Kansai
One weekend in April, a coworker said, “Let’s go to Japan.” So we went to Japan.
01 / Before departure
A Sleepless Night at Pudong Airport
We took the high-speed train to Shanghai Pudong Airport straight after work on Friday. Our flight was at six on Saturday morning. I had never caught such an early flight and had no idea what I was doing, so I booked a hotel miles from the airport. After working out the logistics, we thought, fine, we might as well spend the night at the airport.
Had I known how miserable an overnight stay at Pudong would be, I would have chosen a few hours lying down in a hotel over sitting on a hard bench until dawn.
I even brought two bottles of alcohol to help me “fall asleep quickly.” In the end they only made me sleepier, and the night that little bit harder to endure.
Working hard, after hours
Getting a seat in the check-in hall was hard enough, never mind one next to a power socket. Even the shuttered restaurants had people stretched out on the tables. S: even on a Friday, you have to put in the overtime!
You take my picture, I’ll take yours!
K brought his full arsenal of lenses on holiday for the first time and shot everything in sight, looking thoroughly furtive about it.
Overtime, with a brave little smile
By now it was four in the morning. Checked in, through security, past customs. S could finally do overtime… undisturbed.
Peachy-Butt Airlines
Sunrise was getting closer, and our inbound aircraft had finally reached the airport.
The next morning’s sun
After circling the departure hall again and again, I suddenly noticed a crowd pressed up against the windows taking photos. Ah, of course: the sun was coming up.
An ugly little green plane
Tickets scanned, boarded, ready to go. Outside the window an ugly Russian jet was coming in to land.
02 / Day 1
Above the Clouds
🛫 ——> 🛬
Attempt number two at sleeping: failed.
I am a light sleeper to begin with. Between the roar of the engines and the vibrations, sleep was impossible, so I could only stare out the window. S and K slept soundly. Ah, to be young and fall asleep the moment your head drops.
And we’re off! 🛫
Overcast weather is my favourite kind for a takeoff, because it means the plane will climb through the cloud layer and out above the sea of clouds.
Above the clouds, though not the Guizhou kind that hosts iCloud
Above the clouds, take two
Little islands
The first little island after what felt like ages of flying with nothing to look at.
Shikoku, take one
Land at last, and plenty of it: we were over Shikoku.
Shikoku, take two
Japan really is not a flat country. Mile after mile of folded hills, with only a few stretches of connected plain. Japanese cities are fairly small, and a single small plain might hold three or four of them, which back home would be roughly one city and the counties under it.
Landing at Kansai International Airport
Kansai International Airport sits on an artificial island in the Seto Inland Sea. The weather was mediocre and a little hazy. On a clear day you can see the water.
Haruka
Riding the familiar Hello Kitty Haruka, except this time we were headed for Kyoto.
03 / Day 1
I Was Awake. Probably.
Thanks to Japan’s positively backward rule that hotels will not let you check in until 3 p.m., the three of us began wandering Kyoto.
The mind had left the building. The body kept wandering.
A very improvised lunch
All three of us are the type who never plan, so a restaurant reservation was out of the question. We picked somewhere in the basement of Kyoto Station with no queue. It turns out restaurants without queues have their reasons: a small, bloody, undercooked steak too tough to chew, and outrageously expensive too.
A shrine in the city center
Our hotel was near Shijō in Kyoto, about the most modern part of the city. Even along a busy main road like that you still see any number of shrines, sitting beside the such-and-such Bank and such-and-such Building, making it feel as if different eras coexist.
Inabadō (Byōdō-ji), the “cat shrine”
We left our luggage at the hotel. S and K both have pets at home, so the first stop on the plan was Inabadō (Byōdō-ji), also known as the cat shrine. It actually enshrines Yakushi Nyorai, but it is famous for selling cat amulets, and people on Xiaohongshu have run into the tabby that lives there. Sadly we did not meet it, and only heard steady meowing from behind the statues. I bought a cat-shaped strap for a notebook, in the hope of one day finding a notebook I like enough to use it on.
A tiny ⛩️ in the roadside grass
Late cherry blossoms down a quiet alley
Lush green leaves, with only a few blossoms left.
The Kamo River, take one
The Kamo River has a kind of magic to it. Like the Songhua in Harbin, every aimless walk ends up here sooner or later.
The Kamo River, take two
As I sat by the Kamo River staring at the far bank, it felt as though I had slipped through time. It is also possible I fell asleep and woke up again. A group who looked like university students were picnicking nearby, and a steady stream of people cycled or jogged past behind us. Everything was completely unhurried, except for S, who was still in a meeting on his phone.
At last, sleep
We finally made it to three in the afternoon and checked in. S lay down on the bed to play with his phone and fell asleep before the screen went dark, though that may have been the meetings.
Skewers. So good.
Slept until it was dark, then went out to hunt for food and ended up at an izakaya. Japanese portions are always tiny: two people will sit over three or four skewers of yakitori and drink beer. The three of us started at several dozen skewers plus three cocktails, and K, who cannot really drink, went bright red on the spot.
