Thought for the day: People with really low tables shouldn’t place them between the bed and the bathroom at night. – Ouch!

…and Ouch again on the way back!

We woke up this morning smelling of sulphur from bathing in our private Onsen last night which has hot mountain spring water continually flowing into it.

I’m not sure which is worse, smelling of sulphur or fish?

Dave (see yesterday) seemed irritated with me. I could tell because her voice, usually the same deferential volume of all Japanese service people which, at its highest level, is barely audible, had become a medium whisper. Plus she was gesticulating at my feet.

I finally realised that it was because I was wearing my slippers in the room. It seems that you are only supposed to wear them to go out! Completely the wrong use of slippers in my opinion but I’m here to learn.

Also, where are my real shoes? I’m worried Dave may have confiscated them.

Breakfast, once again, was quite baffling. I know one of the dishes was raw tuna with shredded onions which was okay, there is a bowl of tiny whitebait/eels with grated daikon in the middle surrounded by what I can only describe as fishy jelly-like things. At the top you can see a bowl of fish and vegetable soup heating on an open flame. Some sour pickles on the left hand side, tofu in the middle and a soup with some baby clams and rice. There was also a rice porridge which was like cold rice and water.

Then Dave came back with kippers, or something similar which is what we actually ate for breakfast, with the easily identifiable kiwi and orange.

I know it’s beautifully presented, aesthetically pleasing food and some of it is absolutely delicious. I’m trying everything put in front of me but, surprisingly, Brigitte is becoming more squeamish as the food becomes more bizarre. Maybe our European breakfast food prejudices around eating raw fish before 8am are too firmly entrenched to embrace Japanese breakfast.

Dave has become quite chatty now that we have introduced Google voice translate and we have found out that a western breakfast is available so we have ordered that for tomorrow. God only knows what they think we eat for breakfast but hopefully it’s not raw fish.

Enough fishy tales. Good news, I can see from our Apple tags that our suitcases have arrived in Kyoto! We just need to find our way there tomorrow to meet up with them.

Today we went on a pirate ship. It sounds tacky but it was actually a really nice ship. As part of our travel package, we have a Hokone travel pass which allows us to go almost anywhere in the area on any method of transport and pirate ships arr included. (Ha-ha – that really was an unintentional misprint that became a pirate joke!!) – ‘To err is human, but to Arr is pirate’.

We decided to upgrade to first class so we could use the upper deck for £3 each – they didn’t mention about that option in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ did they?

The cruise was across Lake Ashi to Hakone Machi, a small town at the bottom of lake. One of the local arts here is marquetry where they make beautiful wooden items, especially boxes using inlaid wood. All the colour is natural, no wood stain is used so the colour variations come from the species of wood used.

The other speciality here are intricate inlaid wooden boxes made using the same techniques, which can only be opened by moving/turning/sliding parts of the boxes. They usually have a sequence of between 4 and 20 individual movements before they will open, but they have one which has 324! How you could you ever remember how to open it is a mystery.

I bought one with 14 movements and I’m hoping someone has posted the solution on Youtube or I just bought an expensive wooden cube.

We bought quite a lot of things, paid by card and then realised we needed a bag. The lady told us they were 5 yen each and she only took cash. 5 yen is around 0.03pence and the smallest we had was a 1,000 yen note but there was no way she would let us off – good to know there’s probably a Japanese word for ’jobsworth’.

We ate lunch (avoiding all unidentifiable raw fish), and had an amble around, did some shopping, took a bus to the next village, Motohakone, did more shopping then made our way to the famous water gate of the Hakone shrine.

On our way, we came accross the best exterior restaurant food display we’ve seen so far….

Just take a closer look at the realism of the display. Zoom in and look at the ’custard’ in the centre right. It all actually looks quite appetising.

Here’s a picture of Brigitte and I underneath the shrine gate…

Okay, you’ve probably caught me out there but there was a queue a mile long so we couldn’t be bothered to wait.

Here it is from the water so sailors knew where to come and buy their luck. (See day 2)

Then it was back on the pirate ship ‘me-hearties’ and back to our Ryokan for siesta before a no-doubt fishy supper again.

