Have You Climbed Mount Fuji?

Apart from the countless questions on us three visiting Japan over and over again, people tend to ask me whether we've climbed Mount Fuji. The answer to that is, we've enjoyed the view from afar, but yet to attempt to reach its peak. I've gotten plenty of incredulous remark about me wasting my time going to Japan and not attempting the conquer the peak.

Some would go to the extent to tell you that you have not traveled Japan until you have scaled Mount Fuji. But do you know that only 1% of the Japanese ever experience climbing the mountain?

Of course, there is a saying that goes : "He who climbs Mount Fuji is a wise man, he who climbs twice is a fool" or "You are a fool if you never climb Mt. Fuji and you are an even bigger fool if you climb it more than once.”

If anyone is planning to climb Mount Fuji, the "official" climbing season begins on 1 July and ends on 31 August and it is most popular to ascend the mountain overnight to see the sunrise.

We'll leave Mount Fuji (or Fujisan) climbing out of our planning for now though. So, if anyone planning to do the climb, we are totally the wrong people to ask for tips! On the other hand, over 80% of the Japanese countryside is hilly or mountainous terrain so we'll hopefully be hiking or climbing something on our next vacation. Nothing too high, and instead of Mount Iwate, a hike to Mount Mitake is a consideration too. We'll just view Fujisan for far, for the moment.

Kak Lela of Awan Okinawa Berlalu, who resides in Okinawa did manage to make the climb in 2007. Bravo to her! For me, I think I'll head for Mount Kinabalu first before attempting the Fujisan. When will that be, I wonder? LOL

A Dip In An Onsen?

I am currently cutting back my time reading blogs and EC dropping and spending more time browsing and looking up travel information on Japan with Zaini. Although we have yet to confirm whether we can actually go for our vacation in late Nov/early Dec, there's no harm planning. Planning for our vacation and poring over train schedules and maps is always a fun activity for us.

Anyway, if we can't go through with this vacation plan, our backup plan is to head to Thailand for a more affordable vacation.

At the moment, we are looking at several options for a night in a ryokan and a dip in onsens. Currently, going to Nyutou Onsenkyo in Akita looks like a good option to us.

Photos from Nyutou Onsenkyo official website

Both Zaini and I agree that Tsurunoyu Onsen looks the most appealing for us in terms of room choices. Its rustic accomodation (no modern plumbing and electricity here) kinda appeals to us. Tsurunoyu Onsen is the oldest operating ryokan there and is one of eight hot-spring baths that belong to Nyutou Onsenkyo located near the foot of Nyutou san. Of course there is a newer addition to Tsurunoyu onsen, Yamanoyado; that offers all the modern comforts of a modern ryokan complete with internet connection too.

Taenoyu looks great too, with a myriad of baths to choose from, but the rooms wasn't exactly what we wanted. Choices, so many choices...I guess it'll be easier if money is no object, but at the moment, we are looking at a 50,000yen night stay in a ryokan. That is equivalent to 5 nights at Toyoko Inn. Gasp!

And oh! Nyutou Onsenkyo has mixed gender bathing available, apart from the seperate and private baths. Would you enter a mixed gender bath if you have the chance?

And going there, we'll have the chance to take the Komachi shinkansen (Akita Shinkansen) and on our return trip, we thought of taking the Tsubasa shinkansen (Yamagata Shinkansen) with a few stops along the way before making our way back to Tokyo.

Yasashii Mareshiago Katakoto Kaiwacho

I would like to congratulate Nash (a fellow Malaysian in Japan) on his first published Japanese-Malay Language book entitled ‘Yasashii Mareshiago katakoto kaiwacho’. Check out about his post on this here.

I love the cover of the book because it is so colourful and playful too. For only 1,300yen, you can learn Malay (for Japanese buyers or if you understand Japanese) and for those who understand Malay but not a word of Japanese, this book can be for you too to learn Japanese.

I wrote this post without him knowing my intention to do so but I hope he doesn't mind.

The book will be available from June 29 but I'm not sure whether we can get it direct from the writer (I'd like to get my hands on one if possible) or whether it's going to be sold overseas. I'll ask Nash later, if anyone is interested. :-) Or you can check the book out at Subarusya site. Also check out Amazon Japan to buy the book.

Update: Nash will be coming back to Malaysia end of year, so maybe for us Malaysians, we can wait for him to return and get them direct from him.

Selecting a JR Pass To Buy

If we are planning to visit several places around Japan and they are a few hundred kilometres apart, it is important for us to get a JR Pass. Last year we got ourselves a two-week JR Pass at 45,100yen each. The year before, we got a 7-days JR Pass at 28,300yen each. These passes are quite a bargain if you plan to do extensive travelling on the Shinkansens. And we do travel A LOT on Shinkansens. The super efficient train system is our favourite thing about vacationing in Japan. We can spend days just hopping on and off trains; comparing the different train features and be completely happy. Weird? Maybe.

Anyway, we got to travel from Kyushu all the way to Tokyo on JR trains with plenty of stops in between and not have to worry about additional ticket fares.

For this year's visit (if we get to go, that is) we are not planning to go all over the country and will concentrate mostly to the East side of Japan. So a JR East Pass looks like our best option.