04 / Day 2
Nara, City of 🦌: Kasuga Taisha and Tōdai-ji
For a fun, hands-on Kansai trip, Nara is an essential stop: a chance to get close to nature.
The whole city is filled with a distinctive scent of nature: deer poop.
Our strategy was maximum freeloading. Not a single packet of deer crackers: straight in for the petting.
Outside Kintetsu Nara Station
It has earned its reputation as a world-famous tourist town. We had already seen Nara adverts plastered across every train and subway, and the crowds really are far heavier than in Kyoto or Osaka.
Nikon: for sharper bird shots
Roadside 🦌, take one
Nara has these little 🦌 sitting tucked up by the roadside all over the place. Perhaps they were already full, because they were very docile and would not chase you for crackers when you came close. Having bought exactly zero crackers, I felt a bit guilty and only gave one a token pat on the head.
Roadside 🦌, take two
K had no such qualms and went in for a proper vigorous rub. The 🦌 actually looked pleased about it. Ah. A masochist 🦌, then.
An influencer deer
At the entrance to Kasuga Taisha there is often a deer standing between two stone lanterns, with a crowd around it taking photos and feeding it. This one was working the pose and thoroughly enjoying itself.
A bowing little 🦌
The little 🦌 inside the shrine are far better mannered than the ones in Nara Park. No chasing you down, biting your hem or headbutting your kidneys; they bow their heads and ask politely instead.
Abundant Ebon Deer
Holy crap, a die-hard Honkai: Star Rail fan!
Good fortune!
I have been sore about the bad-luck fortune I drew at Kiyomizu-dera last time, so drawing a good one at Kasuga Taisha was a relief. Poor S drew a bad one.
Another influencer deer
There is another little 🦌 that likes to pose by the exit of Kasuga Taisha as well, though compared with the entrance there was hardly anyone about.
Tōdai-ji
This was not my first visit to Tōdai-ji, but I still found myself thinking the same thing: it really is enormous. You rarely see a temple on that scale back home.
Kōmokuten
Kōmokuten inside Tōdai-ji, eyes blazing. Hold on, is Kōmokuten not the one with the lute? Or have I been playing too much Black Myth: Wukong? S drew another fortune here, bad again, at which point he donated every coin he had.
05 / Day 2
Mount Wakakusa: So Much Poop
Leave Tōdai-ji and head uphill to the southeast, and you will reach Mount Wakakusa.
The Mount Wakakusa of Xiaohongshu fame is a very small area: just one west-facing slope. There was almost nowhere to sit because it was covered in deer poop. Everyone around us was speaking Chinese; we could have been back home.
So we chose a less social-media-famous route: climb to the actual summit of Mount Wakakusa and look out over all of Nara.
A quiet path uphill
A quiet path uphill, with almost nobody on it.
A grass-eating 🦌
The 🦌 up here no longer chase you for crackers; they just keep their heads down and work through the grass. Honestly, if it were not for these, I would have half forgotten that deer are grazing animals rather than cracker-eating ones.
Halfway up
There is a small terrace halfway up, and here there were actually a few other visitors who looked like they meant to camp. Sun on the east side, rain on the west: worth the climb.
Straight out of a romance drama
Made it to the top!
We hauled ourselves to the summit at last, just as the sun was going down and being neatly covered by a bank of cloud. We waited a while hoping it would show itself again, but it set behind the clouds instead.
The photo of a lifetime
On the way down K used his longest lens to take a photo of S and me. Were it not for the internationally recognised hand gesture, it would qualify as a photo of a lifetime in every sense.
A hillside full of 🦌
At the foot of Mount Wakakusa, with the light already going. The 🦌 covering the slope had stopped chasing each other and were quietly grazing.
Rice doesn’t come cheap in Nara
Japanese rice prices had already made the news for soaring before we came. A 1.5 kg bag in a convenience store was 1,920 yen, over thirty yuan per 500 g. Eye-watering.
06 / Day 3
Time to Go Home
We had no particular plans for the last day, so we declared it shopping day.
Good times always fly by. As if reluctant to let us leave, our flight made a special effort to be four hours late.
Mickey D’s near Takashimaya
The Mickey D’s downtown was running a Detective Conan collaboration, complete with a burger shaped like Ran’s hair.
Nintendo KYOTO
While claiming our tax refund at Takashimaya we found Nintendo KYOTO on the same floor. I had thought about picking up some cartridges in case they were cheaper. The shop turned out to stock consoles, controllers, and a great many eye-wateringly expensive figures.
A little shopping on someone else’s behalf
At my colleague C’s request I picked up a PS5 copy of Split Fiction at EDION, only to find once home that it was no cheaper than buying it in China.
The shopping haul
It took wandering through several department stores to just about complete the list. With the tax refund it came to roughly 20–30% less than buying on JD.
Back on the Haruka, off to the airport
Scenery along the way
We headed for the airport at around three in the afternoon, just as school was letting out. Leaning against the window I watched groups of high school students walking home in twos and threes. What youth. They say you cannot have youth and the sense of it at the same time, but some people's youth really is more youthful than others.