Beynac-et-Cazenac

Beynac-et-Cazenac was our base while in the Dordogne Region. Beynac is quite small, has a relaxing atmosphere, and is beautiful. While in Beynac, we spent most of our time day tripping to the nearby towns of Les Eyzies (to see the prehistoric caves) and Sarlat.

Beynac is another of France's well-preserved medieval cities. The stone village features steep streets that still boast their Languedoc (old French) names.

Beynac

The highlight of Beynac is the castle. Château de Beynac is a wonderfully-preserved castle constructed in the Middle Ages on top of a limestone cliff on the edge of the Dordogne River. Built in the 1100s by the barons of Beynac, the location of the castle provided excellent defense opportunities.

While in Beynac, we decided to take a ride on one of the barges, locally called gabarres.

Gabarres on the River

From the gabarre, we were able to see Beynac from a different vantage point. I took photograph after photograph of the castle perched dramatically on the side of the cliff and the aged buildings of the town.

View of Beynac from the gabarre

Not only did we see Beynac Castle, we were able to see three other castles from the boat: Marqueyssac, Fayrac, and Castelnaud. Over a thousand castles like these were built in this region during the Hundred Years' War alone.

Marqueyssac

Fayrac

Castlenaud

Beynac Castle sitting dramatically on a cliff

After riding on the gabarre, we walked through town to our rented car. We drove around the back side of the town to the rear the Beynac Castle.

Greg and the castle

Beynac Castle

View of the valley from Beynac Castle

Beynac actually reminded me of Cinque Terre in Italy. The village is small and set directly on the water in a way that took me back to my memories of Manarola and Vernazza in Cinque Terre. I would recommend a stop in Beynac to anyone wanting to visit France. 

Nagoya City and Back to Tokyo

After the awesomeness of karaoke last night, we slept a little later this morning.  Because check-out time was 10am, we still didn't get to sleep too much later.  We hadn't yet seen Nagoya, and I wanted to see the castle at the very least.  We checked out and left our bags at the hotel, then walked to the castle.  

Nagoya Castle

The Ninomaru Palace was under construction, so we were only able to see a small exhibit explaining how the the palace is being rebuilt. The castle and the rest of the grounds, however, were open to visitors.  We explored the grounds, bought a banana chocolate ice cream cone, then entered the castle (after the ice cream was consumed).

Nagoya Castle

The castle featured various exhibits on different floors.  One floor was devoted to hand-painted door and wall panels, one showed replicas of the castle at different stages, and the top floor boasted many windows and a view of Nagoya city.

Nagoya Castle. The guys who built the castle wanted to 

make sure they got credit for each stone they carried, so 

they carved their symbol into their stones.

  Nagoya Castle is most famous for the pair of golden dolphins located on the roof.  One is male and the other is female, so the measurements and specifications of the two are different.  

Like most of the castles we visited, Nagoya-jo had been rebuilt.  The castle had been destroyed during World War II. Everything burned, including the dolphins. The dolphins were recast and placed atop the rebuilt castle, only removed twice since for expositions.

Replica of one of the golden dolphins. 

People were lined up to pose for pictures with this golden dolphin replica.  There were replicas in other parts of the castle as well.  There was even one inside the castle that people could sit on and have their photo taken.  The line for that dolphin was huge.

The time was getting late, so I said goodbye to the dolphins and Greg checked the map for the nearest metro station (which happened to be a kilometer or two away, not so near).  We still had to travel back to Tokyo. 

Yuri met us at the train station and we said our goodbyes.  We left Nagoya on the 2.33pm hikari shinkansen.  I didn't think it would take very long to get back to Tokyo on the shinkansen, but it actually did take us about two hours.  I had remembered that it took about 2 1/2 hours to get from Tokyo to Kyoto, and this time we were traveling less distance. 

By the time we arrived at our hotel, it was almost dark.  We stayed at the Grand Arc Hanzoman on the west side of the Imperial Palace.  After the inconveniences and problems of Business Inn Tsuchiya in Nagoya, Grand Arc Hanzoman was amazing.  The 14 floor elevator ride was smooth, the toilets had warm seats, and we had an incredible view of the city. 

View from our hotel room in Tokyo.

