Wally Nes’ Blog

Hi! This is Raphaëlle. For once you can read me blog with intelligible sentences relating actual facts instead of a collection of playlists, pseudo-artsy pics and anecdotes in French. Also this is the second time Wally takes the trip I’m going to tell you about so he’d rather not blog about it again (don’t remind him that his mother did the job last time.)

July is a cool month in Japan. Well it’s actually very very hot, but for this reason companies scatter a bunch of unofficial holidays, with the purpose of saving money by not turning on the air conditioning for a few days at a time, and that is pretty cool. So last weekend included Friday and Monday for me, allowing me to travel to far and remote places, close to where Wally lives, like Koya-san. The place has it all: culturally relevant activities, gorgeous sceneries, vegan food, relatively easy access, lodgings that can be booked through technologically advanced means. Ah yes. That means they can’t be booked from work. Obviously we both have much less free time outside office hours than when sitting at our desks all day, so the booking took some time – a bit too long. While I was sitting in my office, my bus ticket in my pocket and my bag packed in my locker, I was informed that we were very ill-organized foreigners and that there was no way we’d sleep on Koya-San on Saturday night. Sooo… what next? Making a day trip out of a 4-day weekend sounds a little silly. The bus tickets were already hard enough to get my hands on (that’s another story altogether – I never had a problem buying shinkansen tickets but boy is it hard to be cheap!) I haven’t seen the boy in 2 weeks, there’s no way we’re canceling now. So we decided to wing it, take trains along the coastline and see what interesting spots we could find on our way. JR trains schedules, the Lonely Planet and Wally’s previous stay with his parents helped organize things a little bit.

Once my bag repacked to include sunscreen and a swimsuit, on my way to the bus stop, I saw an angry mob – more of an annoyed and bored mod, really – gathered in front of the station. For some reason the PA certainly explained, JR East train lines were paralyzed for hours that night, and some more that weekend. Had I opted for expensive train tickets, I would never have reached Tokyo that day, let alone Osaka. Was I right to be cheap!

Okay! With all these obstacles out of the way the weekend can start. I spent a short and nice day in Kyoto, enjoying the freshness that the overcast sky allowed in the morning, climbing up woody hills in temple complexes, drinking iced green tea, eating awesome Tofu-Lettuce-Tomato sandwiches and falafels (how else could it be in Kyoto!?), and generally wandering around in quiet parts of the city, only hearing cars in the distance and fuurin (traditional wind chimes) catching the slightest breeze.

Can I make a cultural side-note? Before AC make its way to Japan, the people developed a bunch of traditions and imagery to deal with the terrible heat and humidity that they have to bear with for 4 months a year. On top of carrying fans and mini-towels to wipe the sweat off your face, an emphasis is made on water and air symbols to remind you of what coolness feels like. The fuurin is often made of transparent or blue glass and painted with carps or lilies, and so are stationary, traditional clothes, fans, tableware, etc. You can hear small water fountains in many places and restaurants will serve clear broth and translucent jelly desserts. I like these very season-specific, very Japanese details that are so engrained in everyday life they’re hard to see.

After an absolutely uninteresting commute, I met Wally in Osaka after his workday. We got some of the last seats on a train that took us to Shirahama (白浜: literally, white beach city) where we spent the night in a ryokan with the kindest owner ever, who insisted on recommending us the best restaurants in town and on driving us around even after we had checked out. With this kind of help it was easy to see all of the interesting spots of the town. We started with the 3 Step Cliff, a beautiful viewing point on the ocean off the old coast road. We climbed down the cliffs, enjoying the various shades of red and ochre of the rock clashing with the bright blue background and trying to hide from direct sunlight. Apparently we weren’t very good at it, because my shoulders started burning before lunch, in spite of my wearing a shirt AND sunscreen AND a large hat. You know what they say about true blondes, right? (No, the other thing, silly.)

We snacked on our way to 千畳敷, a large rock formation that has been eroded to weird shapes and is apparently friable enough for all the Japanese teenage couples passing by to carve their names in it.

Next stop… What do you do when you’re in a place called white beach? Spend some time on the white beach! Note the magnificent beach resort architecture in the background. Also note the very authentic tropical paradise look – Japan being volcanic, most of its sand is black. This one is imported from Australia.
All the beach straw huts were taken but thankfully the shore was lined with pine trees to protect (badly) our delicate northern European complexions. Like everywhere else in the world, going to the beach in Japan implies bouncing in the waves, looking pretty in a bikini, witnessing boys throwing seaweed at girls (the seaweed is dinner only in Japan, though) and getting even more sunburnt. Yeah I learned the hard way that SPF 50+ sunscreen isn’t waterproof here. What, I was supposed to read the bottle? I don’t carry my dictionary everywhere with me you know.
Once we had played enough in salty water we went to sit in not-so-salty water at Shirahama Sakinoyu Onsen (one of Japan’s Top 3 onsens!) I had been to onsens under red maple leaves, onsens in the middle of Tokyo, onsens under the rain, onsens in the mountain in the middle of nowhere but it was the first time I went to one on the seafront, and the sunset and the soothing sound of the waves definitely add to the already relaxing onsen experience. At least until you notice that everyone in the high concrete buildings around can see you nekked.

We finished the day quietly in another train ride, sharing beer, crackers and books all the way to Shingu (新宮, or new shrine city), where things like baths and tables seem to be even shorter than elsewhere.

Sunday started with a nice boat ride on the Kumano river, between the cliffs that separate Nara, Mie and Wakayama prefectures, that could have come with an annoying soundtrack. The day was terribly hot but staying near the water (or dipping our feet in it) kept us pleasantly cool. We sucked at behaving like Japanese people, though, with Wally being tall enough to stick his head through the boat roof, my missing the group picture and neither of us buying souvenirs at the dedicated souvenir spot. And taking pics of the weird stuff on the way.
Finally we went to Nachi no Taki (another of those things that made it to the top of a list), a beautiful, tall waterfall in the mountains around which a temple complex has been built. We made up for being bad Japanese earlier that day by taking lots of pictures at the dedicated pictures spots. A bowl of cold udon and mountain vegetables later, we caught the last bus back to the station, then the last train back to Osaka (and had enough remaining daylight to see some gorgeous spots on the coastline, too!) We found a nice hotel close to Wally’s train line, minimizing his commute time and maximizing our cuddle time, pondered whether we wanted to eat pizza in bed, decided against it, were damn hungry when we woke up and were (well, mostly I) incredibly happy to find out that the local Starbucks carries eggless, dairyless, whole wheat bagels to dip in my (soy) latte.

All in all, the last minute change of plan gave a nice summer holiday feeling to these 2 and some days, something that I’m not sure gloomy mountains and zen sessions would have achieved. And now I know why I never write long posts like these – by the 8th paragraph it’s freaking annoying.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.