I, Neenja

(Umeda OS Hotel, Osaka)

After a day spent exploring the cheesiest and funnest parts of Osaka, I did the exact opposite, and left the city entirely. It was no small feat, this. I was bound for Iga-Ueno, which was not easy to get to, and due to a lack of connecting trains I opted to actually use the departure times hypedia.com offered.

First, the JR line to Tsuruhashi. Straight forward enough.

Then change lines entirely for a private company that had lines like a pile of spaghetti all over the Kanto region. I bought a ticket, found what was hopefully the right platform, and waited.

The train arrived, and hello there! Reserved seating? What? I hurried to the platform booth to ask if my ticket was okay, and after confirming this, turned around to see the doors close and the train depart. Well, fuck.

With my schedule blown out the window, I just had to wing it. I knew what lines and what stations I needed, and after much studying of the rail maps plastered over the platform, got on the next train that appeared to go where I wanted it to. Unlike all my other train-hopping, this was not a stress free exercise. I wasn’t on my rail pass, so any mistakes I might make would cost me, and I’d probably have a devil of a time trying to explain to any station staff what my problem was. There wasn’t much I could do but wait and see.

The city quickly disappeared into rural Japan, which exists, tucked away in little valleys between the mountains, rice paddies everywhere. The stations we passed through grew smaller and smaller, until finally we were passing single platform stations, unmanned.

I was right, the train stopped at Iga-Kambe, and I was able to walk straight onto a connecting train bound for Ueno-shi. A little country train, it was only two carriages, and bright pink with the happiest chibi ninjas painted all over it. It was a single track only, rolling by more single platform stations and past long empty roads.

Ueno-shi was a very small country town, without any stores around the station, and wasn’t at all listed in my LP, so I was rather relying on their being a town map at the station to get where I was going. Thankfully, not even remote country towns are without these, and I was able to find Ueno Park (hello, familiar?) with ease.

And thus, my quest was achieved.

I went to the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum.




Haha! YES!

Even if you ignore my normal almighty OMGNINJA! tizz I get into over ninjas, this was incredibly cool. The Iga ninjas are one of the two leading schools of ninjitsu in Japan, the other being the Koga ninjas. If you’ve read much in the way of fiction set in period Japan, chances are you’ve bumped into both schools. They’re prominent in the Lone Wolf & Cub books, and play crutial roles in the old black & white TV series, The Samurai, with Tonbei the Mist (a Koga ninja), playing Shintaro’s side kick. To be in the home town of the Iga ninjas was just way cool.

The museum kicked far more arse than I could have hoped for.

To begin with, I was greeted by a couple of kunoichi (female ninja, in pink to be precise), who invited me to take off my shoes and gave me a thorough tour of a ninja house. There was no common language between us, but English explanations were posted, and the demonstrations of the various neat nifty sneaky ninja house tricks spoke for themselves. There were all sorts of ideas that I would love to build into a house of my own one day, not that I shall ever need to keep a hidden look out over my garden, or make a secret trap door escape from intruders. I was particularly fond of the wardrobe that contained a shelf which was actually a trick staircase into a secret compartment in the ceiling. The beauty of all these tricks was their simplicity. They were elegantly straight forward.

From there, I went down into an exhibition detailing the various props and techniques used by a ninja in the art of stealth. The ‘water spiders’, shoes devised to disperse a ninja’s weight and thus make it possible for them to walk across a mud moat to infiltrate a castle, were great clunky things that I just couldn’t see fitting in a pocket. A lot of emphasis was placed on the various disguises the ninja adopted to move about; being a ninja is a pretty versatile job. Most of the time they appeared to pose as farmers, as that allowed them to carry farming tools/weapons without arousing suspicion.

From there to another hall, which contained an exhibition of the traditions, history, and various communication forms of the ninja. There were all sorts of ciphers they used, from complex knots that formed sentences, to colored rice grains to mark the alphabet. Of particular interest was a board comparing the different tricks and traps of ninja and samurai houses. The traps of samurai houses appeared to revolve around trapping and maiming any potential intruders, whereas the ninja houses were built mostly with escape in mind.

