superchicalonelyviking
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An update for family/friends on what we're doing when off exploring
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Eight (final for this trip!)
Hello from... London! Since Mongolia the trip has mainly consisted of train journeys, but we did have one stop off in Yekaterinburg, one of the biggest cities in Russia, just by the Ural Mountains in Western Siberia. Here we met my Auntie Pat's pen friend (of over 40 years!) Who last met me on a trip to England in 1990! She has lived there all her life with her husband and it was really nice to meet them both for a short time! They met us at the station and took us to their lovely apartment where they cooked us a fantastic dinner, complete with Borscht (a russian soup with beetroot), marshmallow whirls and vodka! Then we went to the border of European and Asian Russia - the border is marked by a monument, with a line that divides Europe and Asia. It was very satisfying to step over the border back home to Europe on foot! (Then step back into Asia. Repeat several times.) Lots of newlyweds like to visit the border to leave a ribbon on the trees there, it creates a special atmosphere. Afterwards we explored the town, which is lovely and felt very alive with lots of people walking by the river at sunset, and they too have a Beatles monument ! Later went for pelmeni which are a delicious kind of boiled/steamed russian dumpling with a meat filling, with a drink called Kvass. So all in all a great stopover in Yekaterinburg- it was so lovely to meet Farida and her husband who are very kind and knowledgeable people and we hope to see them again -hopefully it won't take us 26 years this time! From Yekaterinburg we took a train to Moscow, then a train through Belarus and Poland to Berlin, then several trains and a Eurostar back to London. The Moscow to Berlin leg (Strizh) has this amazing train which feels like a spaceship and you can get a 35% discount for your birthday or honeymoon! Highly recommended! Final thoughts and reflections - it's been a very interesting trip and great way to learn about the chunk of land in between here and the Pacific! Fascinating how different the cultures of the different countries are, and how the culture has been shaped by the natural environment, government and historic events. The somewhat epic journey, Japan and back without flying, seemed a bit daunting before setting off. But you take it one leg at a time, and each leg is always enjoyable, comfortable and very interesting. I would really reccomend trying to travel in this way to anybody. Yes, it would have been quicker to fly to these places we've visited, but having properly travelled to each place, I've always felt an awareness of, and a connection to home - in a way that I don't feel it when I fly somewhere. It's hard to describe, but it's a satisfying and quite special feeling. Someone we met named it 'the places in between' - by passing through a country and seeing the 'places in between' - not necessarily the most beautiful or charming or famous places but also the "ordinary" places where people live their lives just as you or I. It gives a unique perspective where rather than seeing a charicature of a place or a nation, you can catch a glimpse of real life there. It feels good to be back in the UK, we are now on a delayed train back up north so feel totally back to normal! Looking forward to going back to moaning about the weather, gravy, a 'normal' cup of tea, walking the dog and having a bathroom again! Thanks to everyone who has followed the blog all this time, and if anyone reading is considering doing any legs of the trip, get in touch-we'd be happy to help !
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7
Hello from the Gobi Desert! This post is a bit of an epic so you might want to sit down with a cup of tea if you're planning to read it all! We've been in Mongolia for almost a week now, and have found it to be a fantastic place with very beautiful landscapes, where traditional culture is still very much a part of life as parts of the country are rapidly changing and becoming modernised. The traditional lifestyle in Mongolia is that of nomadic herding, where herders move several times per year with their herd of cattle, goats, sheep, yaks and horses, living in a ger (yurt) which is dismantled and taken with them. The extremes of temperature from minus 40 in the winter to +40 in the summer mean they are very tough ! Mongolia became under Soviet governance in the 20's and was a communist country until the early 90's. As a buffer zone between Russia and China, it received a lot of subsidies from the Kremlin and hence in a lot of ways people felt their quality of life was better during this time - there was free healthcare, universal education and if herders didn't meet quotas set by the government (for wool, meat, etc) they were given enough for a basic standard of living, which it is felt did not encourage productivity. As an independent democratic nation it is in a time of transition to an economically productive country - there is a wealth of natural reserves such as gold, uranium and zinc, and it is hoped that if managed properly, mining will bring a lot of wealth to Mongolia. Nowadays more and more people live in urban areas (around 60%), the main one being the capital Ulaanbaatar, where there is better infrastructure and access to services and employment. Here the landscape is not unlike many other Soviet cities with huge crumbling tower blocks and plenty of concrete, however with one key difference- there has been a strong reluctance of many to leave their ger life behind, and hence the suburbs are full of 'ger districts' where people live in small fenced areas, near to shops, electricity and running water, but in their ger. Everyone in Mongolia over the age of 18 has a right to 0.7 hectares of land, so can take this and put their ger on it, sometimes families will combine their land and have a compound with several gers and different family members . The ger districts have a lot of air pollution in the winter due to coal fires, and apartment blocks have been built for people to relocate to, however this scheme has proved unpopular. It seems the traditional way of living is important to many Mongolians, even if many parts of life are become modernised or westernised to make life easier. Some people will live in the countryside in a ger just for the summer months and spend the harsh winter in the city. There are still many herders (difficult to say how many as some people may live a semi-nomadic life, but around 30-40%) who continue their way of life in a similar way to how it has been for hundreds of years, however many with certain adaptations, for example solar panels, cars and internet access. Tourism has been useful for many people living in the countryside, bringing money for them to be able to buy these things. There is little other source of income here other than selling livestock, and hence it can be disastrous if there is a particularly harsh summer or winter. Buddhism is the main religion of Mongolia, along with Shamanism and certain other minority religions. The buddhist teachings came from Tibet and the church was very powerful until the communist years when it was declared that there was no religion, and monasteries and temples were destroyed. Still, however, Mongolians continued their rituals and all over the countryside you can see coloured scarves representing air, sky, earth, water and fire, shrines and prayer flags and gers all have a family alter, often with Buddhist ornaments. Mongolians tend to be quite spiritual and superstitious people and we're slowly learning some of the things which are bad luck (e.g accidentally touching someone's foot with yours- you have to shake their hand to say you didn't mean it). So combined with the dramatic, diverse and often empty scenery, all in all it makes for a really interesting place to visit! On planning the fortnight in Mongolia we realised two things, firstly that we happened to be arriving on the first day of the Nadaam Festival - a national celebration with a tournament of "manly games" on a similar (if not bigger) scale to our Christmas! And also that planning to explore yourself with public transport is quite hard work and can take a long time with lots of potential pitfalls , so we gave up on that and booked a tour. We found a small company which aims to maximise benefits to local people and minimise environmental impact, and it has been great so far! The first couple of days we spent enjoying the Nadaam festival, an annual festival to celebrate the arrival of summertime, it has taken place for hundreds of years and comprises three "manly games", wrestling, horse racing and archery, and recently ankle bone shooting has also been added to the games. Actually women are able to take part in the horse racing and archery. The evening we arrived there was a big concert in Sukhbatar Square (named after a famous revolutionary) with lots of music and dancing, including some mongolian renditions of Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran! A huge fireworks display and on the way home there was a jazz band and salsa dancing in the streets. We went to the field by the stadium to watch the archery, you sit in the stands with lots of families and competitors, many wearing the traditional clothes which are a long coat (which doubles as a blanket) boots and a pointy hat, differing in colour and style depending on the person, with the backdrop of the a mountains North of UB behind. the archery we saw was very different to archery elsewhere, the aim is to shoot leather cylinders which are stacked on the floor in a row around 100m away, so the arrows are shot in a long arc - apparently it takes a lot of strength, for a woman it is equivalent to lifting more than 20kg with one arm! By the leather cylinders, judges stand to signal to the shooter whether they were successful or not, and do so by waving their arms in different ways. The following day we went to the horse trainer's Naadam - a smaller festival outside the city for the people who train the horses for the national Naadam in UB and hence miss the celebrations. First we saw the horse racing - interestingly all the riders are kids , as they are lighter - there has recently been a lower age limit of 7 set! They race for around 40km, so it is quite a challenge. It doesn't seem to be a professional/ elite sport as it is in other places- any family who trains horses can enter and win. We also saw the wrestling, where men wearing a nice outfit of a