Day 9 in Japan



So, a month ago today we got back on the Shinkansen and speeded south from the former capital Kyoto. We'd originally intended to go to Koyasan, because friends had enthused about staying in one of the many temples there, but having a JR Pass for only two weeks meant that if we went to Koyasan we'd have to skip Hiroshima or pay the full fare to travel back from Hiroshima to Tokyo. We'd slept in a Buddhist temple on earlier travels, Hiroshima was a high priority, and we did have to think a little about economies. So Koyasan dropped off the itinerary, and we went straight to the city that was the capital of Japan before Kyoto: Nara, city of deer and shrines.

We stayed in another business hotel here, in a room overlooking a cemetery.



We strolled around the town, slightly bemused by the loudspeaker in the main street outside our hotel that seemed to be broadcasting a children's radio program most of the day. That's one of the advantages of having in effect no language at all: things that might otherwise have been non-events, boring or annoying remain tantalising enigmas. We did find a bookshop with an English-language shelf, and bought a couple of Japanese prize winners in translation.

For dinner,we decided to take advice from the Lonely Planet, which recommended a restaurant named Harishin. Of course the Lonely Planet gave only vague directions on how to find it, so we (and in this case that means I) asked for more specific guidance from the people at the hotel's front desk. This led to the first of several fascinating conversations involving maps. I already had a reasonably detailed map which we'd picked up at the station. The guy behind the counter recognised the name of the restaurant, looked up something on his computer (Google, possibly?), and pulled a map from a drawer, very detailed with Japanese script all over it. He scrutinised this map, tracing a path with his finger, and marked a spot with a pencil. After a moment's thought, he marked another spot half a block from the first, then pulled out a second, less detailed map, and compared the two carefully. Placing a finger on a spot on the second map, he produced yet a third map, and I recognised this one as the same as the one we'd got from the station. Looking back and forth between the three of them, with an occasional glance at the monitor, he finally took a pen and marked a cross on the third map -- evidently this was the only one a gaijin could reasonably be expected to understand. Finally addressing himself to me, he turned this map around so I could read it, showed me the hotel and the restaurant and traced with his pen the way we should walk to get to our dinner. Confident that the hard work had been done for us, we set out.

And it worked. But did I mention that there were no street names on this map, or on most of the actual streets? And that quite broad thoroughfares, wide enough for two cars to pass, were represented on it by two lines roughly as far apart as the two lines representing a narrow laneway? By the time we found what we now thought of as the fabled Harishi, we were hungry, cranky, and just a little desperate.

The dinner, a fixed menu served in a number of tiny ceramic bowls in a beautifully asymettrical black lacquered box, was fabulous, and cost all of 2900 yen (a little more than 30 Australian dollars) for us both. The link above is to a New York Times review, and describes the experience well.

Posted: Tue - September 23, 2008 at 09:30 PM           |

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