Eating at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant

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Having visited Yo! Sushi in the UK and seen pictures of conveyor belt sushi restaurants in Japan, we were curious about how the two would compare, so when the lovely Rio at our hostel in Kobe recommended a branch of the Kura Sushi chain we decided to take a break from the beef and give it a go.

On arrival we were given a small board with a diagram of the restaurant and arrows showing us how to get to the table. OK, they don’t even show you to your table, this is definitely going to involve less human contact than we are used to in restaurants… Our table was a small booth with the conveyor belt moving along beside it.

Can you tell how excited I am?!

We soon spotted the screen above the conveyor. Aha we thought, we know what’s going on here, we’d heard that you can order extra items using the touch screen so we settled into our seats secure in the knowledge of what we were doing… That all changed pretty quickly when we spotted a plate that we fancied moving past. We tried to lift it off, but we couldn’t detach it from the little train of two or three plates all with plastic domed lids. We looked around to see if we could take a cue from a nearby table. Nope, everyone was either eating or ordering from the screen. OK, we’ll try that then, why don’t we order a beer? So we scrolled through the menus until we found the drinks. Hit the picture of a glass of beer and sat back to wait. After about 5 minutes and another attempt, nothing had appeared so we collared a passing woman who was wiping down tables. “Biiru?” we enquired (yes, that really is the Japanese word). She motioned to the back of the restaurant and when Andrew went to investigate this is what he found:

A draught beer vending machine!. Insert a ¥500 coin, take a cold glass from the fridge, place it on the stand and press start. The machine tilts the glass, pours the beer with a perfect head and away you go!

In the meantime we’d figured out how to get plates off the conveyor, you just need to grip the edge and lift slightly to trigger the release for the lid. We’d got through a few dishes that way, it’s pretty compulsive choosing things from a constant parade, but we still wanted to order from the menu screen and have something delivered, this is how it works…

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QzsdGAu8I]

By this point we were accumulating quite a stack of plates, but we could see that the nearby tables were empty apart from plates with food on. What were they doing with their empties? We’d already noticed a kind of plate shaped post box at the side of the booth, maybe we put them in there? In Yo Sushi! the plates are different colours which signifies different prices but here they’re all the same ¥100 (about £0.60) or some dishes are double and come on two plates held together with a clamp so it made sense.

Disposing of dirty plates – I bet you wish you had a slot like this at home!

As we fed the plates into the slot we noticed a counter in the corner of our display incrementing. When it got to 5, there was a loud trumpeting sound from the screen and it started to play a little cartoon of a contest. We had no idea what was going on but it must have been a success because the hitherto unnoticed vending machine above the screen clanked into action and delivered us a prize in a plastic ball! It was a rubbishy plastic mobile phone charm, but still, we wanted another… The cartoon was activated on multiples of 5, but despite feeding in 10 and then 15 plates we didn’t see the winning version again.

Cartoon ‘contest’, you can just see the prize balls in the dispenser above the screen

And if you’re wondering what we had for dessert, here it is – banana toffee sushi :-)

We figured that the bill probably wouldn’t be brought to the table and that, with our little table number board that we received at the start, the cashier would just be able to pull up what we owed from how many plates we’d posted. But we missed out a step, at the till we handed over our table number which generated a little flurry of activity as the cashier called across to one of the cleaning ladies who bustled off in the direction of our table. I think we were supposed to press a button to let them know that we’d finished so that someone could check that the table was clear and all plates counted. We apologised for holding up the payment and in typical Japanese fashion, he brushed aside our apology and apologised to us that everything was only in Japanese – not many places in the UK would apologise for having inadequate translation into foreign languages.

Yum!

It was fun to see how mechanised the restaurant experience could be and at an incredibly low price too – we greedily ate until we were almost ready to burst but still spent less than £5 each (not including drinks). We enjoyed the experience so much that we sought out another branch of the restaurant in Tokyo, it was just as yummy but not quite the same without the adrenaline rush of trying to figure out how everything worked!

Temples of Kyoto

Kinkakuji

The one with the glitz

Kinkakuji, or The Golden Pavilion, is an iconic image of Kyoto and it didn’t disappoint. It is hugely busy and because of the volume of tourists you are constrained to a one-way route around the grounds which means that you have to move with the herd and can’t enter any of the buildings. Even so, we’re really glad that we went, even when you’ve seen photos the real thing is still utterly breathtaking.