Hakone is a beautiful area. It reminded me a bit of the English lake district but with volcanic activity and different foliage. Two full days here is ample, unless your a hiker and want to get out onto the mountain trails.

Many people come to Japan and never see Mount Fuji, it’s often covered in mist and cloud. A bit like tourists going to see the northern lights.

However, we were really lucky and had clear skies and sunshine so it was a magnificent ever-present sight looking down on us.

On the way back to the Ryokan the bus driver got even more annoyed than yesterday after I didn’t have the tickets that he’d seen only five minutes previously when we got on ready to show him. I took both our tickets out of my wallet and he grabbed them off me, gave one to Brigitte, one to me and shouted ‘one at a time’ in broken English!

Dinner time again at the Ryoken.

Another beautifully presented raw/pickled fish-fest. Sorry, there was another two courses I forgot to photograph of beef stew and sake molted rockfish. So much food. So much fish.

I’ve never been pretentious about food and I’ve eaten sushi and sashimi many, many times and always thought it’s okay, occassionally very good but rarely amazing. I thought this holiday would teach me differently but I’m even more convinced that this type of food is more about style than substance, or flavour for that matter. Most raw white fish has very little taste, the flavour comes from the soy or wasabi. It’s purely about texture and I think I’m more of a taste person. The taste here seems to come predominantly from the pickles served as an accompaniment. The pickles, unlike subtle acid flavours in European cooking that balance, clean, contrast or compliment the main food, are the main flavours of the meal so what’s the point of the main foodstuff?

There, I’ve said what I think. Is this a controversial opinion? Am I mad not to enjoy it or am I just not understanding the subtlety and nuance of the food if there is such a thing. I know my pallet has spent sixty five years exposed to European cuisine and maybe that’s the reason, maybe I just have a poor pallet or understanding but to me food is, of course, about texture but even more about the overall mix of flavour. Of course, I realised that of I am correct it’s purely from a European perspective as the Japanese, Koreans etc must love their food equally to the way we do. It’s just that our ingredients and preparation methods have evolved differently over the centuries. I also love Teppanyaki, Teriyaki (‘Yaki‘ means cooked), I’m just talking raw fish – sashimi, sushi etc.

Let me know if you agree or if you think I’m a food Neanderthal. Or maybe it’s a generational thing? It would be interesting to know if I need re educating or secretly others think the same. Don’t worry, I can take the criticism.

In think I have created a poll so you can vote. If the link doesn’t work just copy and paste it into your browser and vote. It’s all anonymous and I’ll tell you the results tomorrow.

https://strawpoll.com/polls/NPgxEodEoZ2

And in other news…

We did initially think that it was a great idea rolling up the bed and gaining a room. However we just got back to our room after a lot of walking for a siesta. No bed 😩. Not such a great idea.

I think Brigitte really likes the fact that everyone here bows to her. What she’s not yet figured out is that the Japanese are just a very polite society and bow to everyone, she thinks it’s just her. 😂

Katie asked in the comments if tattoos really aren’t allowed in the communal springs and yes, it’s absolutely true. In Japan tattoos we’re a sign of gang membership so they were frowned upon and still are in many places.

Toilet roulette-Update

Just when I thought I’d mastered 4-6 button toilet roulette, the odds have been upped. We now have a….wait for it…. 15 button toilet. Maybe this is the king of roulette toilets.

I was determined to conquer it so I sat down, nervously.

The red button is obviously the ejector seat, flinging you backwards into a pit, like the chair on the Graham Norton show.

The second one seems to be what I call the ladies front bottom shower, a.k.a. the testiclé tickler. The third is your common all garden bottom wash. The first slidey buttons seem to increase or decrease jet pressure. The fourth is temperature, maybe? From experience, a cold jet of water can be quite a shock in the morning depending upon the exact point of impact. It also seems to have a timer function. I remember my grandmother saying it was always good to be ‘regular’ but to be able to set an advance timer would display incredible bowel training. I had no idea what the other buttons did so I enlisted the help of google camera translate so you can figure it out yourselves:

Amazing device isn’t it?

Well, that’s all for another day. Tomorrow we set off, bright and early, for Kyoto and more adventures.

21:13 – 10th May – Hakone