Nara (Day 3) - Shunie (Fire & Water Festival) & temples

It's always hard to wake up in the morning for me. Even though I spent months planning for this trip, setting myself 8am starts, doing a different activity every hour and even planning where to eat, nothing really turned out the way I wanted them to. Oh, I know what went wrong. I didn't plan for the awesome TV programs late at night! Staying up with Yuye nearly every night to watch the hilarious celebrity talk shows and mouth-watering travel/food shows really kept us from eating breakfast. That is why on the most part you won't be able to read about our breakfast adventures (apart from the ones in ryokans where we HAD to wake up since we paid for them already). One good thing came out of this though, Yuye can finally identify some members of SMAP since they were on TV every second night and even during ad breaks (they were ambassadors for the Japan earthquake appeals). I reckon the cleaning ladies really hated us because on a few occasions we had calls from reception telling us to basically either call off cleaning for the day or get out of the room.

Brunch and snacks

On day 3 of our trip (14 March) we woke up just in time for brunch in Namba Walk before paying Nara a second visit. Namba Walk links the three different Namba train stations into one long walkway (JR Namba Station, Kintetsu Namba Station and Nankai Namba Station all owned by different companies). This walkway houses many fashion and food stores which makes the long walk a bit more interesting. It didn't help much when JR Namba Station was the furthest away from our hotel though.

The place we chose to have brunch was called Sarashina Hirotaya (さらしな廣田屋) close to the entrance of Kintetsu Namba Station. Really we could have eaten anywhere. The food moulds that lined each and every restaurant window is enough to make a hungry me want to taste every one of those stores. Seriously. The moulds looked exactly the same as the real thing! I was so tempted to bring some back with me just to fool my friends. In the end the mould with a set of eel rice and soba won me over. These sets were reasonably good value. For less than $10 AUD, I got a smallish rice with eel on top and a huge bowl of soba with a tempura prawn. I wasn't able to finish mine so Yuye cleaned my bowls for me.

Yuye got a set of zaru soba (cold soba dipped in soy sauce) with tempura, also for less than $10. I personally liked his more but that's just because I didn't get to eat very much of it (Yuye was stingy!). I can eat that soba all day. :)

After brunch, we travelled straight to Nara. On the way to Nara Park, we passed a dango store called Douya (堂屋）and decided to snack on some freshly made dango. I must admit, dango's not my favourite snack since often it lacks flavour and it's really sticky (made of sticky rice) but a lot of people like it, guess it's personal preference.

Just before we got to the festival location, we got hungry again (not surprising right?) and got a leaf wrapped sushi along the path up to the temple. It was actually quite delicious, although the salmon didn't taste fresh. It was most likely preserved of some sort as it wasn't kept in a refrigerated area.

Nara's Deer

Most of our time in Nara was spent at Nara Park visiting the various shrines and temples, patting and feeding deer (and having our clothes chewed by them) and of course, attending the fire and water festival. The deer is literally everywhere! Be very careful if you plan on feeding them with deer senbei (rice crackers) because they will chase and headbutt you down and then chew every bit of your clothes until they get all the cracker crumbs off you. Each lot of senbei costs 150Yen and (yes we tasted it…) it really tasted like nothing, well, except plain rice crackers I suppose. Yuye and I were both overwhelmed by our popularity that running away was our only option of survival. Remember if you buy one, try not to open the package in front of the deer, the crackers will disappear in seconds.

Nara, Japan - Day 1

Hello and long time no see!! I know, I got lazy. As it's been a long time since I last wrote a post, I figured I should just stick to writing about Japan (and skipping, at least for now, China) since that's the freshest in my mind and probably the most interesting part of my trip.

Yuye and I left Beijing (and all its lovely food) to embark on the trip of our lives - Japan 2011, just one day after the great earthquake and tsunami hit its shores (we landed in Osaka Kansai International Airport in the afternoon of March 12, 2011, lucky it wasn't Tokyo). Even though both his family and mine were opposed to going, I wasn't mentally prepared to cancel my trip. I was expecting chaos and trauma and whatnots, BUT lo and behold the great nation of Japan, nothing of the sort was felt at all! Everyone was still partying hard at the local festivals and going on with their busy lives. The only difference was the constant earthquake reminders on telly and the many fundraising attempts on the streets. This is of course because we were hundreds of kilometres away from the affected areas and eventually we did have to cancel the trip to Tokyo, Sendai and Sapporo….sad sad face. :( Trains up north was severely affected which was a shame and plus the radiation and all…SIGH. Maybe in a few years we'll go back again...

