ferris-wheeled and public artsy area. It's clearly the place to come and stroll about on a Sunday afternoon. Instead of climbing the Kobe Tower (big, red, overpriced) we decided to hop on a ferry for a 45 minute harbour cruise. We bought tickets from a woman wearing a cartoon-style sailor suit, incorporating a broad white collar, a blue bow and bell-bottomed trousers. And when the boat pushed off, two employees waved giant foam 'bye bye'-inscribed hands at us as cheerfully American festive tunes blared from the speakers. 

Never change, Japan. 

We followed up the cruise with a walk down Flower Street. There were several earthquake memorials, and also flowers. Most pedestrian crossings were manned by a police officer toting an orange baton. I found this slightly amusing as the motorists here seem much less inclined to mow down pedestrians than in, say, Europe. People don't jaywalk either. It's almost disconcerting. 

We lost half the afternoon in Loft, this epic IKEA-scale store with an entire floor devoted to stationery. Think walls of notepaper, of photo albums, of patterned masking tape. Think bank-breakingly good. When we finally left the building, it was dark outside, and Kobe felt inclined to rain. 

Soaked to the skin, we slunk into a nearby restaurant plastered with the (English) word 'curry '. Zoë had imparted wisdom to the effect that Japanese-style curry is the ultimate comfort food, despite appearing at first glance to consist of rice mountain + brown puddle. Zoë was (as ever) absolutely right. Curry was just the thing we needed. 

And so ended our stay in Kobe. Kobe beef, I will not forget you. Unfortunately I can't say the same for my plug adaptor. I'm so sorry, Zoë, but I've already managed to land myself [you] a new one - but we'll leave that fascinating tale for Hiroshima.

Mount Koya: Of Monks and Onsen

Ages back, I asked Zoë what some of her Japanese travel highlights had been, and she seemed strangely fixated on Buddhist monks, an ancient cemetery, and supposedly superlative vegan food. Mount Koya, she promised, had all this in spades. I worked some persuasive powers on Maddy, and so it was decided that the first proper stop on our tour of Japan would be Koya-San.

How good is this: it was snowing when we arrived in Mount Koya. Snowing, despite the above-zero temperature and the lingering autumnal landscape. After a hectic morning of extensive train travel, culminating in the cable car that climbed hundreds of feet to the Koya-San bus station, the snow-showers were magical. A monk told us that snow usually only starts falling in late December, so this was something special.

We dropped off our luggage at Ichijoin, our Buddhist monastery accommodation for the night. Koya-San is packed with temples of the ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) variety, so we'd obviously selected a place known for its food. Then it was straight to Oku-No-In, the 1000 year old Buddhist cemetery and the clear highlight of Koya-San. We crossed a bridge and suddenly everything was muted, all grey marble and cedar trees. The tombs and markers, kept scrupulously clean of branches and overgrowth, were more likely to be decorated with brightly coloured bibs or shawls. Even the hollows in trees were filled with religious tokens.

We made our way along the 2 kilometer path to the Temple of Lanterns. The name speaks for itself, but it's hard to explain the sheer scale of the temple's lantern population, hung in rows along the outside edge of its swooping roof and covering every inch of the ceiling inside. The incense levels rivaled those of an enthusiastic Orthodox church at Easter. 

A little way outside the temple stood a tall haystack-shaped mass of small infant statues. Every statue within a reachable height had been dressed in a little red bib. This stood as a monument to stillborns and aborted babies. We noticed a couple of other such conical monuments back along the cemetery path, as well as countless individual bibbed statues. Haunting. 

The stone lanterns along the path were lit when we turned back. It was deliciously atmospheric. If all the countless spaces reserved for candles were filled and lit, Oku-No-In would look like one of Studio Ghibli's fantastical landscapes.

When we got back to Ichijoin, we replaced our shoes with slippers, were shown around the temple, and then removed the slippers as we entered our room. There were also separate slippers to be used in the bathroom. (Japan is well-stocked with slipper customs.) Our room was divided into two sections, both laid over with tatami mats. The first space was for our bags, and the second for us. This section was well-heated; but the best lay waiting under a squat, square, curtained table with its two seat-backed cushions. We were ushered into these seats and directed to put our feet under the table, which turned out to contain a heater. Delicious leg warmth! The monk affirmed that yes, this table was dangerous as one never wants to leave it. 

