The Tans take on Tokyo

Day 6 (Sat, 31 May 2008)

Time to leave Nikko and surprise, surprise, it's still raining. We were planning to take a cab to the Tobu train station where we could use the takuhaibin service to send our luggage back to Tokyo (the Teddy Bear house didn't offer the service, I guess its location is too remote). But when Mr Kobayashi heard our plans, he actually offered to get his daughter to drive us. Now, that's hospitality for you!


Here we are with the very hospitable Mr Kobayashi and his daughter, Kanako. She drove us to a part of town where her friend operates a small shop with a takuhaibin service, helped us fill up the form and then drove us to the Tobu train station. And as she dropped us off, she got out of the car, kept bowing to us and saying "thank you for staying for us!" Of course we bowed back and said "Thank you! Thank you!" My smile was so wide it felt frozen on my face. I'm still unused to these over enthusiastic gestures of politeness.

But not to take anything away from the Kobayashis, they really are a wonderful host and very warm, generous people.










Back at Tobu-Nikko, we took the local train to change to the Spacia train back to Asakusa. The left picture shows the local train and the right picture shows the Spacia. Doesn't the Spacia look way cool? Once we arrived at Asakusa station, we decided to buy lunch from Matsuya department store and bring it back to our hotel to eat. Remember the yummy beef we had bought for our trip to Nikko? We bought that again as well as unadon (eel rice), tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) and some croquette.

We took the subway from Asakusa station to Suehirocho station which was a 6min walk to our hotel. At least it was supposed to be 6mins. Although we had a map and had judiciously checked out the location map at Suehirocho station, we still managed to get lost. I blame this on the fact that in Japan, the streets have NO NAMES. That's right. For some incomprehensible reason, only the very large and major roads in Japan have street names. The regular roads and small lanes (which exist in abundance in Tokyo) are all nameless. Apparently, when people give directions, it goes something like: "walk 100m, turn right at the petrol station, walk on until you see a statue of a dog, then turn left." For Pete's sake!

Anyway, we had overshot our turning without realising it and we knew the hotel was in this general direction but couldn't figure out which of those tiny alleys it was in. Oh, by the way, if you think nameless roads are bad enough, just wait till you hear this: the house/building numbers are allocated not based on their location on the street but based on the order in which they were built. Which means that house no. 3 could be next to building no. 41. Which could be next to house no. 97. I kid you not! Who says the Japanese don't have a sense of humour? How do cabs find their way, you ask? They all have GPS.

Back to our situation - we asked a passerby if she knew where the hotel was. The Japanese are really very helpful. Even though she clearly had no idea, she scrutinised our map very carefully, kept looking around the vicinity, obviously very vexed that she didn't know where it was. Then she started stopping everyone who walked by to ask if they knew where the place was! Eventually, someone pointed vaguely in the general direction where we were headed anyway, so we thanked them and went on our way. We finally found it when I recognised the hotel having seen a photo of its exterior online.

We stayed at Hotel Edoya. I chose it because

1) It's a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) and I wanted us to try something different.

2) It's quite central and conveniently located near a few subway stations.

3) It's affordable (Y15,590 (S$203) for Sun & Mon nights, Y17,670 (S$230) for all other nights. This is for a room that sleeps 4 with attached bath and comes with free buffet breakfast.) I keep mentioning the attached bath cos I'm finicky that way. No common bathrooms for me!

So we checked in, the receptionist magically produced our luggage (I just can't get over this!) and we went to our room. As you can see in the picture, the sleeping area behind has 3 futons, you can shut the wooden sliding door for privacy if you like. The last futon is on the left side. Space-wide, this is luxurious by Japanese standards. In most other ryokans, the futons are kept in the cupboard in the daytime and at night, the housekeeping staff will remove the table and turn out the futons, ie the sleeping and living area is the same.