After unpacking a few things and trying on the slippers and robes the hotel provided, we discussed how we were going to spend the evening.  Greg had been wanting to go to the Akihabara district, so after resting for about an hour at the hotel, we set out for the nearest train station (because our rail passes would cover the cost of the rail journey and because the rail line stopped at Akihabara).  According to the hotel website, the nearest station was a 10 minute walk.  They must have meant a 10 minute run, because the walk took us at least 20 minutes.  

We made it to the train station and onto a train going toward Akihabara. We left the station through the "Electric Town" exit and were greeted by the lights of the multi-storied Sega arcade, manga shops, and electronics stores.  Greg commented that this is where his people are.

Akihabara, Tokyo

Akihabara, Tokyo

Akihabara, Tokyo

Akihabara, Tokyo

Unfortunately, Akihabara is not a part of Tokyo that stays open late. Many of the stores started closing down shortly after we arrived, but not before I acquired a couple of new cutesy Japanese toys.  Cell phone charms and key chains are all over shops in Japan and are always cute.  I ended up with a mole inside a mushroom cellphone charm and a kitty cat key chain. Greg bought a couple of character key chains.

After picking up some dinner at a 7-11 (you can play the 10 Second Game with convenience stores as well as vending machines), we walked back to the JR station (Japan Rail) and boarded the next train going north.  One stop later, we got off in Ueno.

Since it was late, we didn't venture far from the train station.  The zoo and a couple of the national museums are located in Ueno, but the area we explored near the train station was a bit seedy.  There were a lot of shops, restaurants, pachinko parlors, and a few massage halls.  Pachinko is a form of gambling that is something like pinball combined with slot machines.  Homeless people, invisible in most other areas of Tokyo, were visible there.

Only the pachinko parlors and massage halls were still open, so we didn't spend much time in Ueno.  Near midnight, we entered the metro station adjacent to the train station and took the metro back to the hotel (since the metro station is closer to the hotel than the train station is).

Kanazawa to Nagoya with a Stop in Hikone

This morning we woke up and checked out of the hotel early with the intention of stopping for a few hours in a city on the way to Nagoya.  We asked a woman in the train ticket office how to get to Nagoya.  She told us to take a limited express train from Kanazawa to Maibara and then the shinkansen from Maibara to Nagoya.

We didn't have any plans for where we would spend the day, so while Greg slept on the train, I pulled out the Lonely Planet Japan and scoured the maps and information to find an appropriate city to spend a few hours in.

I finally decided that we would go to Hikone.  Hikone was only one stop away from Maibara, where we were required to change trains anyway.  The guidebook suggested Hikone Castle as an alternate to Himeji Castle, which was, as we discovered, under construction and not visible.

Hikone Castle is one of the most preserved castles in Japan.  Some castles were ruined by fire, many were dismantled during the Meiji era, and others were destroyed during World War II.  Few castles have survived.

Hikone-jo Castle.

Because much of the castle is original, Hikone-jo is our favorite castle.  Castles rebuilt as museums (like the Osaka Castle) are less interesting.

Hikone Castle

We explored the stable first, where we fed some hay to a pretend horse.  We then walked over the moat and  proceeded to walk up the hill towards the castle.

Me feeding the "horse" in the stable.

The view next to the castle from the top of the hill was amazing!  We could see Lake Biwa and in the distance some snow-covered mountains.

Lake Biwa with mountains in the distance.

We entered the castle.  The stairs were the most memorable part of the castle itself.  The stairs were very steep and a little scary to climb, even with a handrail.

Steep castle steps.  

This castle was not used as a museum.  In fact, the castle was mostly empty.  The construction and architecture of the castle were more on display than any other feature.

Greg reading about the castle.

After we finished seeing the inside of the castle, we consulted the map.  From the castle, we walked to the old town where we went into a couple of little shops.

Old town Hikone.

Old town Hikone.

It was about 2pm, so I called Yuri, a friend I met several years ago in Belgium, and we agreed to meet later in the evening for dinner.

Greg and I walked back to the train station where we took a train back to Maibara, and then the shinkansen to Nagoya.

We finally arrived at Tsuchiya Hotel to check in.  The hotel seemed nice, but we weren't actually staying at the hotel.  We were staying next door at Business Inn Tsuchiya (owned by Tsuchiya Hotel).  I had spent an awful lot of time trying to find a hotel in Nagoya, but for whatever reason, nothing nice was available.  I literally combed all of the hotel and travel websites and found availability at only 3 establishments, two of which were far from the train station.

