Unexpected Joy in Japan

After Taiwan our intention had been to visit the Philippines and we even had a flight booked but we knew it was still rainy season and when we were checking the forecasts it did look pretty rubbish so we cancelled our flight and booked a new one to Japan! Japan is somewhere that I have wanted to visit for a very long time so it was exciting and very unexpected to be able to do it, especially as we only had five days to plan before leaving!

We’d booked a direct flight with Cathay Pacific and the flight originated in Hong Kong and the typhoon that we’d been affected by a few days earlier had actually hit Hong Kong the night before so our flight was delayed by 5 hours! We only found this out at the gate but they handed some food vouchers out so it wasn’t all bad, plus we figured that in all our travels we’ve been fortunate enough to never really be massively delayed so we were probably due a delayed flight! If you ever find yourselves severely delayed at Taipei airport with a food voucher in hand, our top tip would be walk to Starbucks and eat there – our voucher went further there than at the nearby ‘local’ restaurants. Another top tip is to go to duty free if you want a drink – a can of beer from duty free was about 60p as opposed to being twice the price at a restaurant.

We eventually landed into Tokyo and reached our hotel around 12.30am, it wasn’t ideal by any means as we didn’t have time to get our bearings on arrival and we had to pay a fine at our hostel for a late check in!

The next morning we got up and set about heading into Tokyo. We pretty much fell at the first hurdle! The transport system was quite overwhelming with different lines being owned by different companies, there was also mainline trains, a metro and a subway system- all having different ticket systems. When we eventually arrived at Tokyo station we almost lost the plot trying to find our way around. I’ve since read the Tokyo station has 200 exits and I can well believe that. Individual local stations are hard enough to get around with different areas for different lines but this was something else! It was really frustrating to start with and I started to panic that we’d done the wrong thing coming to Japan, but we had some food and we pulled ourselves together!

We spent 4 nights in Tokyo visiting various temples, parks and Godzilla! We visited the Metropolitan Assembly building which has a free viewpoint of the city which was stunning. We also managed to get a free tour of the assembly hall which was really interesting, the guy showing us around told us that they’d recently been debating how to reduce the crow population- we had noticed how many crows there were and how large and menacing they were so it was a relief to hear they were discussing measures on how to control them.

Tokyo also presented us the chance to catch up with our friends Wun Lee and David who had been travelling Japan for the previous three months. We arranged to meet them at a toy shop and we were greeted by the hilarious sight of them in the below hats! David mentioned that he wanted to see Godzilla head and I had a quick look on the map and there was supposedly a Godzilla statue around the corner so I led us all on a walking tour to the statue and it was very much a damp squib. It was the smallest Godzilla statue I have seen and I’m not sure I’ll be starting a new career as a tour guide any time soon!

Japan is obviously famous for its bullet trains but prices have increased recently and there was no way we could afford to splash almost £500 each on a pass, so we opted for a much more reasonable bus pass instead.

We took a bus from Tokyo to Fujikawaguchiko where we spent two nights. We arrived around lunchtime and headed straight out for a walk around Lake Kawaguchiko it was beautiful scenery and we met someone along the way who told us that in 10 minutes we’d be able to see Mount Fuji and it was stunning when we did see it! The lake setting and the sunshine made it such a beautiful walk. We walked to Oishi Park and came across a beautiful field with the most gorgeous plants and it really did give us the most beautiful pictures of Fuji. When we arrived back at the hostel they told us that we had been really lucky as Mount Fuji had been out all day, it’s very common for it to disappear behind cloud at some point but it hadn’t done at all that day.

Mount Fuji was stunning with beautiful countryside

The next day we bought tickets for a sightseeing bus which has three lines and you can hop on and off at any point, the tickets were valid for two days so we planned to do that for the next two days.

We headed to another lake and walked around and then hopped back on to visit some lava caves. The caves were really interesting as they were formed of lava so different to any other caves that we have seen. It was much cooler in Fuji to the rest of Japan, especially at night so it was back to layers. We were lucky for a second day in a row and Fuji stayed out all the day for us – Fuji was just beautiful!