What the museum emphasized was how little emphasis is placed on combat, which is what current pop culture highlights. A true ninja should pass detection entirely, and thus have no need to engage in any form of combat at all.

I made a point of calling Dad while there. He got a kick out of it too, heh.

Finally, there was a ninja demonstration, with real weapons, and real ninjas! Real! Ninjas! With the scars to prove it. Ahhhh! EEEEE!!!!!

The first ninja opened by making the hand signs before drawing his sword. I thought he was merely going to go through some practice sweeps, but no, he chopped some poles to pieces as though they were butter. Holy fuck, a real sword! To actually see someone do that, with my own eyes, was awe inspiring. So very different from TV, so very so.

He demonstrated shuriken throwing, and threw two and three at once. The sound of the shuriken hitting the wooden board was alarming, and there he was, standing in front of us with a whole pile in his hand, demonstration a sort of automatic-fire technique of throwing many in quick succession.


(Semi-automatic neenja, minus the real sword. He dies later. Several times.)

He was replaced by a second, younger ninja, who demonstrated the uses of the kama, weapons that were devised from farmer’s scythes. The way he swung them around made my hair stand on end, and I’m pretty sure he was holding his breath while he was doing it. He looked incredibly relieved to have finished his piece and not injured himself.


(I am Young! Cute! Neenja!)


(See Young! Cute! Neenja! throw kama with deadly precision!)


(See Young! Cute! Neenja! did not disembowel himself swinging the kama around! Clever neenja!)

A third ninja came out to demonstrate the uses of the kusari-gama, basically a kama with a chain and weight attached to the handle. Quite a complicated weapon, but he handled it with familiarity, and was more than skilled in his control over the chain. The first ninja returned, and they sparred, and I eeeeee!ed.


(Eh, killing the semi-automatic neenja is all part of a day's work. Beer would be nice about now...)

The best part was the cheesy arse spaghetti western Mexican stand off music they were playing in the background.

Truly, an fucking awesome brilliant and unexpectedly educational place to visit. I was very glad I’d gone out of my way.

Getting back to Osaka was another test of my “oh shit what if I end up in banjo-ville by accident” resilience, but I managed it without incident. The train from Kamo to Namba passed through Nara, which I think means I’ll have visited every capital Japan has had on this trip. I could be wrong though.

I killed some time in America-mura. Don’t ask. It’s some place where they’ve imported the big cool American life, or something supposed to be it. I was about 10 years too old and light years too untrendy to be in the area. It was tacky and flashy and hilarious as all hell. I did myself some damage in a CD store before having my fugu dinner, which has already been written about.

Today was another trip out of town, and another minor headache with transport. I reserved a seat on a shinkansen (bullet train) heading to Himeji, no problem. What I didn’t realise was that the shinkansen left from Shin-Osaka, not Osaka station, where I was. I thought I had heaps of time, and had a nice lazy breakfast in a café before heading to the platform, realising no shinkansen were to be seen, and had myself an ‘oh shit’ moment. Thankfully, it was on my JR pass, and ticketing is pretty flexible for the JR trains. I made my way to Shin-Osaka, and had a moment of complete stuckness with the ticket attendant. He kept saying ‘announcement’, and I had no idea what context he meant. We kept going back and forth, “announcement,” “sumimasen, wakarimasen,” until he finally lost his patience and snapped, “smoking, non smoking, reserved, not reserved, announcement, no announcement.” Ah, ding! FYI, there are ‘silent’ cars on the shinkansen, where no loudspeaker announcements are made.

With that cleared up, I boarded the train with no further complications.

Shinkansen are alarming. They are exactly like sitting on a plane that is powering up the run way, just seconds away from leaving the ground behind. The roar and rumble of the wind and ground is everywhere, the engine pitch rises, the carriage develops that little shimmy as it almost travels too fast for itself…but the train doesn’t leave the ground. I was constantly bracing myself for takeoff, and forcing myself to relax again. The speed was amazing. Although the LP said it was an hour to Himeji, it only took half an hour, no small feat.

The goal of my quest in Himeji was Himeji-jo, another original castle, like Matsumoto-jo. Himeji-jo has the distinction of being a world heritage listed sight, and deserves it. Easy to see from the station, so I didn’t even have to look for a map. No getting lost for me.