Hidden from view is a bath and separate toilet. The bath is a typical Japanese square-shaped bath. You're supposed to sit on a stool inside the bath and scoop water over yourself, but nah... we just used the shower. The only negative is Hotel Edoya only has air-conditioning, not heating. We were fine since it was summer but I imagine it must get pretty chilly in winter.

After lunch, we set out to explore Rikugien Gardens. In case I didn't mention it before, it was raining. Again. Rikugien is a Japanese landscaped garden in Tokyo, quite close to Yushima, the district where we were staying. It's supposedly very beautiful and reproduces 88 scenes from famous poems in miniature. We changed a couple of trains and alighted at Komagome station. As we were walking towards Rikugien based on the map I had, I kept wondering where it could be. We were in the heart of a city district, surrounded by buildings. It didn't look like a place which would hold something as verdant as a landscaped garden. And then, suddenly, we turned the corner of a building and there was the entrance!


Kids get free entry, which is nice. It really is very pretty, in a manicured kind of way. The gardeners here trim the grass using tiny scissors! It's apparently an attraction in itself.

Here are some of the scenic shots.




I'll be honest here. Because it was raining, we didn't really enjoy it as much as we otherwise would have. The ground was muddy, so most of the time, we too were busy looking down trying not to step on mud or puddles to admire the scenery. Lesley-Anne and Andre kept going "eeeee!" and "yuck!" and "ewwww!" Kenneth would say something like "look at that beautiful tree" and the kids would look for all of 5 seconds and go back to playing watch-your-step.

After that mini adventure, it was back to the hotel, to the relief of the kids. Since we didn't have any plans for dinner and no one felt like going out again after a nice warm shower, we decided to eat at the hotel restaurant Umejaya. I had found out from their website that they had a set dinner for Y1,500 (S$20) which I thought was very reasonable. In Japan, dinners at restaurants are generally expensive. We're talking S$100 and up per person. Most guide books advise you to eat your big meal at lunch where the set meals tend to be more affordable. But at Umejaya, the set meal for lunch and dinner is the same price, which is highly unusual.

For Y1,500, we could choose any 2 items from this list:

• Tempura
• Burned beef with sweet red miso
• Sashimi (raw fish)
• Steamed eel with egg
• Boiled seasonal vegetables and fish
• Fried crab croquette
• Burned fish with sweet white miso

Each set comes with rice, miso soup and salad. Sounds good? We ordered 3 sets with 1 sashimi, 2 tempura, 1 beef, 1 fish, 1 eel. This was what the spread looked like.

It was absolutely DELICIOUS. I had to show separate pictures of the super fresh sashimi and the to-die-for beef. Andre loved the piping hot eel. All very generous portions and even though we only ordered 3 sets, the waitress brought us 4 bowls of soup. I think they're used to people sharing food.

It was the best meal we'd had in Japan so far. And the bill only came up to about S$60! What made it so cheap was that there was minimal tax, no service charge, they don't charge you for silly incidentals like hand towels as they would in Singapore, and ocha is free.

I think in this picture, the kids are saying they enjoyed the meal...

Just a quick lift ride upstairs and we're back in the room. Here we are in our yukata, all comfy and ready for bed.

Nikko means udon

Day 5 (Fri, 30 May 2008)

We woke up and... curses! It's still raining. It's warm and toasty in the room but that's because of the heater. We went onto the veranda and GAH! it's freezing. This was supposed to be our sight-seeing day of Nikko. How to see anything in this mist and rain?

Anyway, we gamely wrapped up (Andre wore 6 layers) and headed outside. Mr Kobayashi lent us an umbrella, which was really nice. There's a bus-stop just outside the hotel. As you can see, it's no.95. At the hotel, you can get a bus-timetable which tells you exactly what time the bus will arrive at EACH BUS-STOP. We're waiting for the 9.23am bus and at 9.22am, the-boy-who-can't-wait asked "where's the bus?" I said, "count to 60." Would you believe it, as he counted to 53, the bus rumbled up?? Unreal.