short and decorated jacket with an open front and long sleeves, and matching pants, with a pair of boots, aim to force their opponent to touch the ground with a part of their body other than their feet . Before the fight they salute the referees and perform the eagle dance, where they spread their arms like eagle wings, pretend to swoop around and slap their thighs. The winning wrestlers from the national Naadam were at the event and were awarded a jeep! They then proceeded to drive around the wrestling ring waving out of the sunroof! In between the matches there was a traditional mongolian folk band, a Mongolian pop band and a 'wolf dance' with throat singing and really impressive dancing. It was a scorching hot day and the area around the ring was packed with people. The stands were crammed full with people climbing onto the railings at the back for a better view. A truck drove round to spray water on the grass to keep it moist whilst the music was being performed and also sprayed the crowd, which people were quite happy with! After the Naadam we went into the countryside and drove for miles into what seemed to be dry farmers fields on the side of gentle mountain slopes occasionally asking at gers for directions - it turns out it's quite difficult to find your destination if it moves onto a new pasture in the middle of vast open countryside every few months!-but eventually found the place we were looking for - a family which accepts tourists and has done since the 60's when tourism was strictly and rigidly controlled by the government. When we arrived there were dried curds and home made yogurt inside the ger, where we stayed for the next two nights. The gers are very cosy, comforting dwellings which are surprisingly sturdy, dry and cool. They are made from a lattice of wooden sticks with layers of sheep's wool covered in a white fabric sheet. They tend to have elaborately and colourfully painted wooden chests and cupboards, decorative silk hanging on the walls, and a family altar opposite the door with photographs, pictures and ornaments of deities and other special items for worship or offering. In the centre will be a stove and there is an opening in the centre of the roof to allow air to circulate. There are many symbols used to decorate the ger and it's contents, for example the endless knot, a Buddhist symbol representing infinite life or live, and the interdependence of things. The ger was surrounded by gentle slopes opening up a huge grassy valley, climbing to the top of the slopes you could see over many mountains for miles, and couldn't see anything or anyone else! Only just outside UB, already it felt like the middle of nowhere-but I guess that's understandable in a large country with a population of only 2.9million. And then there were the stars- there were so, so many! It was so quiet at night, all you could hear was the sound of the herd and the occasional breeze. We drank some whiskey in the back of the van for a while -When you drink alcohol you have to put your ring finger into it and flick it toward the sky as a symbol of respect- Bayara is the driver and Mishka the guide, Mishka is a school teacher but has 3month long summer holidays so has started doing tours to make a bit more money. She said she enjoys seeing more of Mongolia too. They are both very lovely kind people and we've been enjoying spending time with them and have been very well looked after! Bayara really cares for his van, spending lots of time attending to it and maintaining it, we feel very safe with him driving (and with the roads here that's saying something!), There is a carpet and cushions, a small library, binoculars and even a TV! We've been watching Mongolian musicians on it and doing a bit of Mongolian karaoke! We drove from UB down to the Gobi desert, moving from grassy rolling hills to dry sandy moonscapes. We camped by collection of huge limestone boulders which were great fun to climb up, and hiked to the interior of one group of rocks where there is an old temple, now destroyed, but people still make pilgrimages here and everywhere hang prayer flags and blue scarves. On top of the rocks are piles of stones- people place a rock on top and walk around the pile three times, praying to the ancestors or deities .some people also leave money and sweets, and even a toy horse,! There was also a natural spring deep in the rock with a long metal spoon you could use to reach it, it is said that it is very good for your eyes which was lucky as Mat was struggling after getting sand in his eyes, now completely fine so clearly the water worked! There is a lot of wildlife here and we've been spending time in the national parks where we've seen wild horses, wild camels, ibex, lammergeiers, golden eagles and gazelles. There is a special type of wild horse (truly wild,the ones in the UK are apparently escaped ferrel horses!) called a Przewalski horse which became extinct in the wild in the 80s, but was successfully reintroduced (there were some in a zoo in Germany;!) And is now doing well. We're currently in the Gobi Ghurvain national park where there are huge rocky mountains rising up out of the desert, created by the same geological events which created the Himalayas. For a few days it was punishingly hot- at least up to 38 degrees - and heading South was a bit nerve