(The crests of the various lords and clans that had a hand in the building, maintenance and ruling of Himeji. These crests appear everywhere, and by everywhere, I mean all over Honshu.)


(I figured this would be some interesting aside on the foundations of the castle, which it was. Stone coffins are built into the walls. Efficient use of space, but slightly creepy to consider.)

It isn’t just the main keep that has survived, but the castle grounds themselves. The side keep and bailies are still intact, and the walking tour winds throughout the entire complex. As with Matsumoto-jo, the wood and stones were worn smooth with the passage of so many feet. There were more floors, higher ceilings, and wider corriders in this castle. It was quite a sumptuous affair, with crests of the various lords in residence on every available surface. It was allegedly in this castle that Miyamoto Musashi was locked in a room and did nothing but read for a whole year, emerging an entirely changed person.




(The little platform is for samurai to peek out the windows. Really.)


(On the top floor of the castle, this samurai disguised as an ordinary tourist surveys the besieging army, which isn't there.)



The west bailey was largely the womens quarters, and the quarters of one Princess Sen. A series of rooms running along a very long corridor, it still smelt wonderfully of cedar.


(The reconstructed section.)


(The original.)

It amused me how many non-Japanese were present. So many that there were no English guides available when I rocked up.

From there, I visited the koko-kun gardens. They’re by no means old, having been constructed in 1992 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Himeji prefecture, but they’re quite lovely. I cooled off and rested my feet in the restaurant there, and was served conger eel on rice while looking over a lovely pond full of glowing orange koi.



No offence, koi are beautiful and all that, but they’re also dumb. What fish swims around with its upper dorsal fin OUT of the water? And what fish actually looks like it’s bad at swimming? Seriously, if it is possible for fish to waddle, these fish were doing it.


(They're like the bumper car version of fish; not all that keen on avoiding collision.)

After a stroll around the gardens, it was back to the station for me. Sort of. I was distracted by a second hand book shop that had a freaking ENORMOUS comics section. Oh, you have no idea how big it was. For 100 yen each! Damn you, language barrier! Or thank you, you kept me from spending too much money. Regardless, I had a lovely time browsing, flipping through random pick ups and marking myself gaijin every time I opened a book the wrong way.

There was a large older school kid who was muttering and giggling to himself in a mildly unhinged way. I didn’t pay him any mind till I noticed he was following me around the store. And masturbating. Normally, this wouldn’t bug me. Look, when you have the job that I do, public masturbation just isn’t worth getting that worked up about. But I was in a book shop, and he was dampening my I’m-surrounded-by-millions-of-beautiful-books happy fun time glow. I wanted to tell him to at least have the decency to go to a different aisle, but you don’t encourage these people by acknowledging their presence, and I had no idea how to say it anyway. Stupid masturbator boy.

I could be wrong. He might have been quite legitimately jerking off to the Pokemon book he was hiding behind.

Tonight was a shut in night, with laundry and packing. Tomorrow, I bid Osaka goodbye. Osaka feels much more casual that what I’ve seen of the rest of Japan. I’ll miss it.

Sir Tessa and the (other) Tessa

(Blogger is being snerky about uploading pictures, so use those imaginations of yours, yo.)

Fugu - pufferfish - was accomplished. Thankfully, the restaurant had an option for a single serving of fugu sashimi, as I didn't feel like a full meal, and sashimi is the only important part of this tale. The plate was brought out, the fish nearly tissue thin and transparent.

It tastes rather bland, and has a not entirely pleasant rubber texture.

There's a saying that gets tossed at people who've just been dumped, "plenty more fish in the sea." That is true in the case of fugu; there are other fish out there, that are cheaper, will not come with the threat of lethal poisonous death, and taste a hell of a lot better.

That wasn't the point of the exercise though. I partly wanted to eat fugu just because of the look on Mum's face when I suggested it, but mostly because I discovered what fugu sashimi is actually named.

That's right.

Fugu sashimi is called 'tessa'.

Take Two

I'm in Osaka now, and in my wanderings tonight found a couple of fugu restaurants. Tomorrow, I shall try and have my deadly fish dinner. Again. Just so you know.