The bus is actually one of those luxury coach types, not the basic public bus as you might imagine. There's a real-time information display system in front of the coach which shows you which bus-stop the bus is at and which is the next bus-stop, so you can press the bell if you want to get off. All the bus-stops are listed in numbers, so it's real easy to track.

Very quickly, we're back at the Tobu Nikko station. This is like the bus depot of sorts, but with only 4 different bus-stops and routes. We needed to come here to catch another bus to the main touristy parts of Nikko. So we got on yet another bus. Along the way, we passed the famous Shinkyo Bridge (left). We also passed the bus-stop for Toshogu Shrine. The Toshogu Shrine is famous for its carving of the three monkeys. You know the "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" monkeys? The Toshogu Shrine is where they originated. Bet you didn't know that!

Then we drove up the infamous Iroha-zaka winding road which comprises 48 hairpin curves (24 up, 24 down). This main thoroughfare connects central Nikko and the top of Nikko. After about an hour of winding road up the mountain, we arrived at the Lake Chuzenji area, which is the main tourist spot. First, we headed for Kegon Falls, which is touted as the third most beautiful waterfall in all of Japan. This, on the right, is what we were supposed to see.

This is what we actually saw:

Stupid rain! What a disappointment. By then, it was getting to be real cold, so we nipped into a nearby shop. It sold packaged food but it also served up some dishes from the little kitchen behind the counter. You know you're not in the main city anymore when all the signs are in Japanese.

However, having memorised the Hiragana system before coming on the trip, I recognised certain words. Important ones too. Like soba and udon. Immediately the kids wanted udon (even though it's not even 11am) so we ordered a steaming bowl of udon.

Kenneth also ordered some yuba, which is the specialty of Nikko. This is soya beancurd skin, handmade and rolled. It's sold everywhere in Nikko, you can have it with soba, udon or alone as a side dish, like the one Kenneth is having here. It has a very smooth texture, similar to the beancurd skin we have at home, but it's accompanied by a sweet syrup. I've discovered that the Japanese like their food sweet, like their curries.

The great thing about restaurants in Japan is that ocha is always free and unlimited. So we savoured our udon and yuba and multiple cups of hot ocha until we had no more excuse to stay in the shop.

It was back out in the cold and instantly, the complaints started. "Mummy, I'm so cold!" wailed Andre. "You're already wearing 6 layers!" I said. "But I'm still cooooold." He sniffled pathetically hoping for sympathy. He got none. "If you walk faster, you'll warm up." "HAHHHHH".

We walked over to Lake Chuzenji. Lake Chuzenji is a crater lake caused by the eruption of Mount Nantai 20,000 years ago. With an above-sea-level altitude of 1269m, it is the highest lake in Japan. This is a magnificent view of Lake Chuzenji (picture courtesy of Japan-guide.com).


And here was the actual, that day. Curses! Our original intent back in sunny Singapore was to take a cruise around the lake. But on that wet, wet day, you couldn't have seen a thing. In fact, no one seemed to be out, the town looked deserted.


So what to do now? You guessed it, eat more udon!

We went into this quaint little shop which had a terrific range of food, as you can see from the window display. That lady by the door was the proprietress. Thing was, she spoke absolutely zero English and the entire menu was in Japanese with NO PICTURES. So to order our food, I had to go outside, point to the items on the display while she took my order.

She brought us 4 cups of ocha. Proudly displaying my newfound knowledge, I pointed at 2 cups and said "oyu". She looked at me blankly. "Oyu?" "Hot water?" "Oyu?" (Like maybe if I said it repeatedly, it would start to make sense.) She went over to the counter and brought over 2 glasses of cold water. Eh?

I asked Kenneth if maybe I'd been saying it wrong. He said it probably wasn't that she didn't understand me, she probably didn't have hot water, only ocha. Ah, ok.

So here's what we had: two bowls of udon and one plate of curry don. We can't get used to this sweet curry. I mean, it's really sweet.