The next day we were catching a nightbus and we woke up to pouring rain. Not much chance of seeing Fuji today it would seem! We’d saved one of the bus lines for today though which actually had the worst views of Fuji anyway so the rain didn’t matter too much and we set off on that route. We visited another lava cave, called the bat cave and then walked through the forest to another bus stop. The rain eventually stopped and we ended up at the Iyashi no Sato which is the recreation of a traditional village which had been destroyed by a landslide in 1966. We headed back to the hostel to grab some food and our bags and when we reached the town Fuji put in an appearance and she was gloriously covered in snow! How lucky we were to see her with and without snow! We were limited on time so couldn’t snap the best photos but we felt so blessed to be there to savour the views.

We were so excited to see the first snowfall on Fuji

We were heading to Kyoto but we had to first head back to Tokyo before picking up the next bus. When we boarded the bus at Tokyo we were very pleasantly surprised by the overall comfiness of the bus – it even had a ‘pram’ hood for extra comfort and made frequent comfort breaks. We both slept really well – which is surprising as you all know I love a moan about some of the night buses we’ve had on this trip!

Joey settling down for the nightbus, complete with pram hood

We arrived into Kyoto station around 6.30am so we left our bags in a storage locker and headed to McDonald’s for breakfast. We then headed off to a nearby temple which was pretty quiet. We then tried to take a shortcut to another temple but ended up in some school grounds! The security guard was very helpful though and even gave us our first origami crane.

We spent the day wondering round until we started to flag and needed food! A quick pit stop though and we were on our way again. We stayed a little way from the centre and headed off to our apartment. Accommodation in Japan was pretty expensive (compared to what we have been used to) so we were finding ourselves in bunkbeds and with shared bathrooms more often than not so it felt like a treat to have our own bathroom here.

Kyoto was all about the temples and they were quite beautiful but it was also the busiest place we visited. We tried walking up a street to get to a particular temple and we just gave up as it was so busy, to the point where it was almost scary!

Kyoto temples and countryside – look how busy it was!

Poor Joey came down with a cold in Kyoto so was feeling under the weather most of the time but he did save his energy for a visit to Fushimi Inarin Shrine. This is very famous as it has hundreds of Torii gates aligning the path of a hill – very beautiful and different to anything we have seen.

From Kyoto we took a local train a very short ride to Osaka, famous for its neon lights. Joey was still feeling rough so we took it very easy and basically made that our only activity! It was very fun and we have some great photos.

After Osaka we took the bus to Hiroshima, infamous as the place that the first atomic bomb was detonated. We knew it would be a hard place to visit but I don’t think either of us realised how much of an impact it would have on us.

We had two full days here so decided to split the time in two with us tackling the more challenging aspects first before having fun later!

We started off with a walk through the Peace park, visiting ground zero where the bomb detonated and several memorials. We also visited memorial hall which had a temporary exhibition featuring the memories of those who had worked at the meteorological office during the time. We watched a video of men recalling their experiences and it was probably the hardest thing I have ever sat through. One spoke about going back into Hiroshima after the bomb had exploded to try and find his sister and the town was littered with bodies. All the bodies were almost unrecognisable and he struggled to recall what his sister was wearing that day and he found it hard to keep looking. He went back to his office (I should mention that he was badly injured and could barely walk) and then came back the next day to try and find her, only by the time he reached town all of the bodies had been removed and he never found his sister. He spoke in a very moving manner about the guilt that he had felt ever since and I found it incredibly hard to watch and digest.

One of the lesser talked about things of Hiroshima is the fact that a month after the bomb a typhoon ripped through the city making the situation even worse. Weather forecasts were still banned so the people of the city had not been able to take evasive action.