racking! But luckily it has begun raining and cooled down massively- it's also very lucky for the herders who have been experiencing a very dry summer and if their animals don't put on enough weight they really struggle to make it through the very harsh winter and spring. If the animals starve they can't make any money and don't have enough to eat. The water source in the countryside is usually a well, which can run out of water. It really demonstrates how climate change and what seems like a small temperature rise can have disastrous effects upon people living in certain areas. Particularly unjust as their relatively very low impact lifestyle means they haven't contributed to the problem. One evening we turned up to a place to stay in the middle of a vast open desert plain where a family lives with their herd of goats, cows and horses, in a semi nomadic lifestyle where they have a barn and several small out buildings for housing animals and producing curds and other dairy products, but can also live elsewhere in different times of year if the herd needs it. None of the family were there as they'd all gone to the local Naadam, all the buildings were locked, and a few minutes later within seconds a huge dust storm had begun where strong winds were blowing harsh clouds of sand like mist across the plain. Soon you couldn't see or hear further a than a few meters in front of you. We all ran and jumped in the van and closed all the windows as it was steadily filling with a layer of dust. The place felt desolate and completely at the mercy of the elements. There was nothing really to do other than some karaoke and Nishka taught us a Mongolian song and wrote out the words so we can now do a feeble rendition of 'Ayani Sliuvud'! Eventually a motorbike with two sisters pulled up out of the dust and they both ran and jumped in the van. It turned out they'd been asked to look after all the local gers while everyone else went to the naadam! After they drove off to find some phone signal to call the host family and locate the keys we eventually were able to get into one of the gers where we stayed the night . This ger was different to others we'd stayed in as it was brand new and had super modern furniture but still with a family alter, Buddhist scarves and elaborate decorations everywhere. We played some ankle bone games - sheep's ankle bones are different on each side and represent a sheep, goat, horse or camel depending on which side they fall on, and the aim of the game is to collect all the bones by flicking matching animals so they hit each other- a bit like a more complicated marbles. It is generally a really fun and satisfying game and we're hoping to get some to bring home (as long as we can get them through customs!) So will be teaching you all how to play (lucky you !:P) We also got a cheap ukulele from China and a chords app which turned out to have the entire Beatles library on it so Nishka and Bayara have been having to put up with lots of Beatles songs in the evenings ! They like 'i wanna be your man's and '8 days a week' The Beatles have even made it to Mongolia and in UB there is a square called 'beatles square' with a statue of Paul in it! One night we stayed in a provincial centre town (with a public shower, woohoo!) with a family of musicians who played some mongolian folk songs for us in full traditional clothing - they had a type of two stringed lute with a goose head for the neck, and a horse fiddle which is played like a 'cello, and they did this incredible throat and overtone singing. Overtone singing is where you somehow sing more than one note at once, it looks like hard work, and produces an intense and beautiful otherworldly sound which hardly resembles a human voice. I would recommend googling it as it was really amazing and very difficult to describe! Travelling up through a wide valley between the mountains of the Gobi Gurvan Saikhan national park you reach the Khongoryn Els sand dunes which are a ginormous bank of golden sand running roughly parallel to the valley, swept up by strong winds and reaching a height of 200m, spanning 180km! It takes up to an hour to hike up to the top, and the view is breathtaking, like an otherworldly coastline without any ocean, like striding edge made of sand! Over the other side are smaller gentler dunes sweeping for miles like a static sea over to the rocky mountains beyond. The dunes change shape with the weather and make humming sounds in the wind, they are nicknamed 'the singing dunes'. A very fun thing to do there is go exploring by camel! The camels in the Gobi are part of the livestock of people living there, and their meat and milk and wool are all used along with their immense capacity for shifting things(including tourists)- they can carry a whole yurt!聽 Another spectacular sight is the 'Flaming Cliffs' at Bayanzag, a name coined by explorer Ray Chapman Andrews (who the character Indiana Jones was based on) one of the first explorers to take the challenge of visiting the harsh Gobi desert in the 1920's. These are huge cliffs of red sandstone, baked by the sun to produce a glowing orange mars-like scene. Here some of the first dinosaur eggs were discovered, along with a lot of other dinosaur fossils. On the way here we stopped to look at some petroglyphs on top of a big rocky hill overlooking the steppe - they were pictures of deer, horses, camels, people and dogs, carved into the rocks sometime between 3000 and 8000 BC! It is not clear why they were carved here but they are thought to be of spiritual significance. Incredible to see folk art from such a long time ago.