Our first stop on this trip was Nara, an ancient capital in the Kansai region of Japan. Nara is famous for its deer, temples and untouched Japanese culture, a perfect place if you have a day or two to spare when you're wondering around its busy neighbours - Osaka and Kyoto. Nara is only around 20 minutes by train on the JR Nara Line or private Kintetsu Kyoto Line and roughly equally distance apart from these two cities. As soon as we arrived at Kansai Airport, we went straight to Nara so I don't miss the Omizu Tori festival (festival of water and fire) I had planned for that night. However, Yuye's hungry stomach made us miss the festival anyway. Lucky enough for me though, the festival lasted until the night of March 14 so we ventured back there again amongst the hundreds who also attended this sacred event. More about the festival in my next post.

Where we stayed

I only planned to stay for one night in Nara as I didn't know I was going to miss the festival on March 12 :(. The only place I could book at the time (I assume was because of the festival and everyone staying overnight because it went till fairly late) was Guesthouse Nara Komachi. By no means was this hostel bad, it was to my surprise actually very good. You can tell it was built just recently as the whole place smelt and looked of newness. I wasn't sure if the person who greeted us was the owner or not but he was so very nice and helpful. He carried our luggage up to the second floor (this place only has two floors I believe) and explained how to use all the electronics in the room. Every time we left the building, he would smile and bow. Ahh…the Japanese spirit… :)

We had a bunk bed with very comfy soft blankets and pillows and were spotlessly clean. This room really set the standard for me (for hostels anyway) during the trip. I wish I really didn't stay overnight in Kyoto because the hostel there was SHOCKING! More about that in a later post. The only thing that I didn't like too much was the bunk bed I suppose as I'm just not used to having to climb up and down stairs to get some sleep. They do have doubles, but those rooms were already taken.

Yuye had his first experience with a Japanese toilet here. :D I always find them awesome, even though I actually have one in my house :3. They are pretty much in every hotel you can find across Japan (apart from some older places) and can really make staying fun as you figure out what each button do. The shower was also spotlessly clean, cleaner than my own shower that's for sure.

Facilities were also great as you would expect from a good hostel (although I think it's more like a hotel than a hostel since you have your own bathroom and toilet). There was a free PC usage area, a common kitchen and DVD rentals available if you feel like staying in. Price was cheap too, 5800Yen per night booked from www.hostels.com, equivalent to around $71 at the time. The only unfortunate thing was the location, it was very close to the JR Nara Station (good for people who have the JR Pass like us) but was very far from the park where the festival was held. It literally took us about 30 minutes by foot and a lot of it was uphill. I was huffing and puffing by the end of the walk, and finally when we got there, we had to walk back with the leaving crowd. :( Despite this fact, we still had a good stay here.

Guesthouse Nara Komachi
Address: 41-2 Surugamachi, Nara, Japan
Book via Hostels.com

What we ate

Dinner on the first night was a bit rushed. I had every intention to attend the festival so I told Yuye to 'make it quick'. It didn't happen according to plan but as we managed to get a reasonably good meal out of it, I didn't complain too much. This traditional Japanese restaurant was near the hostel, called Echizen Sushi (越前すし). It didn't have an English menu, nor English speaking staff so beware if you're not very good at Japanese. At the time, we were both Japanese sushi newbies, didn't really know what to order so we got the chef's sushi omakase, which is basically whatever the chef felt like feeding us using that day's special ingredients. The locals had a good laugh out of our visit since the chef kept cracking jokes and speaking in broken Engrish.

All the sushi were very fresh and tasted fantastic, a great first meal I must say. Price wise was as expected - around 5000Yen for the two of us, not too expensive for food of its kind, but not cheap compared to the 300Yen ramen you could be having around the block. If you know Japanese, visit the following site for more information about the restaurant. http://r.tabelog.com/nara/A2901/A290101/29000325/