We then visited the Peace Memorial museum and this was also incredibly moving. It was very, very busy, to the point that you almost couldn’t see the exhibitions but what was really interesting and poignant was how quiet everyone was as they moved through the exhibitions. The pictures and stories were again very harrowing and moved us both to tears again. The pictures told a story of complete destruction and the entire city was completely destroyed, it was truly awful to see the pain and suffering told in those photos and it both gave us a lot to think about and I wanted to immediately join the CND.

The next day we stuck to our word of doing something fun and headed off on day trip to Miyajima island, a UNESCO world heritage site. We caught the train and a ferry there and headed up the hill on a very steep hike. You can also catch a cable car but we had time and energy so we went for it. It was a very peaceful and serene walk and just what we needed after the previous day. It was worthwhile as well as the views from the top of hill were stunning. There is a famous torii gate which, when the tide is in, looks as though it is floating. The tide was out when we arrived but back in upon leaving!

That night we caught a night bus back to Tokyo and again we slept like angels! I wish every night bus could be like the Japanese night buses!

We dropped our luggage at a hotel and set off to visit the ‘cat temple’ this is the temple from which the ‘lucky kitty’ is born. Legend has it a cat was seen beckoning its owner in from a storm. The temple has thousands of lucky kitties in the grounds and it was nice to see such a unique place. We then headed to some gardens to while away our homeless day. After that we headed to a tech store and spending time in tech stores in Japan was so much fun – our favourite thing was the toilet section and deciding which one we’d like to install when we remodel our bathroom in the future – heated toilet seats are definitely the future!

The next day was our last day in Japan and we spent the morning at a Hedgehog cafe. I love hedgehogs and back in our garden at home we were regularly visited by wild ones so this was such a treat. Japan has lots of animal cafes and when I found out that included hedgehogs I had to go. You get an hour to pet them, this did feel a bit odd as in the UK you are discouraged from picking them up but I really enjoyed the experience and l found it so relaxing when one fell asleep in my hands.

Look how happy I am to cuddle these little fellas

We spent the afternoon wandering around revisiting a few places (including the Godzilla head) and enjoyed a game of bowling before it was time to say goodbye to Japan.

Japan was such a lovely surprise as we didn’t expect to go on this trip, we managed more or less within our budget by doing things such as sleeping in dorms and sharing bathrooms. We didn’t eat out much which also made it cheaper and we travelled by bus rather than train which again made it cheaper so I’m pleased we managed to backpack a small part of Japan on our backpackers budget!

December 2, 2023 1

Taiwan – Typhoons and Tea

Our journey to Taiwan was relatively smooth, in the grand scheme of things. We’d booked two separate flights with two different airlines with a change at Kuala Lumpur airport. We had to wait around 25 minutes to even park at the gate, wait an absolute age for our bags and then change terminals so when we landed in Taipei and deplaned immediately, effortlessly went through immigration and collected our bags we were impressed. Our first impressions of Taiwan were that it was well organised, clean and very efficient!

We headed to our hotel, arriving around 9pm and went for a small wander to the convenience store. We slept like babies that night only to be woken just before 6am by the sound of some very low fighter jets. Everyone knows there’s tension between China and Taiwan so we put it down to maybe some drills that we’d heard about. A couple of mornings later we heard the same again and this was followed by the sound of a chinnock helicopter, so I looked out of the window and saw a huge Taiwanese flag being carried by the helicopter! I called out for Joey to come and witness this and he then saw the red arrows doing a fly past! And all of this was before 7 am! I did a little bit of research and it appeared that they were rehearsing for the Independence Day celebrations a couple of weeks later.

Very poor photo of helicopter carrying the huge Taiwanese flag

Once we got up and went out and about we slowly got our bearings and visited our first temple, the first of many! We started to learn more about how to pray in a Chinese temple and the different symbols. We were caught slightly off guard by just how hot and humid Taipei was! We’d obviously been used to extreme heat in the Stans but in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia it was more ‘normal’ temperatures and we often had a sea breeze to cool the air. In Taipei we had none of that and had to revert back to our ways of getting up early and doing things.