AAAH! WHALE SHARK!

(Umeda OS Hotel, Osaka)

The Agnes has to have been the quietest accommodation I’ve had this trip. It was appreciated, greatly appreciated.

A continental breakfast was included in the cost of my room, so I went downstairs fairly early to get eating out of the way. It was a continental breakfast in the loosest possible definition of the term. There was some toast, and eggs, and from there it went weird. There were frankfurts available, a garden salad, miso soup, tofu, some sweet seaweed package things that were tasty and bizarre – but they had orange juice. They got that bit right.

I checked out, left my bags, and headed over to the bus terminal. I figured an hour and a half would give me enough lee way with travel time to get lost and get my bearings again. There was no romanji to be seen at the terminal, so I had to ask where the bus for Naruto Koen (park) was; fyi, bus stop #1, bus #27. This bus leaves on the hour, every hour, which was cutting it fine, as the height of tide change was slated to be at 10.

The driver of this bus was actually surly, which pleased me to no end. About time someone was disgruntled and bored and not the least bit inclined to be bright and perky at customers. The trip took just under an hour.

There are two viewing options for the whirlpools, either by sightseeing boat, or on a walkway constructed beneath a bridge going over the strait. None of the signs at any of the stops were romaji, so I ended up opting for the boat trip, if only because it was obvious to make out when the bus stopped. I’m still not sure, having gawked around a bit, how to get to the walkway.

The boat was 2100 yen for Aqua Eddy, which zipped out to the strait pretty much straight away. There were windows in the hull to view the whirlpools from beneath the water, but there wasn’t much to see. The view was much better from the deck.



The tide difference at the strait is 1.2 metres, so every day on the change whirlpools are created. Alas, they weren’t as deep or steady as I’d hoped they’d be. They were definitely there, but there were no giant raging maelstroms (not that I was really expecting giant raging maelstroms, but you know…). At a new or full moon, they might be bigger (I haven’t seen the moon since arriving here). During the king tides, they’d definitely be worth checking out. Otherwise, they’re not quite impressive enough to feel like time and money well spent.

The buses back to Tokushima station were few and far between, and I had to wait an hour for one to turn up. I arrived back at the station with just enough time for a quick lunch before picking up my bags and jumping on the bus to Osaka.

Sitting in on the bus was like swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I don’t remember the trip. Vague glimpse of the Sea of Japan, as we went over the bridge to Honshu, but that’s it. Methinks I was tired.

Osaka station is, of course, another great sprawling maze of interconnecting buildings and various levels of basement, and it took me several walkings back and forth before I’d identified enough landmarks to know where in the station I was, and what direction I should be heading. Thankfully, my hotel was quite tall, and had a nice big and bloody obvious neon sign at the top, which made it easy to locate, but not to get to. This area is a maze. Just finding a way to cross the road took some exploring.

After a very thorough shower, I ventured out for dinner. There’s a shopping centre across the road, so I figured I should be able to find something in the basement levels. I don’t think I should be allowed underground. I have even less sense of direction underneath the streets, and these basement levels actually spanned across several buildings and blocks.

The problem with the bigger cities is not finding somewhere to eat, but choosing somewhere to eat. Even me, on my own, not trying to cater to another person’s whims or preferences, had a terrible time picking a spot. I ended up finding somewhere quiet that served cold noodles. Interestingly, most of the other customers were single women as well. There were plenty of izakaya around (sort of street-side pub/feeding holes that deal specifically with the after work crowd), but they tended to be very busy, and full of business men. I’m game, but not quite game enough to be the only woman in the place, especially lacking any other company, being a clear gaijin, and being as front heavy as I am.

I will say this, Japanese men do not know how to be covert about checking out boobs. Probably because there aren’t any boobs in this country to check out. They haven’t had the chance to develop the art of a subtle headcheck.

This was followed by a glamorous evening sitting in the laundry.

I let myself sleep in this morning, which felt luv-er-ly. Osaka being much smaller than Tokyo, the subway is much easier to use, and I got to the Tempouzan Village area without hassle. My goal there was the Osaka Aquarium, which despite setting out from the station with no real idea of where it was, I found easily. It’s a pretty distinctive building (but the real trick is to just head towards the ferris wheel).