Tenryu-ji

The one near the bamboo grove

Another busy temple, Tenryu-ji is situated in Arashiyama in north-west Kyoto, right beside the famous Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. The temple’s Zen garden is one of the oldest in Japan and has the same form as when it was designed in the 14th century. It is lovely and we really appreciated the benches and area to sit on the terraces of the buildings around the pond although there were a few too many visiting tour groups to make it a really peaceful place to pause.

Just outside the grounds of Tenryu-ji, Arashiyama Bamboo Grove was beautiful but smaller than we’d expected

Otagi Nenbutsuji

The one with quirky statues

Hint: two of these are not permanent fixtures

This temple is also in Arashiyama, just outside the main tourist trail area. It’s not in the Lonely Planet, we found out about it on another travel blog. The temple originally dates to the 8th century although it was moved to its present location in 1922, and the grounds contain 1200 carved stone figures of Rakan (disciples of Shaka, the founder of Buddhism) which were made during the 1980s by visitors from across Japan for the reconstruction of the temple. We loved that enough time had elapsed to cover them with moss so that initially they looked very old but on closer inspection the variety of expressions and accessories (tennis racket, beer bottles, walkman!) gave them an air of modernity. It’s a lovely peaceful temple, but also feels a little like an art installation, and is definitely one of our favourites.

Kiyomizu-dera

The one with the view

It seems as if this temple is on everyone’s itinerary, it was full of school groups as well as scores of other tourists, including quite a few Japanese dressed up in kimonos for the day’s sightseeing. Even so the main hall of the temple perched on a hillside overlooking central Kyoto is an impressive sight.

If you go we’d recommend stopping at Tainai-meguri before entering the main temple (go through the gate and up the steps, it’s to the left before you get to the ticket booth). It’s an unusual sub temple which you enter through a curtain into a pitch black corridor, following a handrail of large wooden prayer beads leads you to the centre of the temple and symbolises rebirth. Even with a group of giggling schoolgirls following us and stepping on the backs of our shoes it was a mystical experience.

Chion-in

The one with grandeur

Clockwise from top left: Andrew in front of the temple gate, the main hall under wraps, a large Buddha head in a sub-temple in the cemetery, the ‘big bell’

From the beginning you know that this is going to be an impressive temple. It has the largest temple gate in Japan, a self proclaimed ‘big bell’, and when the main hall is uncovered and reopens (scheduled for sometime in 2019) it looks as if it will be an imposing structure. But, for all that, there’s nothing brash about this temple, it has a quiet dignity and we liked how it seemed to be a working temple, minding its own business and almost ignoring the few tourists who pass through.

Its seven ‘treasures’ are explained in a display case behind the temple hall and the corridors linking the three main structures are fitted with nightingale floors, so called because they ‘sing’ as you walk on them. It’s thought that they were used as a kind of security measure so that intruders couldn’t sneak in.

Shoren-in

The one that looks like a country retreat

I still can’t quite get my head around this one being a temple. There is a line of massive camphor trees along the front shielding it from the street and the buildings are an interconnected collection of rooms with beautifully painted screen doors and views out into a peaceful garden. You really have to look for the temple elements – the Buddha images are modestly sized, there’s no incense and even the temple bell is tucked away in a corner of the garden.

Fushimi Inari

The one with lots of red torii gates

OK, strictly speaking this is a shrine not a temple, but you know what I mean… It’s located about a 30 minute bike ride south-east of Kyoto centre and extends all the way up the side of Mt Inari. It’s quite a long and sweaty hike to the top along a path almost entirely covered with thousands of bright orange-red torii gates with various small shrines along the way dedicated to the gods of rice and sake. We found the view through the gates to be really photogenic and it was much easier to find empty stretches the higher up the mountain we climbed.

Ginkakuji

The one with the amazing Zen garden (and not a glimmer of silver)

Ginkakuji means silver temple but, unlike at Kinkakuji, they never quite got around to applying the bling here. We arrived just after opening time to find the team of gardeners beginning a demolition job on the intricate raked sand Zen garden. Our next hour or so was spent sitting at the side and watching as with hosepipe, string line, special rake and a hefty boulder they reconstructed it. Even without the special experience of seeing how the Zen garden is engineered, the rest of the grounds are also beautifully kept (and busy) with mossy hillsides and glimpses into the temple buildings.