So we ended up staying at Business Inn Tsuchiya in a smoky smelling room with cigarette burns in the carpet. Worse than the smell was the bathroom situation.  All the toilets were Japanese style (AKA hole in the ground) and the only women's restroom was upstairs on the 4th floor.  This "inn" was definitely meant for late businessmen who missed their last train.  Nobody else would want to stay there!

We met up with my friend Yuri around 7 at our "hotel" and walked with her to a more traditional Japanese restaurant establishment.  Even I was able to eat the food!  Greg and I both tried several dishes we would not have had the opportunity to try otherwise.

Amazingly, Yuri already had everything planned for tomorrow.  Even more amazingly, she had planned to go to a place that I had really wanted to visit!

As we go to sleep in this hole of a "hotel," at least we know that tomorrow we are going to see some really awesome sites.

Himeji, Bunraku, and the Castle in Osaka

I knew that Himeji Castle was under construction, but Lonely Planet Japan made the work seem like no big deal, so I convinced Greg to spend a couple of hours in Himeji before we took the train to Osaka. 

Instead of a castle, we got a scaffold and tarp covered building.  The lack of a castle to take pretty pictures of did not deter us from wandering around the city.  

Fish sculpture with tarped Himeji Castle in the background.

We saw a circus tent with families lined up, a model reproduction of Himeji Castle in a shopping mall, a temple, and a covered pedestrian only shopping street.  We bought some lunch at a grocery store and walked back to the train station to travel to Osaka.

Once in Osaka, we boarded the loop train and got off at the station nearest the castle.  We had not yet visited a castle in Japan and we were both excited to see how the experience differed from our European castle experience.

Osaka Castle

Osaka Castle was not exactly what we had hoped it would be. We knew this castle wasn't original, but we were expecting a reproduction of the original.  After being damaged and mostly destroyed several times over, the castle was rebuilt in the 1990s with concrete as a museum with modern conveniences.

Along with the elevator were museum exhibitions, which were informative, but not what we were interested in.   We wanted to see how royalty in Japan lived.

Osaka Castle

The time was getting late and we still had to travel across town to get to the National Bunraku Theater in time for the 4pm performance. Slightly disappointed, we quickly looked through the 8 floors of the Osaka Castle and then hurried to the  nearest metro station.  After some difficulty with figuring out the metro fare and a discussion with the attendant, we purchased tickets, walked through the turnstiles, and boarded the metro train.

National Bunraku Theater, Osaka. 

We had bought tickets for a New Year's bunraku performance.  Bunraku is puppet-theater in which a choral narrator and a musical narrator sit stage left down stage.  The main action occurs center stage with 2 or 3 puppets each operated by 3 people.  A puppeteer must work on his craft for about 30 years before he can become the main puppeteer and operate both the head and the right hand.

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the performance or the inside of the theater, but I was able to find this awesome video explaining the art of bunraku and summarizing one of the plays we saw (3:15 into the video).

A short explanation of bunraku followed by a summary (at 3:15) of the play 

we saw, "Tsubosaka-kannon Reigenki."

The performance we saw included excerpts from two longer plays. There are two daily performances (2 different shows) during January. We saw the second performance on opening day.

Bunraku poster for the performance we saw at

 the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka.

The audience was made up of middle-aged Japanese people and a few tourists.  By the end of the hours-long performance, I was going crazy with discomfort.  I was wriggling and fidgeting; I couldn't help myself.  I don't think any of the Japanese people moved at all! They were completely still and attentive the entire four hours.  I've never seen such an interested audience.

Although I very much enjoyed the show, I admit I became bored toward the end.  After the performance, Greg and I were talking and we discovered that in the penultimate scene where the wife threw herself off a cliff to join her suicidal, dead husband, we were both thinking the same thought, "Go on! Do it! Jump! Jump! Get it over with!"

We are both glad we had the opportunity to see the show.  Before we came to Japan, Greg asked me what I wanted to do while here.  I told him I wanted to see a kabuki play or other traditional theater.  While studying for my teacher's certification in drama, I learned about kabuki, bunraku, and noh theater. Reading about these traditional types of drama is one thing, but seeing a performance in person is completely different.

Tired and with sore bums, we left the theater and again walked to the nearest train station.  Fortunately for us with our JR rail passes, Osaka is circled by train stations and the bunraku theater wasn't terribly far from a station.

We didn't make it back to Kyoto until quite late.