Yamasaki weekend 22nd sep - 25 sep

On Thursday (edit: I started writing this the week after we left and finished it three weeks later) Nick and I set off for Yamasaki. We caught the train to Sannomiya, where we had a dinner of delicious steamed pork buns.

 

We also picked up some omiyage for our hosts for the weekend. We had the bus timetable, and knew the Kanji for the stop we had to get off at. I knew the bus station well, having been stuck there for an hour when I missed the hourly bus to Yashiro for my prefectural teachers training, so finding it was no problem. We hit a snag, however, when one of the bus stops was labeled with exactly the same Kanji as the one we had to get off at. After inspecting our tickers the bus driver insisted that it was not our stop, but I insisted louder and he let us off the bus at a bus stop just off the freeway exit. Little did Nick and I know that we had just been the cause for major concern for all of the nice people on the bus with us. First the woman who got off the bus with us waited with her father by the side of the road until we were practically shouting "daijobu" at her, with manic smiles and deep bows. Then the bus we had got off came back to the stop we were waiting at, and the bus driver hung out of the window, asking us over and over if we were ok. Once again we smiled, bowed, and said "daijobu" over and over again, forcing him to park his bus and stroll away to the bus port, with an eye still on the weirdo foreigners. We saw one of our hosts drive past, so we waved frantically in case he couldn't see us on the side of the road. To our shock (and embarrassment) the car car stopped in the middle of the highway, reversed 50 metres, and a young Japanese lady and older Japanese gentleman ran out of the car, asking us where we wanted to go. More bowing, smiling, and daijobu-ing, this time accompanied by many a gomenasai, and attempts to explain that we had only waved because we had thought it was our friends car. Finally we had a call from the guy who was picking us up, who was waiting for us in a carpark a few hundred metres down the road. This was a huge relief, as we were terrified that if we stuck around the bus stop any longer we would only embarrass ourselves further. We picked up our bags and struck out in the direction of the car park at a brisk pace, only to be brought up short by someone running after us, shouting for us to stop. The bus driver had seen us walking away, and had been so worried he'd chased after us to make sure we were ok. More bowing, smiling, and daijobu-ing. By this time we were almost in hysterics, and it was a huge relief to sit at a table at a local american-style diner with the local gaijin and laugh about the whole situation. One thing this did teach us is that hitch hiking around Japan, particularly rural Japan, may be a whole lot easier than we thought.

Our hosts lived in a two story, 2LDK, and were also hosting another couple from Kobe. The house is almost sixty years old (I think...) and has tatami mats in every room (but the kitchen/dining room and the bathroom). The typhoon had driven the temperature way down and we had a blissful sleep in the cool with the door open on brand new guest futons. On Friday morning we were treated to a delicious breakfast of fresh baked bread and fried eggs, and we set off for Tottori, the prefecture that neighbours Hyogo to the North East. We, and ten other folk, were heading from Hyogo to Tottori for a craft beer festival being held at a ski resort. The drive took about two and a half hours, most of which was through mountains. We took an incredible (but expensive) toll road, that was mostly bridges and tunnels. No joke. It literally went bridge, tunnel, bridge, tunnel for about an hour. We made lots of smug jokes about how many people it must have employed to build, and how much it contributed to the national debt, when we were really just jealous of Japan's awesome road. After arriving in Tottori, depositing the car in a crazy parking garage cum dispenser ruled by the hydraulic arm of a car-o-vator, we boarded the free shuttle bus for the half hour drive up the mountain to the festival. 

The shuttle bus took off from the local JR station. On the plaza outside the station was this bizarre station which we nicknamed the train to heaven. Underneath the train tracks are all of these flying children following the train.

The craft beer festival was one of those events that would never ever work in Australia. For about 50 bucks you could drink as much craft beer as you want from 11am til 8pm. It was all set up in the car park of a ski resort.

The mountain is called Daisen (we think) and it made quite the backdrop for what otherwise would have just been a bunch of really drunk people in a parking lot. Nick was itching to try and climb it so after a few beers, and a delicious bucket of wedges served with a slice of lemon, the Hyogo crew set off up the grassy slope that in the winter would be the ski slope.

You can tell we're already a few beers in by this point. Nick, another aussie jet, and I took the ski slope further up the mountain. Nick wanted to get a head start on his ascent, and we wanted to check out the view. The ski lift was hilarious, we were only about 2 feet off the ground. They must not get too much snow in the winter or you would be dragging your feet through it on that thing.

There were lots of pretty flowers in the grass though, so that made it worthwhile. The view at the top of the lift was really incredible.

At that point it was still lovely and clear, and you could see forever. Nick set off, and we returned to the beer festival, stopping off to take a picture with the goat on the way.

The rest of the day was pretty much as you would expect at an all you can drink beer festival. Nothing really needs to be said about it here.

The next day, Saturday, we set off for Tottori's most famous landmark, the Tottori Desert. It's actually a bunch of sand dunes surrounded by forest and the sea but I guess it's the closest thing to a desert they have over here. Our host, whose car we were driving, let me drive for a few hours which was awesome. I miss having regular access to a car!

The biggest sand dune was absolutely crawling with people, who were almost all wearing clothing entirely unsuited to climbing steep sandy slopes. I'm talking ankle length denim skirts and high heeled boots kind of unsuited. Nick enjoyed jumping off the slope, much to the amusement of the people up the top of the hill.

I was peer pressured (it didn't take a lot of peer pressure...) into rolling down the dune on my side. According to Nick this also prompted a lot of twittering and tut tutting from those assembled at the top. I had fully intended to go for a swim, my first salt water swim in Japan, but the water was kinda murky and gross (I know, I know, Perth standards rule out most of the worlds beaches) and no one else was swimming so I just waded about for a bit and then trudged back up the hill, a feat that required removing my pants and wearing them around my neck like a scarf.

We drove back to Yamasaki that afternoon and had a delicious dinner at Laputa, a Ghibli themed restaurant. We were the only customers there and so the son of the owners came in to play with the gaijin. He is three and extremely adorable, and made me miss my nephew and niece.

Next morning we had another delicious fried egg and fresh baked bread breakfast (gotta get me a bread maker!) and explored Yamasaki with our hosts.

 

This is the view from their living room window.

We walked up the mountain by their house and explored the adventure playground at the top. There were all these tiny cemeteries dotting the side of the mountain.

And the forest itself was very beautiful.

 

The adventure playground seemed to have a fairytale or Shakespearean theme and there were all these bizarre plastic statues of roman emperors and nymphs.

There was a massive concrete tower in the middle of the park complete with iron spiral staircase. From the top we could see almost all of Yamasaki, spread over every flat surface of the mountain valley.

We piled back into our host's kei car and drove south to Himeji. We ate amazing kaiten sushi and explored the grounds of Himeji castle.

So delicious!

Himeji castle is closed at the moment as it's repaired. The entire thing in enclosed in a giant white box. The grounds were still amazing, and we spent a long time in the ornamental gardens.

The leaves are just starting to change.

From Himeji we caught the express train back to Nishinomiya via Kobe. The next day I woke up super sick and had to wear a mask to work.

I was coughing really hard, and had no classes that day, so I was allowed to go home after lunch. All of the rice paddies in our neighbourhood have been harvested, and each field has a little burning pile of, I'm assuming, chaff.

I took this picture as I was walking home from school.