After that, we headed back out. And mind you, everytime we entered a warm place, it got increasingly more difficult to chase Andre out again.

We went back to Lake Chuzenji to see if the mist had miraculously cleared while we were having lunch. Nope. If anything, it's worse. Curses!

We just wandered around the little town. It's old, quaint and very Japanese. As you can tell, I don't really have much to say. Would it be more interesting if I told you we saw a family of macaques (father, mother and baby) sauntering across the road? Nikko reveres monkeys because of the Toshogu Shrine, so I guess they have right of way.

We entered a souvenir shop that looked interesting. The shop lady spoke English! Hooray! We learnt from her that it was about 8 degrees celcius outside. What! Wasn't it supposed to be summer? She was very helpful, told us what type of yuba to buy (we wanted to buy some home for the folks to try). Also bought lots of mochi and monkey chocolate (chocolate shaped like monkeys I mean, not chocolate made from monkeys. Eww...) As we were paying for our purchases, the lady smiled at Andre and said "cute boy". He knows it! Don't have to tell him anymore!

After that we decided to call it day. Took the bus back down the 24 hairpin curves. Kenneth and I were debating whether to make a stop at Toshogu Shrine but were vehemently vetoed by both our kids. Both of them ended up sleeping on the bus (eating udon all day is so tiring!)

So it's back to the hotel and Bento boxes for dinner. Spent the rest of the evening playing card games in the room, which is one way of enjoying a holiday, I guess.

Nikko and our very own babbling brook

Day 4 (Thur, 29 May 2008)

After three days of hectic fun at Disney, it's time for a change of pace. Today, we're off to Nikko, a popular mountain resort just north of Tokyo. We used the takuhaibin service to send our remaining luggage to our final hotel in Tokyo (remember, our luggage to Nikko had already been sent yesterday) and we took the shuttle bus for the last time to... no, we're not going back to Disneyland! There are no train or subway stations near Palm Terrace Hotel, so we're going to take the train from the station next to Disneyland. See how wonderful the shuttle bus is?

Today is going to be a day of travelling. If there's any day we're going to get lost, this is it. We have several changes of trains and buses, let's see how well we can negotiate them! Unfortunately, the weather had just turned for the worst, it had begun to rain, a cold, miserable, ongoing drizzly type of rain. Looking on the bright side, thank God we had three days of sunshine at Disney.

A note about Tokyo's rail and subway system. The rail is run by the JR company, the subway by two companies - Tokyo Metro and Toei Lines. It's all integrated and seamless, meaning a station can have inter-crossing lines by any or all three of these companies. This makes train travel extremely convenient, it's definitely the way to travel in Tokyo, considering the exhorbitant taxi rates. However, the maps can be extremely confusing. This is just the subway map (without JR) for Tokyo:

And here's the catch - if you change lines that belong to different companies, you end up paying TWICE because there's a minimum charge for each company. Eg. if I want to go from Tokyo station to Roppongi station (a 10-15min ride), there are 6 different routes and changes I can take and the fare varies from Y160 to Y320. So it's best to do your homework and find out the cheapest possible fare (without compromising too much on time, of course). Fortunately, there are quite a few route finders online, you key in your start and ending stations and they find the possible routes, with fares and time for you. Here's one that's quite good.

We started at JR Mahaima station. Couldn't figure out the ticket machine so bought the tickets from a counter. We took the JR Keiyo line to Hatchobori station, changed to Tokyo Metro's Hibaya line which we took to Ueno station, changed to Ginza line which we took to Asakusa station. Tah-dah! Went without a hitch. We quickly realised that the subway system is much more user-friendly than the JR system. Each station has a letter and a number, eg. Hatchobori station is no. 11 on Hibiya line, so it's H11. If you follow the letters and numbers, it's easy to figure out where you need to go, without knowing Japanese. Not that it really matters, all the subway stations have signs and ticket machines that feature English.