Would you like to know a secret? You’ll never guess it. I’ll tell you: I like fishy things. I know! Who’da thunk it? It’s a strange old world, innit.

2000 yen is about standard fare for aquarium admissions. I know it costs more to get into the Melbourne Aquarium, and that one is a hole and gives you legionnaires disease. Trufax.

This aquarium just rocks the motherfucking kazbar. Trufuckingfax.

It has several tanks pertaining to different marine ecosystems, and the path moves down in a spiral through them, so that you visit each tank several times, at different depths, to see what fishies are lurking around. All sorts of marine habitats were on display, from the Panama Gulf to Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef and so on. Sea otters are bloody enormous in real life. I though I was watching two otters have a wrestle, but it turned out to be one otter having a very involved scratch. Huge! And so adoreable!


(This guy is just a normal otter, not a sea otter. The big guys wouldn't stay still long enough for a non-blurry picture, where as this little guy was more than happy to pose for the camera.)


(For some reason, this little guy had climbed up a couple of metres out of his tank, and was lodged in that little nook in the wall. I'm guessing all the other crabs were bullies, and had stolen his lunch box, and pushed him over, and he was plotting an elaborate revenge. It involved peanuts, no doubt, and was very exciting.)

I had the slight and amusing misfortune of entering the same time as a stack of primary school students. Little kids in enclosed spaces are aural torture. It hurt, I tells you, it hurt. Also, little kids play dirty when it comes to getting a place by the tank.


(Nasty, tricksy little hobbitses.)


(You're seeing right: there is a duck in that tank. To be fair, it's a duck from PANAMA, but still...a duck. Can't escape the rascally rascals.)


(The penguins loved the guy cleaning their ice. They followed him around, flapping and wiggling. He gave one of them a rub under the chin.)


(I caught this octopus with tentacle inserted in gill. Pretty sure that's the same as having finger inserted in nose. As you can see, le octopus got terribly fluffed up about having been caught, and having a camera drawn.)


(This school of fish was just hanging, all at the same angle, not moving. Creepy.)

The main attraction of the aquarium is the Pacific Ocean tank, which is home to a WHALE SHARK. Wait, I think some of you might have missed that. I saw a WHALE SHARK. He was king of the tank, he was. Swimming around in lazy circles with a whole posse of fish trailing in his wake. He actually wasn’t as big as I’d believed, but still a big fishie.




(WHALE SHARK!)

In the same tank, but in a netted off section, was a manta ray. Said manta ray was so big, it totally could have taken on Mr Whale Shark. Hence the net, maybe. Manta Ray was beautiful, zooming around, and around, and around.


(You can make the 'zoom, zoom' sound effects yourself.)

In yet another tank was a Sun fish. Yeah! I was terribly happy to see one, even if it was small and floating up on the surface waiting for someone to come and preen it. For some reason, it was netted off from ALL the other fish in its tank. Presumably, sun fish don’t play well with others. There were also a great many signs asking people to please not agitate the sun fish with ‘flames of flashlight’ from their cameras. Sensitive critters. Daft critters. It was kissing its own reflection.


(You can make the "duuurh, duuurh" sound effects yourself.)


(I, Ugly.)


(This lot kept going round, and round, and round the rock, and had probably been doing so since they were dropped in the tank. It was hypnotic, like a large, living lava lamp.)

There were two old men keeping pace with my ambulations. I took a liking to them. They stood out from the hordes of young couples who would cry ‘kawai!’ against the window, snap a photo on their phone, and then move on. These two stood and nattered comfortable by each tank, pointing out individual fish and taking the time to actually see what was before them. It was the one time the language barrier made me sad.


(Porcupine Fish, not to be confused with Puffer Fish. Do you think the little fuckers would stay still for the camera? Nooooo. Turds. I heard them mutter, "fucking paparazzi," as I walked away.)

Most of the posters advertising the aquarium feature cute happy crabs. I would like to point out that the crabs are also FUCKING ENORMOUS and CREEPY AS ALL HELL to look at. They’re not cute. They’re scary. I was on to something with my giant crab story, I tell ya.


(I reiterate: creepy as all hell.)


