29th to 30th April - Planes and Trains

Our travel to Japan proved very simple. We drove from Hanmer to Christchurch Airport, leaving our car in an off-airport secure carpark and got a shuttle to the airport. The first flight was on Fiji Airways to Nadi. The flight went very well, with heaps of room and simple but nice food. As it was a daytime flight we made no attempt to snooze, but just watched movies.

The next leg began after a 6-hour wait at Nadi Airport, as the connection times seem to be optimised for Auckland and not Christchurch flights. We'd looked up the options for dinner, and they were bleak. One cafe with poor reviews, and a Burger King with worse reviews and occasional food poisoning. We took our own food - a baguette from the Paris Bakery in Amberley, some cheese, sliced fennel and banana. better by a long way than the alternatives.

I found a "quiet lounge" downstairs where we got a nice little alcove, and later upgraded to a big daybed where I slept for several hours before our flight just short of midnight.

The flight to Narita, Tokyo departed on time, and was unexpectedly shorter than the 11 hours we were anticipating. It took just under 9 hours. Dinner was served around 1am and we settled down to try and sleep as much as possible. John did exceedingly well, me less so, however the flight was very smooth and the Fijian flight attendants were very smiley throughout. A breakfast of vanilla pancakes or scrambled eggs and sausage was a little underwhelming at 4am, with two hours left to fly to Narita. However we felt in reasonable form when we left the plane, and were pinching ourselves with joy that we were actually back in Japan. Flying in over the Narita landscape brought home just how little land is usable for agriculture in japan, the vast majority is very steep, and only the valleys between or beyond the hills is flat enough.

Extraordinary landscape of steep wooded hills and flat areas, with little in-between

The last time we flew into Narita it took us around three hours to get through immigration, causing us to have to bed down on the terminal floor for the night because all transport into the city had ceased at midnight. This time around was enormously better, despite this week being Golden Week when the Japanese travel back to their family homes. We cleared baggage collection, immigration, quarantine, found the JR office to pick up our train passes and sat down for a coffee all within an hour! An excellent start. We had to wait around just a little until the post office in the terminal opened at 8:30am, which it did precisely on the dot. Being first in line, it only took us just one minute to pick up the portable wifi router we'd rented. Now we will be online throughout the trip, no matter where we are - great for maps, directions and timetables. We merely put the router into an envelope and drop it into a post box on our last day.

By this stage we were about 1.5 hours ahead of our planned schedule so we returned to the JR office and exchanged the train tickets we had booked earlier for our first trip down  Honshu. We would now leave an hour earlier, and hence arrive at our destination at Miyajima by 4:15pm instead of 5:30. Bonus!

The Narita Limited Express from the airport

I'm writing this as we zoom through the countryside SW of Tokyo at nearly 300km/hour. It's been easy to negotiate the train connections, even with just 10 mins to find our next trains on different platforms. We are already very much enjoying the politefulness and friendliness of everyone we have encountered so far. Without exception, people seem to go out of their way to be as helpful as possible.

... and our Shinkansen on the next leg.

It's now just after midday and we were anticipating having a picnic lunch on the train. In the past we've spied bento box outlets at many train stations and have therefore been well nourished on board. However there was no bento outlet visible in our part of the airport train station so we tried a 7 Eleven. The latter have a large range of tasty packaged food. We chose what we thought looked great dishes, but on further investigation when we were sitting waiting for our train realised a glaring mistake. We should have Google-translated the labelling on the packets because we'd chosen dishes that needed heating, rather than cold salads. Darn. They will have to become our dinners instead, if we can manage to heat them up somewhere, possibly at another 7 Eleven store (totally normal), or at our night's Airbnb accommodation.

Our lunch that became dinner instead

So, lunch consisted of a few remaining small Easter eggs we'd brought with us, some nut bars and a little tiramisu that was to be our dessert. We won't make that mistake again!

We did manage to get a lovely view of Mt Fuji from the train as we passed through the countryside - the first time we've seen it in three trips. 

It's been fascinating looking at Japan again. The rice paddies are just being planted this time of year, and we've seen some lovely azaleas from the train windows - we were slightly too early last visit. Again, we are amazed at the enigma of Japan. The majority of modern houses and buildings are pretty dreadful - built from poor materials with little design input, and clearly destined for a short lifespan. It's so incongruous when they so treasure the history and design of their temples and shrines.

After two flights, four train trips and surprisingly almost 10,000 steps walking in between our transfers, it's been a long run. We wearily rolled up at our first Airbnb, and were warmly greeted by a very smiley host. Our room looks delightful, and we're pleased to see it has futons and not an standard bed.

 

Our first room

Our first action was to heat up our two lunches in the microwave and devour them for dinner - and they were very pleasant. It will have to be another day that we can try the meal "sets" that we so enjoy.

