No annoyingly loud Chinese ladies this morning so 8am was nearly reached before we woke up. I am starting to feel a bit more human! It is amazing how tiring the heat is, even when we avoid it as much as possible by sun dodging.
Mila’s sun burn is much better today and her chesty cough has almost gone. Sadly, Danny’s chest tightness from yesterday has developed into a nasty, hollow sounding cough (the propensity for which he has inherited from his aunt and Granny!) and a requirement to carry his inhaler. Will keep you posted as to what transpires.
It is fortunate that the train station is so close to the MyStay hotel or we might not have had time to be frog marched there half an hour before the train was due to leave. It did however mean that we had plenty of time to choose our German Bread products to eat on the train. The fast walk with rucksacks rendered Danny speechless for a few minutes so planned to take the rest of the day gently.
Mila and I did some of her memory book on the train- until we felt sick and had to resort to boiled sweets. Then, with the rest of the family happily plugged in and ignoring the scenery, I went back to looking out of the window. I get travel sick so quickly that this is by far the most pleasant way of spending train journeys.
As we approached Kara Onsen, I could see an enormous golden statue on the hill. It is called Jibo Kannon which means “compassionate mother” and “Kannon” is the name of the god. It features a woman cradling a baby and is 73m high.
I also saw herons, cranes, kites, Japanese crows and the possible white tailed eagle again. The others miss so much….
I am going to suggest to Audley that they put a contents page and page numbers into the PDF of the itineraries that they produce. I don’t know how to do it, but I regularly use huge PDF files for work and they have clickability so you can navigate around the document without scrolling. The (heavy!) paper itinerary in the folder is easy to use, but the PDF is so big that it is tricky to find the page you want.
Once a process improvement specialist, always a process improvement specialist!
We walked to the office of the house agent and then got a taxi with the bags straight to the Machiya as it was already ready (thank God!).
We had a little rest in our lovely little house and put the first load of washing on and then did some route planning for our time in Kyoto. A whole new transport system to work out when we had just mastered Kanazawa!
We decided to do a short excursion to the Manga museum, followed by the food and Kimono market. We got distracted on the way to the Manga museum and bought Mila and myself a Yukata as souvenirs. We had aimed for a second hand kimono shop but ended up buying new ones anyway! It was lots of fun picking colours and trying to get the belts to contrast successfully. I have no idea if I will be able to put them on properly but we always have YouTube!
We stumbled on a restaurant selling epic dumplings and strawberry bubble tea. I didn’t take the title ‘soup dumpling’ seriously enough though and the soup ended up on the table after my tentative nibble! The rest of the family learnt from my mistake and shoved theirs in whole.
Bubble tea is lethal. It is like strawberry milk with small balls of jelly in. Sucked through a fat straw, it leaves you very prone to inhaling jelly balls. Too yummy to worry about the risk assessment but don’t buy it for toddlers!
The Manga museum was more of a Manga library, which is a little disappointing when 99% are in a language you cannot begin to read. It was reassuring how many people had paid the entrance to sit in a bean bag or on the floor and read a comic though. No photography was allowed, but Keith was super sneaky: shooting from the hip! There was a Manga artist doing portraits but the queue was completely full. We managed to find a few English/American comics, but we all found it hard to read from back to front. Is it top to bottom or bottom to top? Very frustrating. I need a proper book personally!
Our first underground and overground trip in Kyoto back to Geisha district went well, but was followed by a nightmare of impossible to find and fully booked restaurants. We ended up standing outside a 15 seat restaurant for an hour with our names on a lists and horrific heat still attacking us even in the dark.
Obviously once we got in, the food was amazing and well worth waiting for. We ate our body weight in delicious gyoza and took photos of the children drinking beer (the rules are 20 years today so we got some funny looks but it was non alcoholic!!)
Fate must have been involved in our stressful evening as we were lucky enough to see a Geisha in full dress on the way home.
Home, shower and bed.