So we're now at Asakusa, where we needed to buy tickets for the Tobu train to Nikko. Funnily enough, the office to buy the tickets is not within the Asakusa building but a few doors away. So I trudged out in the rain while Kenneth bought our Bento boxes for lunch (the train station sits right beneath Matsuya Department Store). I found the ticket office, bought 4 tickets for the limited express Spacia train. I asked for seats that face the front and the lady looked at me funny and said, "you just step on the pedal on the side of the seat and the seat will turn any way you want." Ah so! The sua-ku Singaporean...

Just for info, I bought the All Nikko Pass, which gives you a return trip from Asakusa to Nikko, unlimited train trips within the Nikko and Kinugawa (an onsen town near Nikko) and unlimited bus rides within Nikko. It's pretty good value as bus trips in Nikko are expensive. This pass is only available only to foreigners.

And we're off! Right on the dot. We were pretty excited about taking the train, after seeing all those scenic trips on Japan Hour. The Spacia train is SUPER. Huge seats and the ride is smooooth and very fast. We were trying to figure out the pedal thing to turn the seats and this elderly gentleman immediately hopped up from his seat, stepped on the pedal and turned the front two seats (with me still in it!) to face the back. He was jabbering away in Japanese, obviously very pleased to have been able to help us.

It's an ingenious contraption, trust the Japanese to have thought of this. I'm sure though, they didn't account for little boys who kept wanting to turn the seat back and forth a hundred times.

And now, time for lunch. Kenneth had bought different types of Bento boxes. The one Andre is eating comprises different types of sushi. But the stand out one was one of braised beef. Tender, melt-in-your mouth, juicy... I'm drooling just thinking of it now.

Oh, and I have to mention this. You know how the Japanese are so into packaging? We're always admiring the painstaking efforts they put into packaging something as simple as a Bento box. Well, look at the Bento box Andre is eating from - it looks like wood but it's actually styrofoam!! I can't believe they actually manufacture styrofoam that looks like wood...

We'd decided to make a stop at Kinugawa first before Nikko, since our All Nikko Pass covered the train trip there. From Asakusa to Kinugawa-onsen station, it took about 2 hours (Spacia is the limited express and makes the fewest stops, so it's the quickest way to get there). Kinugawa is an onsen town ("onsen" ie hot spring). The Japanese love their onsen and they come here to relax.

But for us, we're just going to visit a mini theme park of sorts called Tobu World Square. A short bus ride and we're here! Tobu World Square is a park which showcases more than 100 most famous world sites. Everything is made to 1/25 scale. There are some 140,000 miniature people created for the park and apparently, NO TWO ARE THE SAME. I can believe this, coming from the Japanese!

The park is divided into regions, like Europe, Asia, America, and they have two for Japan - one of historic Japan and one modern Japan. I thought the ticket prices were not cheap, considering the park isn't very big (Y2,500 (S$33) for adults, Y1,200 (S$16) for children) but I guess we're paying for the intensive work that goes into the park.

Here's Big Ben! Eiffel Tower in the background. As you can see, it was still drizzling so Andre was wearing a poncho which he kept trodding on and was ripping with every step.

This is the Forbidden City in China. We didn't really try to examine if all those people were indeed different but it was pretty impressive all the same.

Kenneth took this photo because he thought it was interesting to show the maintenance guy cleaning up the streets in New York city. By the way, some of the exhibits like Narita Airport and Tokyo subway station actually had moving planes and trains. Andre was quite transfixed!

We had actually planned to take the bus back to Kinugawa-onsen station, but when we checked the bus timetable, we realised that we had just missed it and the next one was only in 45mins. We figured that since the station was quite close by, it might be worthwhile to take a cab.

A little about cabs in Japan: the starting fare is Y710 (S$9.30) for about 2km, after that it jumps at an alarming rate (all those horror stories about S$200 cab rides within Tokyo city are true). But since bus tickets for a family of four came up to Y500 (S$6.50), a short ride in a cab was not appreciably more expensive.