Honen-in

The one with the art

The Path of Philosophy

The Path of Philosophy is a canalside footpath which leads south from Ginkakuji. The next temple along it is Honen-in which the Lonely Planet highly recommended but which was nevertheless very quiet. There is a small garden surrounding the temple buildings as well as several pieces of art installed discreetly in the grounds. There’s also a dedicated exhibition room which hosts small temporary exhibitions. We enjoyed going in and speaking to the mother and daughter artists and an Australian artist who was also viewing, we even got a free cup of tea.

Honen-in (clockwise from top left): art exhibition hall, stupa in the grounds, raked sand, art work in a corner of the garden

Nanzenji

The one with the gate that you can go inside

Nanzenji also has an impressively large gate and it’s possible to enter this one. I found the ¥500 (£3) entry fee a little steep for the 20 minutes required to climb the steps and walk around but the view over the city is nice and the temple on the second floor is beautifully painted although unfortunately we could only peek through the windows and photos are not allowed. Afterwards we wandered through the grounds, past the brick built aqueduct and through a very quiet temple called Saisho-in to a shrine-temple in the forest built in front of a sacred waterfall.

Kurama-dera

The one on a forested hillside

The main reason we visited the small town of Kurama, 30 minutes north of Kyoto on the Eizan rail line was to visit the outdoor onsen, but an hour or so’s walk up the hillside through the various temple buildings and a picnic lunch with a view over the surrounding mountains turned it into a pleasant full day trip. The temple was pretty, but we highly recommend a soak in the hot spring waters as a way to relax your muscles after the hike up and back down the hill.

Kobe, Japan

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Julie and I were a bit skeptical about stopping off in Kobe for a couple of days, as we wondered what else there might be to do in this city famous the world over for the quality of its beef. Well, we couldn’t just eat steak all day now could we..

Teppanyaki Kobe Beef at Steakland

Steakland in Kobe, purveyors of the finest, most meltingly delicious beef we’ve ever had

We were all set to visit a restaurant called Mouriya which has fantastic reviews, until we got talking to the folks at our hostel who recommended the theme-park-named “Steakland“, which we were assured was as good if not better.

It was very easy to find, and when we arrived we found out the whole place is set up for teppanyaki – a cooking style where the chef cooks at the table on a large hot plate, which we later found out was invented in Kobe.

Our chef preparing the famous Kobe beef. Mouth watering level at the time this photo was taken: 11

We watched our chef carefully, masterfully prepare our Kobe steak, before he placed the bite-size morsels on our plate. The texture on the tongue was of lightly seared beef, which gave in to our bite with all the resistance of a marshmallow. Then the fattiness and flavour of the beef hit us. Mmmmmm.. bliss. It is, to my carnivorous brain, the final evolution of the art of consuming beef. Yep, even to my well-travelled tastebuds, this is the best steak I’ve ever had.

Kobe beef, in Kobe, cooked in the teppanyaki Kobe style

Kobe Earthquake Museum

The Kobe Earthquake Museum. Why did they surround it with glass?

The Kobe Earthquake Museum, or to give it its full title: “The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial, Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution” (whew!) retells the story of the massive earthquake that occurred on the 17th of January 1995, measuring 6.8 on the Moment magnitude scale (the successor to the Richter magnitude scale).

The Museum starts abruptly with an immersive recreation of the earthquake which happened in the early hours of the morning. The theatre is dark. The scene is set with stills of Kobe’s streets, shops and offices before the video and deafening sounds of breaking civilisation completely disorientated us.

The video includes CCTV footage of shops and offices, and the devastation wrought was unbelievable. As we have travelled for the past 15 months we’ve recognised places and names, mostly because we’ve seen or heard about them on the news, but neither of us recalled anything of this disaster which took 6,434 lives.