We really enjoyed Taipei. For two people who profess to not love cities we loved it! It was so different to anywhere else we have been with the language and culture. We spent four days there initially checking out lots of temples. We climbed Elephant Hill one morning, which although very hot and humid gave us an incredible view of the city. We met some very friendly locals here who stopped and chatted to us with one of them feeling inclined to reassure us that China wouldn’t invade Taiwan!

One morning just before 10 am we were at the Memorial Hall and we had unexpectedly found ourselves there for the Changing of the Guard Ceremony. We hadn’t planned or researched this but it was a beautiful thing to watch the precision of this activity and I’d highly recommend going if you are in the area.

We visited lots of different night markets as well to try some local cuisine. The first one we visited was Shilin Night Market, possibly the most famous night market in Taiwan. Our strategy for night markets developed here and we basically joined a big queue when we saw one as we guessed that the locals knew what they were doing! The first thing we bought by doing this was some fried chicken – the board advertised it as the biggest fried chicken in the world and it probably was the size of our head! Shilin market also has lots of games to play so it had a great atmosphere.

One thing we tried in Taipei was a knife massage. Our friends Wun Lee and David had told us about these when they visited recently so we put them on our ‘must-do’ list and when we saw them being offered in a shopping centre we leapt at the chance to have one. The massage is carried out by someone wielding two large cleavers, it looks pretty scary but they were blunt! We opted for a quick 10 minute tester for head and shoulders and we both agreed that it was very relaxing. They chop incredibly quickly and the rhythm is so relaxing!

Taipei was also where we first tried bubble tea. Bubble tea is obviously quite big in the UK and Europe anyway but we’d never tried it and the home of bubble tea seemed a great place to start. If you’ve never had it, it’s basically iced tea in whichever flavour you like, sweetened to your choice and filled with tapioca balls. I must admit the tapioca balls were very unusual but it was really good fun drawing them up through the straw and bubble tea became a must have treat for us in Taiwan.

We saw lots of unusual sights in Taiwan including at one night market , a man with a pig on a lead! I think this was unusual for even the locals as they were taking photos of him. We also saw a few days later a man with a lizard on a lead! Not to mention all the adorable dogs in dog prams – it was definitely more common to see dogs in prams than to see them walking.

Taiwan has thousands of claw machines for everyone to play to win all kinds of things. There are mainly toys to win but you also saw things such as noodles, crisps and iced coffee. I love a claw machine anyway so this was heaven to me. We set ourselves a daily limit and I was determined to win something by the time we left Taiwan!

The beauty of Taiwan is that it is a small country (some obviously dispute that it is a separate country in its own right, but for the purpose of this blog I am referring to it as a country!) so we were able to see a lot of it in the space of a couple of weeks. This means that we would be on the go a lot but we decided it would be worth it. Our next point of call was Hualien, home to the Taroko Gorge, a national park featuring a gorgeous marble gorge. You can take a bus to the park and do various walks. We started at the beginning of the park and did a walk before taking a bus to another part and doing another walk. We ended up at the park during the weekend of a national holiday so there were lots of signs at the bus station warning us of a queuing system for the bus to the park so we decided to get the first bus of the day to avoid this. The park has a famous ‘rain cave’ which, as you may have guessed, has lots of rain pouring through the ceiling and you get extremely wet walking through it!

From Hualien we headed to Ruisui, an area with some hot springs. We only had one night here so as soon as we arrived we dropped our bags and hired a scooter to set off to the hot springs. We had a walk through the forest area there, eventually reaching a very high suspension bridge! I wasn’t too keen on walking over this so Joey went first and I followed very closely with my eyes very firmly on the back of his neck refusing to look anywhere else! After this walk we definitely deserved a dip in the hot springs – imagine my horror when I realised that I actually managed to bring two bikini bottoms rather than two separate pieces! I ran out to the reception to see what they could do and luckily they had a shop so I ended up buying a very modest top to wear! We had a very relaxing time checking out the various pools, they were all different temperatures and there was a largest pool which had various things such as jet bubbles or spouts to pour water onto you.