Set meals - add 20% to get NZD, i.e. 1000Y=$12

Next, a short walk back to the train station where we bought tickets for the ferry crossing tomorrow (free with our rail pass), checked out the luggage lockers for our bags tomorrow and trolled through a 7 Eleven looking for more food. Two seaweed wrapped rice triangles (onigiri), some chocolate clusters, a zero-alcohol can of beer and two icecreams seemed to fit the bill perfectly. We also bought some omelette, pork and spinach parcels which are now safely in our fridge ready for a quick breakfast tomorrow.

After a lovely refreshing shower we crawled into bed by 8:30pm. It's been a very easy trip from NZ to SW Honshu, and we both feel very happy to be back in Japan. John is enjoying looking out for new kei cars and manhole cover designs - something that Japan takes some pride in. A group of young boys rode pasts us on their bikes this evening and all called out hello and hoped we'd enjoy our time in Japan. It was very nice.

25th to 29th April - First step, Hanmer Springs

We begin our trip this year with four nights in Hanmer Springs at our holiday home. This gives us time to mow the lawns, tidy the gardens and get into relax mode before the real travelling begins.

We arrived on the day the old Soldiers' Block at the Queen Mary Hospital was given a formal opening after nearly $4million of renovation work. We just missed the combined opening and Anzac ceremony, however there were plenty of official-looking people wandering around, all with large grins on their faces. Clearly the prospect of being able to use a large portion of the ex-hospital buildings for community uses is warmly welcomed. There is even a full gym being installed in part of the facility. 

The weather was gloriously sunny over the entire Friday to Monday, and we relished doing domestic chores, i.e. pottering in the garden, deadheading roses and mowing the lawn. I know, it's sad. But they are actually enjoyable 'pensioner-like' activities that we can't enjoy at Walters Bluff. Enough said!

On Monday we had our last swim at the hot pool complex before heading off overseas. By 11.30am we were keen on some breakfast so treated ourselves to brunch at the Powerhouse Cafe.

Our last Kiwi cafe tucker for a while (buckwheat pancakes,
a Big Breakfast, a flat white and espresso)

We should be as fit as we can be, though unfortunately John's knees decided to play up on our walk up and down Conical Hill yesterday. His knees have been a bit temperamental in recent weeks and we're now a little concerned we might have to pull back on some of our planned walks in Japan. We'll be able to play it a bit day-by-day though, because we do have options to shorten any of the walks. To complete the list of ailments, the toe that I very seriously strained 8 weeks ago is now 90% better and it won't be holding me back. 

So, we are now fully organised to go. With our spare time here in Hanmer Springs we crossed the final 't' and dotted the final 'i' by doing a jigsaw of a Japanese garden. A bit weird I know but I do really enjoy doing jigsaws and we picked this one up in an Op Shop on our trip down to Otago a month ago.

One more sleep before we hit the road ......

Our Third Trip to Japan

Having visited and loved Japan in March 2019 and April 2023, we initially thought that we'd seen and done enough there. After all, we'd spent a combined 9 weeks travelling, hiking, eating and sightseeing around all four main Japanese islands. However as 2024 went by we kept coming back to how much we'd loved it. 

We thought it might be fun to share our experiences with friends, so tried to arrange a shared trip retracing our 2019 walk on the Nakasendo. This didn't work out, but it did reignite our desire to pay another visit to Japan, so we decided to go back anyway to see some new places!

This trip will be shorter at around 2½ weeks, as we are also visiting Alastair and Sophie in Berkeley on the way back. On each of the two previous trips we did a self-guided walk organised by Walk Japan, and we will be doing some hiking again this trip, but entirely self-guided and self-organised. We will be based mainly in western Honshu (the main island), staying in 8 different locations for one to three nights each. We are sticking with smaller centres, with no revisits of places previously travelled to.

As before, we will be using a Japan Rail Pass to get around, with the odd bus for local travel. Our accommodation will range from ryokan to hotels, some with breakfast, some not, and two ryokan will have kaiseki dinners included as well. It was easy arranging it all, mostly through Booking.com, but one each from AirBnB, Rakuten (a large Japanese provider), and a couple of small providers. It was easier than the first time we booked Japan, as the websites now have more English language, and Google Translate is better. The hardest part was finding proper Japanese-style rooms, as many of the true ryokan and minshuku don't have English websites, but we are very happy with those we've found. We will be staying in two ryokans, one old Japanese room in a tiny Japanese onsen town, and in Omihachiman we have a full Japanese house to ourselves! 

Google Maps has proved excellent in working out transport and connections for some of the trickier daytrips. Perhaps a few plans will fall over, but it won't worry us.

We've got a couple of special places we will be visiting - Japan's top ukiyo-e (Japanese block prints) museum in Matsumoto, Naoshima Art Island and the zen garden at Adachi Museum (Japan's No.1 zen garden).

It is the whole Japanese experience we are expecting to enjoy, but we are particularly looking forward to the amazing food, to staying in the ryokans, and to the onsens.