Collapsed sections of the Hanshin Expressway caused by the Kobe Earthquake. Source: My photo of a photo on display in the museum

The museum goes on to describe the immediate aftermath, which was explained to us by very friendly English speaking members of staff who added their own stories of the tragedy. It was fascinating to hear that so many rules and procedures have been introduced as a result of the Kobe disaster. Some examples we were told about were that relief efforts were delayed because of hierarchical authorisation which has been changed in the event of earthquakes, and that fires were caused by the electricity being reconnected – now they inspect the power lines and restore it in stages.

Demonstration area in the Kobe Earthquake Museum. Clockwise from the top: Staff teach schoolchildren (and us!) about liquefaction; Liquefaction demonstration – only one house remains standing because it has deep foundations, the coloured balls represent underground services such as water, gas and sewerage; Map of the world showing the tectonic plates and locations of volcanoes, earthquakes, impact craters and plate tectonics

Engineers and support staff from Kobe have provided assistance at subsequent earthquake relief efforts not just in Japan, but around the world. We thought the interactive visual displays were excellent; a simple bucket of sand demonstrated liquefaction, and a vibrating table demonstrated seismic base isolation.

Kawasaki Good Times World

Me having a Good Times™, marvelling at all the machinery Kawasaki have built through the years

With the delightfully translated name of “Good Times World”, the history and accomplishments of the Kawasaki company was pleasantly impressive – for being more interesting than we had hoped, the amount of information on show, and for the breadth of industries Kawasaki has been involved in.

Julie and I take turns sitting on the Kawasaki Ninja 400 Special Edition

We learnt a lot about the company and its creations that we had no idea about before, like they build the Shinkansen bullet trains and the tracks, they still make huge container and transport ships which is how the company started, they own the trade mark “Jet Ski” and they built the machines that dug the Eurotunnel!

The museum has examples of almost everything they make, which we had fun climbing into and playing with.

Good Times. Clockwise from top left: First generation Shinkansen; Me at the controls; Julie taking charge of a much more modern tram; Me on the Shinkansen arcade game / simulator (which I was rubbish at – sorry Uncle Ken!); Julie on the Jet Ski arcade; Me on the Jet Ski arcade

Kawasaki Good Times World – Good Times indeed!

Nunobiki Waterfall, Herb Gardens and Ropeway

Just 5 minutes north of the Kobe Shinkansen bullet train station is a narrow valley between Mt Futatabi and Mt Maya that leads up to the Nunobiki waterfall.

The Nunobiki waterfall, a serene place so close to the bustle of Kobe

A little further up the trail we passed a reservoir which would have been a welcome stop were it not for the annoying public announcement being looped through loudpseakers!

A Kobe reservoir. It holds water. We didn’t stop for long. What more can I say?

We pressed on, and made it to the Nunobiki Herb Gardens and Ropeway, which can also be reached by said ropeway from the lowest cablecar station near the Shinkansen train terminal.

The Herb Gardens purport to be Japan’s largest herb and flower garden, with some 200 species blooming throughout the year. We really enjoyed the variety of the gardens, and as we’ve come to expect in Japan it’s very well laid out too, although as we started at the bottom some of the hills were quite steep to walk up!

Kobe Nunobiki Herb and Flower Gardens, which also have a great view over downtown Kobe

Herbs and flowers at the Kobe Herb and Flower Garden. Clockwise from top-left: Honey bee collecting lavender pollen, round yellow flower (Allium); pretty blue flower (Cornflower); pointy yellow flower (Lupin)

As well as the herbs and flowers, the gardens have a number of art installations, and a lovely greenhouse complete with a herbal foot-bath that Julie couldn’t resist after all the walking we’d done!

Complimentary herbal foot-bath

While she soaked her weary feet, we ate the various flavours of bagel we’d carried from the bakery next-door to our hostel, and admired the view over Kobe.

It was a nice, peaceful end to our couple of days in this fascinating stopover, and a great way to make room for more delicious Kobe beef!

15 month summary

Countries visited in the last three months (1st April to 30th June)

Singapore, Japan (total visited to date on this trip = 14)

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Nowhere near, we knew before we departed that Japan would be expensive but it still came as a shock after a year of travelling the rest of Asia, although to be fair it’s probably no more expensive than travelling in Europe would be.

Our average daily spend over the three months has been £99.83. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £69.67 which is exactly what we’d hoped – our savings to date were enough to balance the overspend in Japan.