聽 The last couple of days of our trip were spent near a place called Erdendalai on a gentle grassy plain, camping alongside the family of one of the people running the tour. This was a lovely time as the family were very friendly and welcoming and there were lots of them around - many people who work in cities return to the countryside with their children for the summer. The first night was very wet and windy so they let us sleep in the ger. They were very happy to see the rain! The grandfather prayed by the altar every morning, spinning a prayer wheel, lighting oil candles and sniffing snuff. A 10 year old grandson called Biliun befriended us and we played a lot of card games, he loved Splendor! He took us on a walk one day to what we thought looked like a small pond about 200m away and turned out to be a lake about a mile away! It can be difficult to judge distances here when there is so little on the landscape to provide any scale. You often see mirages of water below the horizon on hot days, making it feel like you're on a great peninsula, but somehow you never manage to reach the shore.聽 Biliun also came to get us when the goats were being milked (in our tent we heard him asking Mishka for help with the English, then a few seconds later "GOAT MILKING GO!!" ) so we got to do our second milking session of this trip, this time of the goat variety! About 7 people were all milking around 80 goats and there was an impressive amount of milk ! More difficult than milking a cow I think but a kick in the face much less scary, so all in all if I had to choose I'd probably prefer the goat milking. The milk is very tasty too, we've had lots of milk tea, a breakfast of home made rice pudding (nana if you're reading this, almost as good as yours!), the 'top of the milk' - a very thick creamy skin of milk made when it's boiled -, dried curds and even got to make some Khushur- a kind of Mongolian Cornish pasty, the pastry made from flour and water and deep fried rather than baked, eaten mostly during Naadam. Speaking of Naadam, we got to go to another one! This time a small rural festival in a little town we passed through, much less busy and grand but still with a fun holiday atmosphere and with archery, wrestling and horse racing.聽 We are sorry to be finishing our trip round Mongolia as it's so peaceful and beautiful here, and completely off grid (weird to have no idea what's happening in the outside world!) but also looking forward to being back home. We have one more short stop in Yekaterinburg so will try to write about that before we get back to the UK. See you all soon!
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Ulaanbaatar Naadam festival concert!
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6
Mat here, writing this onboard the train from Beijing to Ulan Bator! So we have had a great week in China and are currently passing by the the epic mountainous scenery as we make our way Mongolia (our final proper stop!) China has some spectacular and very diverse scenery - understandably as it is such a vast country! We could have done with lot longer than a week to see it properly but here is our whistlestop tour. Our ferry to Shanghai was a ghost town! Just 12 passengers onboard a ship that was clearly able to accommodate hundreds! The ferry heads west from Osaka through the Seto Inland Sea, so for the first day of sailing you get beautiful views of Japan on either side of the boat. The second day had nothing to see but water of the South China Sea, so a very relaxing and easy day. Then the next morning, the ferry goes all the way up the Huangpu river right to the centre of Shanghai, so you watch as the skyscrapers in the distance get closer and closer until they're right next to you and suddenly you're in the middle of Shanghai! We just had one day in Shanghai. We wondered through the 'People's Park', which gives the weird juxtaposition of beautiful natural-looking park, but with massive skyscrapers towering over it. There were hundreds of (mainly quite elderly) Chinese people sitting behind umbrellas which form an impromputu table on which they display a page of writing in Chinese. We weren't sure what they were doing - Libby guess of 'maybe they're tour guides' was closer than my guess of 'I think they're just selling umbrellas.' We looked it up - turns out it's a sort of dating market where parents or grandparents go on the weekends to try and find a partner for their children or grandchildren! The pages of writing were a description of the person they're matchmaking for, so they can then go and hover around and try to find someone they would like to introduce their own bachelor/bachelorette to! I think usually there without permission from the person they're matchmaking for! After we walked to the Bund, a Colonial style area on the riverfront opposite all the massive skyscrapers. It doesn't really look any different from a big western city like London or New York, until you walk to the neighbouring old town, where suddenly the streets are all built in the traditional Chinese style with curved rooves, embellishments and a decorations , in the back streets aa people live in very small houses in quite poor looking conditions, a stark contrast to the immense shiny skyscrapers next door. We stopped for some tea in an old tea room hoping to avoid some of the intense heat, had a 'green bean cake' which is a very beautiful looking Chinese sweet made by pressing dough into a mould. It had the slightly unnerving feel of eating playdough! Then it was time to head back to the station for our night train to Beijing. The striking thing about the scenery from the train was the countless tower blocks of flats. Identical, slightly ominous tower buildings are arranged in grid formations, frequently at least 4x3 grids, often much bigger in number. They often seem to be out by themselves, not obviously part of a bigger city. And next to these areas, small, primitive and slightly abandoned looking farming communities in the middle of the countryside. And there are many more apartment blocks and bits of infrastructure under construction- the feel you get travelling through China is one of mass development- production and building on a massive scale, almost like a turbo-boosted industrial revolution. The next morning we arrived in Beijing. We spent most of the day exploring the city and seeing the sights - the politically interesting Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City (the ancient palace of the emperor) and the Temple of Heaven Park. The park was built as a place for the emporor to worship and pray for a good harvest, and has many elaborate halls and temples dedicated to different activities. It is a Confucian temple, so all of the plants growing in the park are very tidy and planted in a very orderly fashion. The famous Beijing dish is Peking duck, which I can confirm is amazing! The flowing day we went to see the Great Wall. I wasn't really expecting to be that impressed by it, but the huge lush tree-covered mountains with a huge wall snaking all over out of the mist, way into the distance, was actually an incredible sight. It wasn't a very effective wall, shortly after it was built it was ineffective at keeping out the Mongols, then shortly after it was rebuilt it was ineffective at keeping out the Manchu army. An excellent example of how walls don't work! That evening we met up with a person called Anna, who we met on Couchsurfing. Anna is Chinese, and lives and works in Beijing, but is also quitting her job soon and intends to travel! We had drinks with her and a friend and had a really nice evening finding out about what living in Beijing is like. She didn't seem to like living in the city, and preferred her home town in a farming community, but didn't have an option of work there. Something she talked about was the pollution - we'd noticed the smog on the first day, giving the city a misty yellow glow, apparently they have 'blue sky days' every year when officials visit Beijing, and they close all the factories! It's especially bad in the winter as most people still heat their houses with coal. She also didn't like how many people there were in Beijing - everywhere you go the streets are full of people , railway stations are rammed like a crowd at a concert, so it's quite an intense experience. Fascinating but quite overwhelming at the same time. The next day we got a high speed train to Pingyao. Pingyao is a small, ancient walled city (like York!), With the entire border wall still completely intact. During the Ming and Song dynasties it was the capital of the region. The old buildings are very well preserved (not the case in a lot of other parts of China). We spent a few days here, exploring the town, seeing the historic buildings such as the old bank and government offices and walking around the 6km city wall. It's a really cool place, it truly feels like an ancient city and exploring the backstreets really seems to transport you back in time. As China is one of the world's oldest civilisations, it was great to explore somewhere so historic. We also made a short trip out to an ancient Buddhist temple near the city. It was very different to the Japanese temples, with huge statues of deities, made from clay and wood, all painted and weirdly human looking. The place is full of dust which has blown in over the years- the area has lots of coal mines which are still very much in use. The statues are hundreds of years old, so are obviously very aged and falling apart a little bit, but weirdly they've been dressed in brand new, clean and shiny gowns! The temple was near a small village and some farmland, so we went for a walk around to see what less urban, less touristy China felt like. The buildings are all built in a courtyard style where you have huge walls and rooms around the edge and an open square in the centre. Apparently during communist times people were encouraged to use materials from ancient sites to build their homes, so there's a chance some of the houses are made from bits of the great wall! After a few days in Pingyao, we'd luckily managed to survive the daily 36 degree heat and it was time to get back to Beijing, ready for our train on to Mongolia! We probably won't have any internet access after leaving the capital so will update when we're back in Ulaanbaatar a couple of weeks!
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Update 5
(Note: As usual, time has passed between writing this and being able to post it! Today is our 5th day in China, so this post is 5 days old!) Mat here, aboard the ferry to Shanghai! We are feeling sad to have left Japan, the 3 weeks here have flown by! But we have loved it. Here's what we've been up to with our final days here. After leaving the Fuji area, we made our way to Komoro. We arrived at Komoro station where our host Yuu San collected us. He seemed quiet and cautious, but friendly. We drove out of the city and over the hills, into a beautiful area filled mainly with rice fields. Yuu San and his family run a book cafe, which was an incredibly tranquil room filled with art (all created by family friends) and many shelves of somewhat antique looking books. The place had such a nice relaxed feeling. It was helped by the cup of green tea and acoustic guitar Japanese singer/songwriter music that Yuu San played. After meeting Yuu San's wife, Megumi San, we had a tour of the place, noting some interesting musical instruments that we were allowed to play, and also seeing a huge loom that Megumi San creates big textile artworks with. It's a really lovely house. Our room was outside - the home-made building was made from mid and straw, with old Japanese tatami mats used for insulation! It was a nice, comfortable place, and nice to be outside and feel connected to nature. We joined Yuu San and his family for meals. Megumi San's cooking was amazing! We had all sorts of brilliant traditional Japanese food that was totally different to what we could find in the restaurants around Japan. They are big Beatles fans! Yuu San proudly told us about when he sang with Paul McCartney - leaving us in disbelief before adding that it was with tens of thousands of other people, at a Paul McCartney concert! After dinner he got out his guitar, which he let me play - it was so nice to play a guitar again after over a month without playing any music! Yuu San played and sang us his 'welcome song' - a version of John Lennon's 'Imagine', with each verse sung in a different language! They have had their guests from around the world contribute translations to help expand the song. It was really beautiful and quite moving! Megumi San is a textiles artist, and so they have many artist friends. The cafe is a nice, creative space, and they seem very keen to support creativity. One thing they like to do is arrange festivals with music and dancing - the biggest one they held had 700 people show up, just in their garden!! They have one in August, called the International Bon Dance Festival. In the past they've had guests help create adverts for the festival - they showed us some videos of previous adverts, before Yuu San quietly suggested, "Why don't you try to create a Bon Dance advertisement for us?" Challenge accepted! So outside our Tatami house was a big crazy looking wooden building. This was the Doraku Organ- the entire building is a musical instrument. It used to be in a city as an art installation, but heavy snow on the roof meant it couldn't stay, so it was transported to Yuu San's house. We had listened to a song that was written about the organ - at the festivals, they perform this song and everyone does a special dance to it! The organ contains many different ways to create funny sounds - most of which work like a pipe organ. It's really amazing, because you have to go inside this huge wooden sculpture to play it. The sounds are weird, and unlike any other musical instrument in the world! It was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. We decided to make the Organ, and the song, part of our advert. The advert is on YouTube, here: https://youtu.be/Mc7zlM0_YgM Everyone was really happy with the advert, including us - we both really enjoyed coming up with ideas and making the video! It was a fun, weird, creative day. Aside from playing music, we explored the local area a bit. The family have a goat in their garden, who seemed pretty friendly! And we walked through the woods down to a nice lake. One evening we walked down with Yuu San and Megumi San's daughter, Mizuki, to see the family's rice fields, where they had spotted fireflies! Apparently there's only a couple of weeks in the year when you can see fireflies, so we felt very lucky to see them! It's really quite a beautiful site, it feels a bit like seeing fairies! Yuu San also encouraged us to go to the local Onsen (hot spring/public bath). We'd heard trying an Onsen is a good experience, but we're a bit nervous about it, because, well, everyone goes completely naked. No swimsuits allowed. Apparently the Japanese like this, because it is a great equaliser in society! I'd find it awkward enough in England where I understand the culture, but because there's a lot of rules and etiquette in Japan, it's even more scary! Still, we thought we should try it. We decided to walk to the Onsen, which was a nice walk through the rice fields, over some hills and through a tiny village tooked away in a valley. It was a nice walk, and it seemed we had earned our relaxing bath. We arrived at the Onsen, and said goodbye - for obvious reasons, the Onsen is gender separated. (Blue curtain for male, red for female, don't get that wrong!) It's easy enough, you get undressed, go to the washing area and shower off so you're clean, then you're free to enjoy the indoor bath or the outside bath. I spent my time in the outside bath, because, well, you can have an indoor bath anywhere... The water is very hot, and it is believed that the water contains lots of minerals that are good for your skin and for relaxation. The last thing I should mention about Yuu San's is the kittens. Oh my god the kittens. Their 1 year-old cat recently had kittens, one of which still lives with them. They are so damn cute! Then a friend who took another of the kittens home brought him round to see his family, so the 2 kittens spent ages wrestling on the table whilst their Mum watched. She was very protective, and extremely talkative, always meowing for attention. So that was our experience in Komoro! Next up was our final stop in Japan - Kyoto! Our first evening was a trip to the Hoon district, which has a street considered to be one of the most beautiful in all of Asia! From there we walked across to a ramen restaurant in the downtown area. It was Saturday night so the downtown area was rammed with people, it was almost as busy as some of the busiest parts of Tokyo! The next day we walked to a craft museum, which had lots of examples of and demonstrations of traditional Japanese crafts. Then we went to the Philosopher's Walk, a popular walking route near a river where university professors used to like walking for quiet reflection time! On the way we found a pottery shop where you could make your own pottery on a wheel - I convinced Libby to have a go, and she seemed like a natural! We walked through the university where Mizuki used to study- it seemed like a nice university building, but we passed the student halls and couldn't believe how crazy untidy and run down it was! No idea what the students had done to the place! And the building itself looked like some kind of prison camp, all in all the most un-japanese thing we saw on our trip! We then headed to the Yuu San family reccomended Beatles Bar - a beatles themed bar, which played Beatles music videos on a massive projector all evening! The next day we saw the world famous rock garden at Ryoku temple, a temple of zen buddhism. The garden consists of just white gravel, and 15 carefully placed rocks. Its been there about 1200 years and there is much speculation as to why it was built the way it was. It's a very beautiful, meditative space, as is the rest of the gardens that surround it. Then we headed to the Arashiyama district, a residential suburb with the famous bamboo forest, a really magical place with dense tall bamboo trees and fantastic colour, shame you spend most of your time trying to get out of the background of other people's photos! Theres also the famous moon crossing bridge and lots more parks and temples. We then went to see the Fushimi Inari Taisha. Inari shrines are dedicated to prosperity, and this is the grandest one in Japan. The animal spirit of inari shrines is a white fox, so there are fox statues everywhere guarding the shrines. It has 1000s of Inari gates, which help prayers reach the temple, so they line all the paths around the hills, which makes a really interesting spectacle of long bright red tunnels! We walked up to the top of the mountain passing many small shrines and really haunting graveyards, all lit by lanterns as it was early evening , passing through another bamboo forest before reaching the top of the mountain , partly overlooking the city . A lot of effort is made to look after the surrounding environment , particularly as Shintoism sees many aspects of nature as sacred - this gives the surrounding environment a real importance and I wonder how this affects how Japanese shintoists see the world around them. The next day we headed to Nara, a city where deer used to be sacred, so there are hundreds of deer roaming free in the huge park! You can buy crackers to feed them, and they seem used to knowing that humans = free food. Which makes them pretty tame, but big signs warn that they're wild animals which may kick, bite or push you over. Nonsense! Although they did try and eat both mine and Libby's clothes. Anyway, they're insanely cute. I gave most of my biscuits to a cute deer that seemed a bit shy and was hanging out by himself, I think he was grateful!There's also a huge ancient temple with an absolutely humongous golden Buddah inside, its hand is the size of a human being, really breathtaking! The next day we went to Kurama, a beautiful temple atop a mountain out in spectacular hills North of Kyoto. Feeling lazy from several days intense walking, we cheated and took the cable car up. An easy day, we spent a lot of time just relaxing and taking in the wonderful views. Theres lots of statues of a red face with a huge nose, it's a sort of evil spirit. One winter the nose of the biggest statue fell off, so the locals put a giant plaster on it! The train home had awesome comfy seats that faced the windows directly, so you can really enjoy the great scenery. Then for our last day in Japan (!!) we headed to the South Higashiyama area to see this area's very well preserved old architecture. It is also an area famous for having a lot of geisha houses. From there we walked up to Kiyomizudera temple, which was a beautiful old temple with great views of the city. Many of the Japanese visitors wear traditional Kimonos to visit the area, including wooden shoes that make a very satisfying sound but I imagine must be pretty uncomfortable! One last ramen (a really good on too, with a veggie option and everything), one last sake, and that was it, our time in Japan was up! It's hard to sum up 3 weeks in Japan, but in short, it's been a wonderful time. The people here are so nice and welcoming, the cities are amazing, the scenery incredible, the food delicious, the roller coasters massive... It's just a wonderful place and I'm so pleased to have had the chance to come here! This ferry is a ghost town, I think there's about 10 passengers on board! No idea why, but it's very relaxing! Shangha茂 here we come!
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