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2006-04-japan
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2006-04-13
Travelled along the San-In coast via Tottori to Amanohashidate. Tottori is interesting because it has huge sand dunes! The weather did not cooperate unfortunately, rain, and then some. This made it a lot less impressive as it could have been, and the photo's finally show the camera's (Panasonic LX1) noise problem in the yellow/brown of the sand. Bummer. I did have a nice walk along the beach.
That train along the coast goes very slow though, so it took 3.5 hours, including 2 changes to make it Amanohashidate. I arrived at a quarter to six, but the tourist information was still open and found me a hotel at 3 minutes walking from the station. I had a quick look around town before it got dark. Just a few restaurants were open, still the off season I suppose. I chose the least touristy one. Nobody spoke english, and I was the only customer so it was a bit tricky ordering some food. In bigger cities they often have menus with pictures to make this easier, but not this restaurant! They suggested sashimi, or maybe it was just the first food word I understood. The sashimi came with a bunch of side dishes, which was nice.
When I was done eating a japanese guy came in to have a beer. We started talking, and it turned out that he had studied for a year in the US, 20 years ago, but his english was still pretty good. He is a cook and was friends with the cook at my restaurant. We talked for a while and had some sake and beers. Around nine they wanted to close the restaurant, so the cook from the restaurant suggested we continue in the bath. The restaurant is part of a japanese style hotel which also has an 'onsen', ie hot spring bath. There must be some pipeline under the whole city to supply all the hotels with the water from the real hot spring since my hotel had one too. In most other place taking a bath with 2 guys that you have just met would seem a bit forward, or even suspicious, but in Japan it is not so strange. It was a nice onsen, pretty small. It was outside on the roof, too bad it was cloudy otherwise we could have seen the stars. And the water is so hot that you do not really notice the cold anyways. After the onsen we went to have some drinks at a yakitori, which meant more food as well (a yakitori is a bar with grill). Later on another friend of theirs joined, he spoke english as well. The amount alcohol consumed did slow down the translation, but it was fun anyways. They managed to get me back to my hotel just before they were about to close up, hotel guests are not supposed to stay up late it seems.