The one thing to tempt us out from the table was dinner, served at precisely 5:30pm. The monk carried in a high stack of trays containing several small covered bowls and a few open dishes of mysterious quality. We knew everything would be vegan, so there was really no excuse not to shovel absolutely everything into our mouths and guess its identity later. There was, as far as we could tell, soup, a ginger-radish dish to be eaten with rice, tofu topped with a sesame-based sauce, a couple of small salads, rubbery soy milk skin presented in wraps to be dipped in soy sauce, a long narrow tray of various fruits and other bits and pieces, tempura leaves and mushrooms, and silky tofu in a sweet cherry-mint soup. 

Altogether: mmmm. These monks should take their dishes to the Iron Chef stadium and do battle against Hiroyuki Sakai.

Then came time for the onsen, an indoor hot spring bath. We changed into our bathrobes (called something in Japanese that sounds not entirely dissimilar to the Japanese word for 'pimp' - oops) and picked up our towels. After trying for a few minutes to jiggle open a locked door, we found the women's onsen further down the corridor. And then we got naked. This was as awkward as it was funny, quite like our next challenge: using a row of showers opposite the onsen to rinse ourselves before bathing. Later on, we discovered the exact extent of our shower fail when we caught sight of two other women showering facing away from the direction we'd chosen, and using the small tubs that I'd accidentally sat on (no glasses). 

The onsen itself was as you'd expect: hot water encased within a rectangular bath edged with wooden slats. Hot hot. We spent about five minutes gingerly lowering ourselves into the water, fifteen minutes in the water, and half an hour fanning ourselves madly with bamboo fans. Then came the time to return to our room, where futons had been laid out in our absence. 

We woke at 5:40am, pulled on clothes and hurried over to the main hall to witness a Buddhist ceremony. We sat at the back of a dark room with other guests and listened to the monks chant and ring bells. Smoke progressively filled the room. My eyes watered and I could feel the snow-cold air seep in from outside despite the nearby heater. There were intricately welded lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and gold and red tokens crowding shelves that lined the room. Pretty intense for 6am. 

Breakfast followed immediately afterwards: another delicious spread of bowls and trays, including my favourite, a 'tofomelette'. Maddy and I then enjoyed the leg-warming table for a little longer before packing to go. On our way out, we stopped to admire the intricate gardens through the temple's floor-to-ceiling windows. One contained snow-dusted bushes of the most carefully tended variety, and another had a large fishpond with very large fish. 

We walked a way down the main road in the opposite direction to the cemetery, discovering yet more temples and bright red bridges leading to small shrine-embedded islands. Then came time to grab our luggage and head back to the train station. Onwards to Kobe!

Osaka: Well, Kind Of

An introductory note: all of my preconceived ideas of Japan come from Studio Ghibli, Memoirs of a Geisha and two shojo manga series. I'm really, really hoping these ideas are confirmed over the next three weeks. 

The Osaka airport was really nice. The escalators spoke to us, saying helpful things like 'please hold onto the handrail'. (The lift also spoke to us, but I've no idea what it said.) When we had ATM troubles, the info counter operator was there for us. She was also wearing a particularly fabulous uniform: yellow skirt suit with brown trim topped with a brown felt 20s-style cloche hat. I want. If the supermarket had dressed me like that back in the day, I'd probably still be scanning your groceries.

Having just left Beijing, which is not what I'd call replete with natural beauty, Osaka hit like a Monet to the face. It made me start churning out awful stuff about pink-edged lilac clouds and glistening seas. I asked Maddy how she'd describe the colours of the sky: 'Blue'. Fair enough. Add 'purply-pink' and I think we've got it nailed. The traditional Japanese colour palette suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. Call it a symptom of last night's sleeplessness or the immediate contrast with urban China, but Japan glazed my eyes with a visual balm.

To be completely honest, we only saw about 2% of the immediate area around Fukushima Station before leaving for Mount Koya. Osaka remains highly explorable via day trip from Kyoto. We saw, in essence, a single street. Fortunately, that single street was lined with the sorts of restaurants too classy for katakana. Time for Maddy and I to display our Japanese language skills. ... ...!

Our restaurant of choice had a single brand of customer: businessman. We broke the mold a little. We also suffered from a complete inability to verbally communicate with the staff. With much pointing at menu pictures, we eventually managed to order sushimi, soba noodles, tempura prawns and hot sake. Raw fish has always scared me but I resolved to eat everything, because Japan! Verdict: very very tasty. Even the mysterious chewy one. Dad, be proud.

