Cindy and Mike Do the World!

Sayonara Japan! We spent our last night in Osaka and while we didn’t have time to see much, we liked what we saw. We went for Italian food last night and it was delicious. The place was right in the Dotonburi area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dtonbori) and we had a great people watching spot (see pics). We also found another Italian cafe for dessert called Marimba Cafe (just by chance) and the waiter could speak a little English and said that he wanted to come to Canada someday. When he brought us the bill, he said that dessert was on the house!! :)

We are now getting ready to leave for the airport for our flight to Beijing. We will be back to Japan for a week in December to see Tokyo and to explore Niseko (ski area) and we’re really looking forward to it. We’ve loved this country! The people are so friendly and polite and although we haven’t understood much of what they’re saying (so hopefully it's good things), it’s really amazing how you can communicate quite well with hand gestures. No one pushes in line-ups, they are always bowing their heads to say ‘hello’ (even on a hiking trail, where do you see that at home?). I can find a bathroom easily here (and I can’t get enough of the heated toilet seats) and you never go thirsty for long as there are vending machines everywhere selling everything from water to juices to cigarettes! We’ve seen these machines in the oddest places, where there is nothing else around but they’ve been very helpful. It’s also wonderful to be able to drink the tap water here.

Very nice

Walk to Dotonburi

Octopus balls

Very handy way to call the waiter

The scene below the restaurant

These two also provided some entertainment...we think she was working for him.

The really nice waiter who wants to come to Canada someday. He also got a pic of me on his phone so perhaps I'm on fb somewhere. ;)

We spent 2 nights in this area and took a train and then a bus to get there (about 5 hours). What a beautiful little town (and full of UNESCO sites in the surrounding areas – just what you like Bonnie!). The transportation in Japan has been great – nice clean trains that run exactly on time (with bathrooms and snackcarts) and the cutest little buses. It was just us and the bus driver for the last half hour on the way there and their buses allow you to change bills if you don’t have exact change.

We did a 16km hike and tried the onsens in our accommodations. We haven’t gotten up the nerve to visit the public ones and haven’t needed to since we had them where we were staying. You cannot wear your bathing suit although the onsens are usually separated by gender (very few mixed ones in Japan). You wash yourself on a little stool before getting in and my Lonely Planet book recommends watching others to see how it’s done (although I think I would feel a bit like a Peeping Tammy) so we’ve stuck with the private ones, where we just hung a little sign on the door so that no one else came in.

The minshoku and the ryokan that we stayed in included dinners and breakfasts so we got to try some very interesting things – some of which we still have no idea what they were! We took lots of pictures so that we can look them up. There was an American woman staying in the minshoku with us the first night (she taught English in Japan many years ago so she was very helpful in identifying the foods or asking the host what it was in Japanese). Venison sashimi was on the menu that night and actually quite good! Don’t know when we’ll eat that again.

We have met some well-travelled people already including an Australian couple who have been to many places and gave us some good tips about the best spot to see the Great Wall. This American woman I spoke about before has lived in many countries, including a two year stint in Bhutan and some time in Georgia.

We finally figured out the slipper situation in these places…take your shoes off in the lobby, put on slippers, walk up to your room, take them off at the door of your room (you don’t use them on the tatami mats). When you enter the bathroom, there are bathroom slippers there for you to use and they stay there. If you want to go outside in your robe, there are other outside slippers to use. Socks and wearing sandals are also acceptable and they actually have special socks just for this purpose.