(Even more disturbing when the big crab has the small crab up against the wall like a prison bitch...)

The best room was kept till last – jelly fish! A great many beautiful wobbly jelly fish, I did love them over and over and over.


("You're invading my personal space there, partner.")


(Too funky for bones.)

Unfortunately, the shop at the end mostly stocked the cute animals – seals, otters, dolphins – but I did manage to find some ugly fish hidden away in there. I bought myself a plush ‘piraucu’ (lungfish), of all things.

The Tempouzan Harbour Village was right next door, so I figured I’d give it a squiz. It’s mostly full of kitschy shops for tourists, but there were a couple of neat places on there. One shop I found sold samurai armour. I couldn’t tell if they were replicas or originals, but they cost a hell of a lot more than I could afford. Pity.

I was sucked into a Ninja House, which was a bit like the Ice Land exhibit at Yokohama. It wasn’t a haunted house, it was a ninja house, full of weird little corners and rooms, and portcullises that didn’t quite stab you in the head and ninja dummies that jumped out of nowhere. Terribly cheesy, and terribly amusing. Not 500 yen wasted.


(I don't know what was going on with this guy either. I activated the room a couple of times, to check I wasn't missing something, but no, it's a ninja in the bath with his tub on his head.)

For lunch I landed in a place called Fugetsu, which did the Osakan specialty; okonomiyaki. Part pancake, part pizza, part omlette, part patty, all yummy. All the tables had hot plates built in. The staff brought the ingredients to my table, stabbed them all into submission, and plopped the mass down onto the plate to cook. It was an agonising wait, it smelt that good. I had squid and prawn (it was written as shrimp on the menu, which is WRONG), covered in whatever sauce they offered, and it was awesome. Very different from all other Japanese food I’ve eaten, it has a bigger, fuller taste, and instead of each ingredient being segregated off from the rest, it was all mashed together. Great, tasty good stuff.



I jumped on the ferris wheel while I was in the area. This one claims to be the biggest in the world, at 112 metres. The view was quite short, as there was a humidity and pollution haze pretty thick in the air, but it gave an excellent view of the city. Osaka seems to be full of interesting and strange buildings and domes.


(Your standard "I'm up high look at the city" pikchur.)


(Apartment blocks on the harbour. People stare in their windows everyday.)

Osaka-jo (the castle) was on the same subway line, so I figured I might as well squeeze a visit in. The castle is a replica, built in 1931, and in itself is nothing special. Beautiful from the outside, but no effort has been made to make it a ‘castle’, as such.



That said, it was well worth the visit to see the museum housed inside the castle, which features various exhibits and displays on the life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man who began the unification of Japan (a process completed by Tokugawa Ieyasu). I had always assumed that the Toyotomis and Tokugawas were always at war, like feuding neighbours, but today learned that at one point, Ieyasu actually worked for Hideyoshi, and it was only after Hideyoshi’s death that Ieyasu went off and got his own ideas. They have some excellent artefacts on display; hand written letters, armour and weapons, art works and more. There was also English signage and explanations everywhere, which was wonderful.


(A rather elaborate set of models reconstructing the initial battle between Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyase, from memory.)

From there, I jumped on the subway again, this time for Dotonbori. Dotonbori is basically a strip designed to haul in tourists; its glitzy and full of elaborately-fronted restaurants and neon signs and intricate lights. A place to enjoy the spectacle, and people watch. I had myself another Osakan specialty for dinner, fried octopus balls, before meandering around. One of the pictures you see quite often of this area is a restaurant with a giant mechanical moving crab out the front. Well, I found three such restaurants. And three fugu restaurants as well, so I’ll be going back tomorrow night to have my fugu dinner.









Ebisu-bashi is toted as having a Bladerunner-esque view (I’d already found that in Tokyo), but unfortunately the bridge is undergoing some refurbishing, and was full of shielding and scaffolding. They weren’t kidding though. It’s ground to rooftop neon advertising back there, great stuff.



I snuck into a quiet tea room for dessert, and had a fantasic bowl of green tea ice cream, red beans, jelly and cream. Nom nom nom. I’m not half tempted to go again, if I survive my dinner tomorrow.