And then Maddy disgraced us both by loudly breaking a chopstick. Right in half! And this wasn't a cheap disposable set, mind you. I almost died laughing. I'm pretty sure the dozens of watching businessmen found it quite as funny. Oh dear. And we'd been fitting in so well. 

Maddy would probably like to add here that soon afterwards I had a massive chopstick fumble myself. But I feel I redeemed myself by signaling for the bill in the correct Japanese style. (Cross one index finger over the other, and say 'thank you, Lonely Planet'.)

That was our introduction to Japan: nice, pretty, embarrassing, delicious. Also, bum-warming toilet seats. Love!

Beijing: Good Times, Great Wall

Best way to work off a weekend in Paris? Climb a million steps up the Great Wall of China. Your knees will shake and your face will freeze, but the 6km hike will smash away your jetlag and your cheese deposits. Sing it with me: 'Let's get down to business to defeat the Huns!'

When Maddy and I met up at Beijing Airport, it was just like that scene from Love Actually; except instead of running straight into each other's arms, we had to dodge swarms of trolleys. Also I looked and smelled like I'd been flung from one side of the world to another - but apart from that, Love Actually. The train into town was peak-hour packed and we had to squeeze our cases into the smallest of gaps. I'm still taken aback by the ticket prices, which were the equivalent of 50 cents apiece. My wallet, still shell-shocked by the London tube, wept with joy. 

Our hostel was top-notch; thanks for the recommendation, V and B! I don't think I've come across a more comfortable bed in a hostel, though you kind of had to earn it by first dragging your suitcase up a glorified ladder to the loft. Maddy and I have biceps of steel. And thighs of steel, after climbing the Great Wall. We're about 40% steel, and, in my case, 60% caramel digestive. 

We woke up early to prepare for the day's adventure: a casual stroll along the Great Wall. Most of my prior knowledge of the wall came from Mulan and bigpond ads: built in the 14th century to allow Shan-Yu easy access to the Emperor (and to keep the rabbits out). Visible from space. These little facts combined to make our climb a fairly surreal experience. I felt like I was in an ad campaign for the 2008 Olympics. 

The views, guys. The wall. It just sort of defies belief. After a three hour bus ride from the hostel, we piled out, pulled up our explorer socks and started climbing. Climbing with hands and feet. It's incredibly steep! You get steps if you're lucky, or even crumbly half-steps, but otherwise you've got to hope your runners cling to the smooth stone as you clamber up and up, from tower to tower. We walked from tower 1 to tower 22 in the space of about three hours, and only spotted two other tourists the whole time. We clearly chose a good time to go - or perhaps other people were scared off by the vertiginous cliff-scaling exercises. Apparently there's an easier section that includes a cable car ride. Psh. Give me life-threatening non-stairs any day. 

We drove back to our hostel, or to a mystery location purported to be near to our hostel, got fairly lost, until saved by my (yes, MY) navigational skills. From there, we embarked on a different sort of adventure: a dinner hunt. Oh, the awkward times we had. First place we went to, we sat down at a table next to a gently bubbling cauldron of a fish tank. So far so good. When ten minutes had passed without sighting a single member of staff, we quietly picked up our bags and fled. We can only assume this wasn't actually somebody's home rather than a restaurant. Skittering back down the street, we next came across a little place with - hurray! - pictures of food on the wall. With great trepidation, I pointed to the picture that appeared to contain the highest vegetable content and raised two fingers. They'll make a diplomat of me yet. We got the noodle soup and bam! Pretty edible. And all for $1.80. (We decided to avoid the mystery meatballs.) 

Wednesday started with Maddy complaining that she hadn't slept well due to the cold. Harden up, Maddy, I sympathized. And then we checked the weather forecast. Yeah, min -4, max 0 degrees Celsius. I'm a good friend. Wednesday was a day of extreme icy pain in the knees, fingers and feet. It was also a day we spent mainly outdoors, in near unbearable wind. Hence the crazy ice burn we got all over our legs. I didn't even know that was a thing. 