Accommodation is yet again the biggest expense at 38.0% – for most of the time we stayed in business hotels which as a couple usually work out cheaper than hostels with the added advantage of an ensuite bathroom. The downside compared to a hostel is you don’t get to chat with the host or other travellers and there’s nowhere to prepare meals (not that all hostels have kitchens but some do).
Food is next highest at 24.0% – we’ve eaten really well in Singapore and Japan and while it’s possible to find relatively reasonably priced food it certainly can’t be described as cheap.
Intercity transportation was high at 18.5%. We had two flights in this quarter, from Dhaka to Singapore, and from Singapore to Nagoya (Japan). When moving long distances in Japan we usually travelled by Shinkansen, the famed bullet train. Very fast, clean and comfortable but not cheap. We kept costs as low as possible by taking occasional buses or travelling by local train when moving between nearby cities.
Local transportation was comparatively high at 5.2%. Although buses and trams are not too expensive (usually £1-2 each per trip) they do add up. We also did a few long distance day trips which were possible because of the speed and efficient timetabling of buses and trains, for example to Kamikochi from Matsumoto and to Ibusuki from Kagoshima
For the first time on this trip the visa spend for the quarter was absolutely nothing – no spend and no stress! Both Singapore and Japan allow UK passport holders to stay for 3 months visa free.

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

If you listen to the continental Europeans or Americans they’ll have you believe that the British are plain weird for driving on the left, pretty much unique. Well, in the last 9 months we’ve visited no less than 6 other countries who also drive on the left (Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Japan) and while it could be argued that for some of these countries, though certainly not all, this is due to a colonial British heritage I don’t think we should let that detract from a good argument.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

Not much to be honest. Travel in Japan and Singapore has been pretty easy, with all our creature comforts adequately provided for. Although we both love trying new foods we do get the occasional hankering for a good cheese sandwich or a plate of fish and chips.

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – I loved Okunoin cemetery in Koyasan. The huge cedar trees amongst the gravestones of all ages, the surprising statues that we came across and listening to the monks’ morning chanting all added up to an experience I won’t forget.

Andrew – My preconceptions about Japan were fast trains, commuter-packed metros and high tech everything, so the most memorable sight is the amount of greenery and scenic beauty here. Julie won’t let me have that as it’s not specific enough, so I’m going to pick Mt Fuji, the iconic mountain of Japan.

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

On our first day in Kanazawa we had lunch at Omicho Market and bought a small cake each for dessert before walking across town to Kenrokuen garden. Inside the garden we found a bench from where we could admire the view while eating our cakes. Suddenly, I flinched back as I caught sight of a bird seeming to swoop very close. When I turned to Andrew to see if he had seen it, he was looking in disbelief at his empty hand which had been loosely holding his cake. A Black Kite had swooped in and taken it without touching him! Since then we’ve always been very watchful when eating out in the open…

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

Our host in Singapore, Diana, was such a pleasure to stay with. We booked her spare room through Airbnb and it was an ideal place for some R&R after the somewhat challenging travel through Bangladesh. She made us feel right at home, from her comfy sofas, fast wifi and well stocked kitchen (Julie seriously lusted after her top quality pans and knives), to her friendly conversation and introducing us to the TV programme Grey’s Anatomy which we watched avidly for a week! As an added bonus we discovered that she had lived in Japan for 6 years and didn’t mind us picking her brains. Her suggestions on where to go basically established our itinerary for the first month of our stay here.

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Julie – Struggling with the budget again. We’d really got used to staying in fairly nice places and basically eating wherever we wanted while travelling through SE Asia and into Bangladesh and it’s been a hard habit to break, needing to think twice about stopping at a cafe for coffee and cake, or whether to organise a packed lunch rather than relying on finding something while we’re out. We don’t compromise on sights and activities so accommodation, food and drinks tend to be where we try to save money.

Andrew – We’ve found that booking last minute budget accommodation as a couple has been hard in Japan, especially as we usually want to stay for three or four nights. It seems that as well as all of us foreign tourists, the Japanese also like to travel a lot, which meant we had to quickly firm up our plans and start booking 3 to 4 weeks in advance, rather than the 3 to 4 days we’ve been used to so far!

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures