Days 5-7: Nara, Takayama, Shirakawa, and Odawara
I decided to group these days together as much of them was spent on the road.
After seven ABDs I really should know to analyze the itinerary for suspicious language better (aka “scenic transfer” on day #7 means long bus ride), but for some reason I thought we were taking the train on most of this trip. I didn’t realize there would be so much time on a bus. In my defense, the itinerary on day #5 doesn’t say anything about transfers—you have to look at a map and calculate the distance from Kyoto to Takayama to realize that it is a long way away.
For me there was too much time on buses. Day #5 in particular was a real grind as we had horrible weather and the driver had to go really slow for the last few hours. I think we had about 7-8 hours of bus time that day with the time to get from Kyoto to Nara (traffic), then to the Sumo place, and then finally to our hotel in Takayama during the monsoon ☺. I might be off, but if I am, it's not by much.
It was raining so hard on the way to Takayama that huge waves of water were hitting the windshield. It was mountainous driving so it would have been even scarier had the driver not been exceptional. He really was fantastic, and despite the scary conditions from where I was sitting (DH an DS were blissfully unaware in the back) I felt as if we were in good hands.
But it was taking so long for us to get there that the guides were worried we would miss dinner at the hotel. I was sitting in the front with DD who gets motion sick, and I could see all the calls and negotiating going on by Tomomi. I got the sense that the hotel in Takayama (Associa) isn’t as excited to have ABD there as the others, and they aren’t nearly as accommodating. When we finally arrived at around 8:30 pm, we all rushed up to eat with our hand luggage and had a buffet dinner under the watchful eyes of the staff. I’m sure they just wanted to go home, and we were all grateful they’d kept it open for us. I think most of us passed on our thanks so hopefully that helped.
The “scenic transfer” from Takayama to Odawara on day #7 was another 5 - 6 hour bus ride. The guides broke it up with movies and a long trivia game (won by DH and DS much to their gloating—DD and I sadly missed out by 2 points), but two long days like that on a crowded bus are a lot. I’d love to see ABD integrate more train rides—the bullet trains are so awesome—but I think they’d have to eliminate some of the stops. (For example, you can get from Kyoto to Odawara in 2 hrs on the bullet train and Kyoto to Takayama in 3). It will be interesting to see how the itinerary changes over the next couple of years. My sense is that there have been complaints about the long bus rides.
On some trips the long bus rides don’t bother me—the original Scotland and Ireland both had a lot of bus time—but this one felt different. I think in part it was due to the big group, not having room to spread out, and every stop taking so long to get on and off the bus and move everyone from place to place. The long bus rides made me feel as if I was on a big bus tour, which is not what I’m paying the $$ for. I still have big group PTSD from our 51(!) on the ABD Baltics Add-on, and this brought it all back in a not great way.
On the positive side, as far as long bus rides go, Japan has some of the best rest stops I’ve ever seen. If there is a country award for clean, nice, rest stops, Japan wins hands down. The “magic” toilets, as my son dubbed them in China, are everywhere. There are mostly western toilets in Japan, but one or two places also had squatty potties. If you read my report from China, you know that DD and I definitely embraced the squatty potty. I found them easy to use and much cleaner, but we didn’t have many converts this trip, LOL.
Hotels:
Days 5 & 6: The Associa was nice enough, but easily the least lux of the hotels on this trip. The "North Korean" décor as someone quipped was outdated, but it was fine, and I suspect the nicest place in the area.
We really enjoyed the Onsen, which we tried out the second late afternoon. DH has a tattoo on his arm so he and DS couldn’t try it, but even for this modest former Catholic schoolgirl, it was really no big deal. People are very blasé and no one is looking at you. We ran into another of our group in the hall so three of us went together and we were pretty much the only people in there. We felt pretty stupid trying to figure out the sit down showers, especially when we realized later that there were western showers. But it provided a good laugh. And just a head’s up on temp … I love hot hot tubs, but these were really hot even for me. We didn’t stay long, and it took a long time to cool off.
Here we are all kitted out for the Onsen. The hotel provided these funny slippers that I tried desperately to buy later--I should have tried to buy them at the hotel. I'm weird, but I loved them. Think Vinyl Grandma.
The Hilton Hotel in Odawara is only one night, which was kind of sad. We were there for only a little over 12 hours! It was a nice hotel, and I loved the buffet breakfast and dinner there. It was the only place other than the sushi making day where we had the option of sushi for an ABD meal. The guy made me exactly what I wanted. This is also the hotel where the Junior Adventurer night takes place.
I’ve mentioned this in another thread, but we only had one true junior adventurer on this trip, but all the “kids” through college age were given the option of participating in the bowling/games/pizza night and every one joined in, including DD19 and DS22. DH and I tried to argue that we were going to take continuing education classes but we were shut down
They had a blast, and it was one of the highlights of the trip for them. There were many saying that they wish this night had come earlier as the young people really bonded—as did the adults. We hung out outside the bar with a few of the other couples and really had a great time.
The bowling shoe vending machine! Japan is a land of vending machines--they are everywhere.
DS on the lanes:
Activities:
I was pretty templed out by Day #5 and there are two of them that day.
The first one with all the gates was fine, but I really wish we’d had more time to walk. There is a loop that you can walk in 2 hours, and by this time I was craving exercise and activity, but we only had enough time to do a small portion of it (maybe 15-30 minutes).
By far my favorite temple of the trip was the Toda-ji Temple in Nara. It was massive and very impressive looking. Unfortunately, our Nara experience was a little tainted by the weather. It was our one day of really unpleasant heat and humidity. My husband’s comment at one point was that he didn’t care whether we went to the Imperial Museum of Toe Clippings as long as it had AC. He kills me sometimes--that one will go down the family lore.
The picture doesn't really capture the size of this place:
I was also not enamored of the famed Nara bowing deer, especially after I pulled a huge tic off one of our fellow travelers after she was brushed by a deer that must have thought she had something. They are very aggressive if they think you have food or paper. So head’s up—if they get close tic check! I don’t think they have Lyme disease but still … ick.
They are rampant:
The mochi making would have been cool if it had been separate and inside, and if we’d gotten to see more of the process. But it’s outside in the middle of the street, and you are fighting with people who don’t realize this is a special “reserved” activity and are trying to push their way through you. It basically consists of a few rounds of banging of the mochi with a huge mallet. One of our junior adventurers got to help out and that was it. I’m not surprised it’s gone from the itinerary next year. It seemed like a nightmare for the guides.
The long ride to Takayama was broken up by the Sumo stop. This was one of those things I thought would be really cool but didn’t end up resonating with me. The people are all really nice and so excited to see us, but it wasn’t something I’d be clamoring to do again. There’s a little too much TMI on those outfits, too, LOL.
For the Takayama days the whole group visits Shirakawa together and then we break off into two groups for the afternoon and the next morning. One group rides bikes and the other has a food tour in Takayama. We had the bike ride the first day, which was nice as it put us back at the hotel a little earlier so we could to the Onsen before dinner.
The UNESCO village of Shirakawa is charming and was a highlight of the itinerary for me. It’s mostly looking at the buildings and shopping, but we also did a little nature walk and hike up the hill that helped alleviate some of that restlessness that we were experiencing from moving so slowly and all the bus time.
Charming thatched houses:
Gorgeous views from the top of the hill:
I was raining a little that day, but it stopped for most of the bike ride. We loved the bike ride, and it ended up being DD’s favorite part of the trip. We had a few stops along the way to look at things like the rice paddies and the farm where the famous Hida cows are raised.
Continued in next post ...
I'm a hiker and not hitting Fuji was a definite bummer. I'm not sure whether you want to do the parks, but I thought 3 nights would have been perfect (we only did 2). Tokyo is a really cool city. I thought 5 days was perfect. I wish we'd done Tokyo Tower, and I wish I'd thought ahead to book a baseball game. I really just wish I'd had more time to walk around the places we visited and absorb.