But we suffered in style! First item of the day was Mao's mausoleum, because I can never pass up a chance to check out famous embalmed guys (hi there, Jeremy Bentham!) We'd been told to expect huge queues, but instead found a steady trickle of people. This decided us; instead of dumping our possessions (bag, phone, wallet) at the side of the square for a fee, we went into the mausoleum one at a time while the other waited outside. Maddy went first. I developed ice rashes resembling the Beijing metro system. And then it was my turn, and I followed the line through a squat security building and up into the columned, statue-flanked mausoleum. 

Inside the entrance chamber, there's a largish Lincoln Memorial-style statue of Mao embedded in a platform wreathed with flowers. The real thing lies in the next room, and is a bit more crinkly and orange from what you can see of his face. Nothing too exciting, at the end of the day.

I met Maddy back out in the middle of Tiananmen Square, which has the mausoleum at one end, the Forbidden Palace at the other, and a memorial column smack bang in the middle. Apart from the knee-biting wind, the most notable thing about the place was the number of military personnel, policemen and guided tours. There's also the fact that we could taste Beijing. We could smell it, we could feel it in our lungs, and we could wipe it from the corners of our eyes. The air quality was not a plus, and I definitely wouldn't want to be an asthmatic tourist. 

The pollution may partly explain the constant hacking, spitting and coughing that went on around us. It rates fairly low on the culture shock scale, but every time somebody sneezed without covering their mouth or burped openly, we remembered where we were. Something of higher culture shock value: squat toilets. I won't go into it, but work on building your thigh strength before traveling to China, ladies. And always carry toilet paper with you.

Our luck continued when we entered the Forbidden City: once again, no queues. We picked up audio guides - in my case, three times, stupid faulty guides - and stepped through the slightly shoddy, paint peeling, mammoth wall of an entryway. Inside, there wasn't anything shoddy about it. The dozen plus palaces had those iconic, slightly winged roofs, and were called things like 'Palace of Heavenly Purity', 'Palace of Earthly Tranquility' and 'Hall of Mental Cultivation'. There was also a Palace of Concentrated Beauty, which was of course referring to the sexy sexy concubines and empresses contained within. Freezing from toes to teeth, we stolidly kept at our palace viewing for around four hours, stopping only for a brief defrost with tea in the Imperial Garden. We spent a good long while examining any and every museum artifact housed indoors, and even longer trying to climb inside the heaters.

Once outside the Forbidden City, we walked around its perimeter to get back to Tiananmen Square. The perimeter was slightly less inviting than the palaces. On one side of the gigantic moat lay all manner of red, teal and gold; on the other side, all was grey. We hot-footed it to Wangfujing Street, the Bourke Street of Beijing, which was all about the neon and the shopping. 

Pretty hungry by this point, we wandered down a side street filled with vendors selling all kinds of food, from jellied fruit to fried insects, meat-of-all-sorts skewers and fried icecream. It was like most intense Chinatown imaginable. People, red lanterns and food smells came at you from all directions. 'Assault on the senses' is accurate. Maddy and I found ourselves some dumplings before hurrying back to the main street for warmth and consumerism. 

We found some really interesting stuff on Wangfujing Street, including tea, lollies, specialty hats, Zara... Zara opened worlds of opportunity by offering access to a huge, warm department store (key word being 'warm'). We spent quality time in Forever 21 and Uniqlo as well as in less familiar shops that took cute to the next level. Think silver runners with cat face tongues, men's jackets with cat paws wrapped around the sides, fur-lined everything, etc etc. We also hunted down jianbing (egg pancakes) per Scott's orders: deliciousness confirmed. I was very excited to come across a panda and white rabbits to pose with - took me back to my Chinese classes at school. 

Following dinner - bok choy, chicken and mushroom with rice, and steamed pork buns - we headed back to the station, thankful to the shopping bags for their extra layer of insulation against the frosty frosty cold. Cue the packing, the hefting of suitcases down the loft's ladder-stairs, the turning on of the heater at full blast, and a bloody stupid awful sleepless night. Maddy rolled me into the taxi, then the airport, then onto our China Eastern Airline flight. To Japan!

Paris: Liberté, Patisserie, Fraternité

Wildest expectations surpassed. I've never seen a better side of Paris. The secret is to blindly follow friends who've lived there. And have a long-awaited reunion. And try very hard not to eat the entire contents of a patisserie... 