We took a cab and it turned out to be just about Y800. We saved 45mins, which turned out to be even more valuable because we were in time to catch the earlier train to Nikko. By the way, it's not uncommon for the train schedules to allocate 2mins for transfers. And now, some information about Nikko. It's a very popular mountain resort town, especially among the Japanese. The foliage there changes each season and has its own unique beauty. There's a Japanese saying, "Never say splendid till you've seen Nikko". In Autumn, tourists flock to Nikko to see the famous foliage and waterfalls.

Our plan was to buy Bento boxes from the town to bring back to our hotel for dinner (our hotel only offers western dinners on advanced orders and there's nothing in the vicinity). But when we arrived at the Nikko train station, we soon saw that there wasn't very much available. Unlike the train stations in Tokyo, this one was very small and only had a couple of small stalls. It was only about 4pm but due to the cold and the rain, we were starting to get hungry. We wandered around and saw a cosy looking udon shop just across the station. Udon at 4pm? Why not?

It's up a narrow staircase on the second floor. A smiley elderly lady showed us to a table. The menu had pictures - great! She brought us four cups of ocha. Hmmm... my kids don't drink green tea. How do you ask for hot water? A quick check with my pocket Japanese dictionary (I told you I was prepared!) told me it's "oyu". So I asked for two oyu and in no time, two cups of hot water arrive. Perfect!

We ordered two different types of udon, one bowl of soba and a plate of karage (fried) chicken. Have you ever had hot soup on a blistering cold day? It's heaven. I've never been fond of udon in Singapore but that day, it was the best thing ever.

Can I say this again? We LOVE Japanese food!

After that yummy snack/tea, we walked back to the train station. As we waited, Kenneth explored the surrounding vicinity a little and came back with some buns for our breakfast tomorrow. We also bought a couple of Bento boxes from the little station stalls for tonight.

The hotel that we're staying in is up on a hill, surrounded by a forest. There's a bus that plies that route but it stops operating from 3pm daily. So we took a cab up to the hotel. Wasn't very far, think the fare came up to about Y1,000 (S$13). Oh, another thing to note, if you're going to take cabs, make sure you have your destination printed out in Japanese. Address too and map if it's an obscure location. Taxi driver do get lost in Tokyo and you don't want them asking directions with the meter running!

So we arrived at the Forest Inn Nikko Teddy Bear House. It's a family-run establishment. I chose it for a few reasons: it's reasonably priced (Y17,850 (S$232) a night for a room that sleeps 4 with attached bath. Nikko hotels can be expensive as it's a tourist spot), it's close to the train station, it has large rooms that can comfortably sleep 4, and finally, it's cute!

This is the view of the hotel as you walk down the driveway. It's very peaceful. I love the thought of staying right in the middle of a forest, that's as far away from the hustle and bustle of city as you can get.

The owner is Mr Kobayashi, a kindly, elderly gentleman. He was expecting us and had put out four pairs of red slippers for us. We left our shoes at the entrance and wore the slippers to our room, it's like staying in somebody's private home. Mr Kobayashi went behind the counter and brought out... our luggage! It's like magic, really.

This is the hotel lobby. The inn is called Teddy Bear House because the owner's daughter, who helps run the inn, collects teddy bears. Some of them are on display here and throughout the hotel, you see teddy bears everywhere.

So we go to our room and it's very spacious. You can see how the four beds are laid out and there's a little veranda which looks out into the forest. Lesley-Anne was so stoked to discover that there was a little stream running just outside our room. It's like a page from a novel, our very own babbling brook! In fact, you can hear the soothing sound of the brook throughout the night.

Here it is, our very own babbling brook. This picture was taken from our veranda. Isn't it just gorgeous?


This picture shows the exterior of the hotel. Our room is the lower floor, 2nd one from the end. As you can see, the building is on stilts. I told Andre not to jump in the room in case it collapsed.


I think this hotel was another great find. I'm sure we went to bed dreaming of babbling brooks and udon.