The next day we were up early to catch a train to Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. This was really just a way to break up the journey and we just spent the day checking out various shopping centres, the Taiwanese love shopping so shopping centres is something they do well! The shopping centres tend to have large areas full of claw machines so we spent a bit of time trying to win a Hello Kitty purse. A woman there took pity on our attempts and opened the machine and moved some to give us a better chance – it still took a couple of attempts but we were so happy with our win! She was very sweet and opened up the machine so we could chose the colour. We took an evening stroll to try and see a pair of famous Pagodas the Dragon and Tiger pagodas. We arrived and the pagodas were closed due to renovation! We did get to walk around the pond and saw lots of turtles which made up for it.

The Dragon and Tiger pagodas are behind here

From Kaohsiung we headed north to Tainan, an ancient town with plenty of temples and history, we had a great time exploring here. A typhoon had been forecast for later in the week and on our last day the skies turned very overcast and the wind picked up but there was no sign of rain yet.

We were due to move on to Sun Moon Lake on the day that the typhoon was forecast to make landfall and I checked online to see if the train was running and it certainly looked like it so we checked out of our hotel and headed to the station. The roads were empty but there was no real strong winds or lashing rain as you would expect with a typhoon – it was almost disappointing! We reached the train station and our train had been cancelled! We asked at the desk and he was very matter of fact about it – ‘no trains today – typhoon’ and he refunded our ticket. So that left us homeless and in a bit of a quandary really! We didn’t faff around too much though and just decided that the best option was to head back to the hotel, ask for our room back and stay another night. We contacted the next hotel to explain the situation and they very kindly didn’t charge us for the night that we didn’t stay. Luckily the hotel wasn’t busy and as everything was shut we were left with a spare day to plan then next leg of our trip.

Our hotel taped up the door ahead of the typhoon

They do take typhoons seriously in Taiwan and everything was shut bar the convenience stores so we were at least able to get some food! The typhoon did hit the southern part of Taiwan but luckily for us it didn’t really hit our area that badly. It was almost disappointing as we it would have been a once in a lifetime event to experience a typhoon but we are grateful it wasn’t that bad.

It was a train and a bus ride to Sun Moon Lake and we’d lost a day already so we were keen to maximise the time that we did have there. The town that we were staying at was a bus or boat ride away from where our bus dropped us so with the purpose of trying to do as much as possible in a short space of time we took the boat across. Most people use the boat as a sightseeing activity so we were the only ones on it with luggage!

We dropped our bags at our hostel and headed straight out to walk around the lake. It was very peaceful and there is a purpose built walkway around the lake which you can either walk or cycle around. It started raining heavily that afternoon but we just carried on walking. We saw the famous nine frogs monument in the lake which is used to demonstrate how much water is in the lake. There were a few frogs on display that afternoon and the following morning we walked back there were actually more on display despite the rain the night before!

We had some more luck with the claw machines and Joey won a happy/sad octopus. Beating the machines gave us so much joy!

We were headed back to Taipei for a couple more nights as we still had more temples to see. We also wanted to visit the National Palace Museum which has the world’s largest collection of Chinese antiquities outside of China. It was a fascinating place to visit with most people seeming to visit to only photograph the jadeite cabbage and the meat shaped stone without really taking the time to admire them. Our favourite part of the museum came as a surprise to us and was actually the rare books section! In particular the map section was incredible with amazing detail and colour.

We revisited the Shilin night market and it was my turn to have luck with the claw machine – I won a goose! I was so happy – it was like being a child when the goose fell down the chute!

We really enjoyed Taiwan, it was still Asia but also very different to other parts of Asia we’ve visited and after the chaos of Indonesia it was so refreshing to have the notion of organisation and efficiency again!

November 21, 2023 2