Maddie and I planned our weekend in Paris with one thing in mind: Polly. On my part, I felt I'd well and truly touristed Paris during previous visits. But from the moment we sprung from the Métro into the Marais, my old visions of the city disintegrated. The Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysées, the Louvre, Montmartre - all of these are wonderful, but a world apart from the stretch of Paris I discovered this time around. 

We found our apartment - donated by Maddie's insanely generous friend - on a street lined with boulangeries, brasseries and national archives. We hoisted our suitcases up the stairs and opened the door to find an apartment with the kind of view you dreamed of back in Year 10 French. We were a little bit elated. We took our newfound energy to the brasserie opposite our doorstep and toasted our benefactor with a Lyonnais-style kir. 

Saturday was very-nearly-almost one million percent as perfect a day as could be. My determination to eat my way through Paris did not waiver when confronted by an escargot chocolat pistache, a pain au chocolat et orange, and a croissant aumande aux framboises. I'm no doctor, but the ensuing stomach cramps and nausea were possibly not wholly unrelated to the unaccustomed richness of this petit déj. Victory...!

Polly arrived around 10:30am. 

When we'd stopped with the run-hugging and general shrieking, the three of us latched together and made our way slowly down the street. Which led to the Notre Dame. Just a five-minute walk to the Notre Dame. Apartment of dreams!!

Happy 850th birthday, Notre Dame. Having only read Victor Hugo's Hunchback in February, I took a moment to relive Quasimodo's movements and Frollo's fall before following Maddie and Polly through the adjacent garden. These two lovely tour guides led the way on a ramble through the Marais, the Latin Quarter, the ridiculously good-looking tertiary zone (the Monash law building has never looked worse), the Luxembourg gardens and a thousand other places completely new to me. 

I finally understand why people fall head over heels for this city. There were gourmet biscuit shops, crazy-popular falafel places (ask Maddie or Maddy for more info) and cheap vintage ('frip') stores partout. We found an open-air market brimming with seasonal produce, bread and cheese. Polly pointed out endives (popular in Lille), I made eyes at plump juicy kikis, and Maddie bought chèvre (anyone surprised? Anyone?)

After my triumphantly upset stomach enforced a brief break - taken by Polly and me in the Place St Sulpice and by Maddie in her fantasy theology bookshop - we made our cobbled way towards lunch. Polly found us a hidden alleyway cafe that I'll almost certainly never find again. We then crossed back over the river. 

The Seine! Oh, the Seine. The 'make the Thames look extra brown, why don't you, and let's not even mention the Yarra' Seine. I eventually geared myself up for a baguette, to which I devoted myself on the way to the first square of Paris, Place des Vosges. Think the French version of Russell Square. It has a statue of Louis 'I'm on a horse' XIII and, more importantly, Victor Hugo's house tucked neatly in a corner. 

The Hugo house was done up to look as it would have back in le temps des cathédrales, the highlight being the author's actual writing desk. Apparently he was chucked out of France for 19 years for making 'insensitive' comments on the social system of the time. I suppose Les Misérables isn't the most subtle of titles. 

We next stopped at a tea house that Maddie remembered from her Marais days, and then to a brasserie on Polly's recommendation. Best guides ever. There was wine. There was cheese. There was even some good old philosophy/theology discussion. We were basically Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, but with slightly less interpretive dancing. Most of my favourite moments of our Paris adventure took place with some sort of drink in my hand, listening to two very intelligent and passionate friends nut out the important things in life. Like the apparent absence of hot guys in Paris. And international humanitarian crises. 

We found dinner around 10pm at a brasserie that served 90% quiche and 10% croque monsieur, hence catering for all tastes. It was with intense, lasting sadness that we finally parted from Polly, but only after securing promises of letters and Skype chats and come to Melbourne please/thank you. 

Jogging along the Seine at 8:30am on Sunday convinced me that there is no other way to jog. Hardly anyone was out and about. The river was a cloudy blue-green, the air was a crisp 4 degrees, and the tourists were sparse. Miki, I listened to Les Cloches while running around the Notre Dame - surreal! And Zoe, I may not have collected creepy hand kisses for you in London, but I got you a wolf whistle and a 'hola' from some garbage men instead. Good enough, or should I try a little harder in Japan?

And then Maddie (beautiful, beneficent Maddie) ushered me through the Métro to the Gare du Nord, and onto the train to the Charles de Gaulle airport for my flight to Beijing. It's continent hopping time!