Zing! Carry a 25kg pack all over Japan for a week: No problem. Get out of work truck on first day back at work: lower back goes pop!
(0)Archive for the 'Travel' Category
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About three hours before flight time, the counter finally opened. The staff was all ANA employees. I got omiyage with no problems and it all fit in my X-Ray. Immigration went smoothly as usual, and I got some angry oyaji sushi from Ganko and a large iced cafe mocha from Tully’s. The sushi was not terrible, considering this is a chain restaurant, and the coffee also not terrible. I wouldn’t rank Tully’s above CB&TL or Lion, but it is better than Starbuck’s swill. Continue reading ‘Boarding’
Sitting at KIX now, poaching their free wireless internet. It’s super slow, but it’s free, unlike HNL. It was going good for a while, but once in a while, it bogs down or completely disconnects. Blazed in from Okayama on the first Shinkansen then stashed bags in a coin locker so wandering around Osaka would be less of a chore. After wandering around Tsutenkaku and some shrine complex (I can’t remember the name right now), I got back to Namba, had some lunch, and headed here. My flight isn’t until 21:30, so the check-in counter is still Cathay Pacific and not Hawaiian Airlines. There are some Hawaii-based musicians here with their instruments waiting for the same flight. I want to hurry and check-in my bag so I can go buy omiyage, head to the gate, and get some sleep. Oh, they’re closing the Cathay Pacific flight, so it should be soon… -ish. …maybe.
Nicely, this cheap hotel in Okayama has wireless internet. Actually, the wireless router is unsecured and not set up, so if I was an ass, I’d go in and give it some screwed-up password. Today was a trip out to Onomichi and Kurashiki to see old stuff after yesterday’s trapsing around Naoshima looking at some great collections of art both classic and contemporary, and getting that mental limit of what constitutes art and what doesn’t stretched and massaged. Contrary to the feel of the town put forth in fiction like Kamichu!, Onomichi feels like a place that has forgotten its Kami like an inconvenient burden. Walking its steep, meandering hillside paths, one should be greeted on every turn by the town’s cats, at least according to the tourist blurb. All I saw were three or four sickly cats and one “lost cat” poster. Continue reading ‘Kami, Neko, and a Dude in Chinese MultiCam’
As Typhoon #15 (“Roke”) passed South of Shikoku last night, all was fairly calm here in Takamatsu, with a light to moderate rain falling in the center of town. The biggest thing I noticed was a single bomb-like thunderclap before midnight when the rain was at its peak. Nonetheless, the typhoon panic led to various school and public facility closures. The ferries were back online, but it was funny that yesterday when they were starting to panic shutdown for the impending storm, conditions were so amazingly calm, whereas today when it was all “safe”, conditions were borderline stomach-churning. There were some legitimate road and facility closures on nearby Ougishima and Megishima due to small landslides or road washouts, but many of the much-touted art sites in the towns remained closed because staff were told to stay home because of the storm. At least this evening dinner was easier to find, as opposed to finding restaurants closed or closing early “because of the typhoon”. I can understand exercising adequate caution, but this event snowballed into a national panic (especially down South where the effects were mild), and I don’t mean this in hindsight – in the days running up to the arrival of the storm at it’s nearest passing point, it was deadly calm with just sporadic drizzling. People were shutting things down days in advance because of the media hype and not actual observed conditions. Continue reading ‘Typhoon Panic’
Although the rainy weather of last night dissipated in the morning so that Shikoku was visible across the water, to avoid the possibility of getting trapped on Shodoshima in the event that the fast-moving typhoon #15 came rushing in, I bailed early. Landing in Takamatsu, the weather was actually worse, with a fairly constant drizzle falling – it makes sense, since I actually moved closer to the typhoon! With no plans for today in Takamatsu, a quick stop at the ekimae tourist information office revealed a map of a shrine complex with a pile of stairs! I hate stairs! Let’s go! I had actually heard of the Kompira-gu shrine previously, but didn’t know many of the details. A leisurely local train ride on the Kotoden from a station built up against the outer wall of the Takamatsu castle ruins took me to Kotohira-machi for 610-yen. Continue reading ‘Typhooned’
Okay, passing through the backstreets of Kotohira-machi (home of the Konpira-gu shrine in Kagawa-ken) I happened across this preschool fence. Once you get passed the fact that there was a barbed wire fence around a preschool (WTF!?!?), note that it is leaned inward to keep the little curtain jerkers in, not to keep weird, unwanted adults out!
Wow. Weird. I managed to find a wireless access point at this late-60’s vintage hotel on the far side of Shodoshima! This morning it was a rush to make it to JR Osaka via the Yotsubashi-sen, only to find that the 06:20-something limited express train had already long since gone. It took a local Osaka loop-line train, a 700-series Shinkansen, and a local train on the Ako-sen to get me to Saidaiji-eki in time for the 10:05 bus to the ferry landing to Inu-shima. The sky was overcast for the most part, and the humidity of the past couple of days had dissipated, so the apparent suffering level was not as great. After a short wait at the pier with unchi-pantsu-gyaru, a 10-minute, 300-yen boat ride got me out to Inu-shima. The former copper refinery on the island closed late last century had crumbled into disrepair, but the old slag-brick and red-brick ruins had been converted recently into an art exhibition and installation. In addition to the converted factory, several house-like installations throughout the island were also built. I wonder a little about what the remaining local fishing village residents think about the whole thing, but I’m guessing that a source of revenue that isn’t slowly killing them like the refinery and is preserving the island lifestyle can’t be all bad. Continue reading ‘Islands, Ruins, Art, and Boats’
Got into Osaka last night on a good flight on Hawaiian Airlines (HA449 HNL-KIX). The 767-300ER they are currently using on this route is older, but it is clean and in good repair. The comparable JAL aircraft have so many hours on them, they look a lot more beat-up inside, and the “personal contact surfaces” like the seat material and armrest pads are a lot more worn and dreary (and possibly suffused with funk). This one didn’t have the personal video screens, so that meant cooler seats and more seat width for me, since I was only one of two native English speakers on board, so I got “volunteered” into the exit row. Passenger demographic was mostly young couples, instead of the older crowd on JAL. They actually ran the A/C nice and cold, such that I actually had to use the blanket, as opposed to JAL, where my back is usually soaked with sweat. After a turbulent approach over Awaji-shima and Kobe, we were brought straight into KIX without any waiting or holding pattern. Continue reading ‘The Wall of Heat’