There is a promotion for a 3-day flexible JR East Special Pass available for sale from Sep 1 - Dec 1, 2009 and can be used from Sep 1 - Dec 31, 2009. The pass is to be sold at just 10,000yen. As a comparison, a flexible 4 day pass is sold at 20,000yen which is the same rate as a 5 consecutive days pass. That is a lot of savings! The JR East Pass can be used to ride the Izu Kyuko Line (Super-View Odoriko, Odoriko), the Hokuetsu Kyuko Line (Hakutaka, between Echigoyuzawa and Naoetsu) and the Tobu-Nikko Line (Nikko, Spacia Nikko, Kinugawa and Spacia Kinugawa trains). Cool! (Zaini can be a complete nerd when it comes to trains)

Maybe this time, I get to go to Nikko.

So far, our rough plan is:
2 days at Disneyland/Disneysea to celebrate Raimie's birthday on Dec 2 which is to be towards the end of our vacation.
Hiking to Mount Iwate, Morioka
Railway Museum in Saitama
Yokohama to check out Heroes Base (and meet Ultraman) among others there
A day or two for shopping : Karuizawa & Gotemba Premium Outlet came to mind
another 7 days worth of vacation days yet to be planned. Hmm... I wonder if we can afford going to a Ryokan and soak in an onsen this time around?

Tasting My New Boh Green Tea

Typically when you think of Boh tea, you think of Boh's endless selection of black teas, right?

I got two new packs of tea to try. I bought a new pack of genmaicha before we went to Cameron Highlands and in Cameron Highlands, I bought a pack of Boh green tea for me and another for Zaini. Plenty of tea for us!

Boh tea pack and genmaicha pack.

Boh's 25s teabags pack cost me RM4.70 (interestingly, it is cheaper to buy in Jusco!) and the Yukino genmaicha 20s teabags cost me RM16.80. I'm always excited to try new brand of tea in my quest for a good cup of (unsweetened) tea but I sure can't afford the high-end products. All my tea are supermarket bought anyway and never cost more than RM20.00! But it is always funny when my Chinese friends and colleagues seemed somewhat taken aback when they see me drinking green/chinese tea or when they see me with my selection of teapots brewing tea in the pantry. Somehow, a Malay drinking green/Chinese tea seems like an anomaly to some people.

What's my verdict of the Boh green tea? The taste was a little too delicate for my liking and the aroma was too subtle. The bitterness of the green tea was only evident after I steeped the teabag for more than 5 minutes because otherwise it didn't have the taste that I want. A light tasting tea, but for someone who is not a connoisseur, it tasted somewhat similar to other chinese tea in the market.

I'm going to finish this tea first before I opened my genmaicha pack. Unlike the genmaicha tea which is individually foiled packed, the Boh teabags are not. Anyone up for a cup of tea?

Boh Green Tea

Can't believe that it's been a week since my last post! We went back to my hometown to attend two weddings and then we were off to Cameron Highlands for a cool break.

Got some new packets of green tea for both me and Zaini. I've already ran out of Japanese green tea so I'm looking forward to trying out the Boh green tea.

We went to tour the tea plantation too, which was rather fun. Afterwards, we went to do some strawberry picking at a nearby farm. I've always wanted to go to ichigo gari in Japan, but doing this in Malaysia was rather fun too.

I'll be posting some photos up at my other blog about our break in Cameron Highlands soon.

How Important Is Good Service To You?

How would you feel when a favourite restaurant of yours, which used to have a crew of bright, cheerful and efficient wait staff no longer offer the same level of service?

I don’t know the reason but I noticed since April, the staffs that we regularly see at Pasta Zanmai, Mid Valley were no longer working there. In their place, a completely new bunch of staff that unfortunately seemed clueless about their job; be it about the menu and taking orders, making sure food served or even giving us our bills when we asked for it.

Nothing sets me off like bad service, so pardon my rant here. (I’m revealing myself as a really fussy, hard to please, grumpy old woman here, right? LOL)

What we had for our dinner on Tuesday:

Raimie's Hamburg. He will order this every.single.time we go to Pasta Zanmai.

The staff asked us how we’d like it – rare, medium or well done which surprised us as Hamburg is not a steak, it’s a beef patty and the cooking style was always standard. It took the staff another two visits to our table to get this one right. Zaini’s curt answer was he wants the patty COOKED, just cooked.

It took ½ hour for this order to arrive to our table, and that was after Zaini threatened to leave the restaurant without paying. We would’ve stormed out if not for Raimie who really wanted to eat Hamburg that day. Cannot show tantrum at the expense of one’s own child, right?

Zaini had a mini combo of Chicken Teriyaki Pasta and Hotate Pizza . A good deal at RM22.00.

My Gyu Shabu no Spicy Pasta (RM23 ala-carte, RM29 for set) was really nice. Don’t be fooled by its look – this spicy pasta really packed a punch. My lips were tingling from the heat when I ate the pasta. The beef strips were nice and tender and didn’t taste dry at all.

After the boo-boo on Raimie’s order, our pot of tea (RM3) was replenished continuously so we had plenty of tea to drink that night.

Good to know that while the service wasn’t good, the quality of food served wasn’t compromised yet. I sure hope it won’t deteriorate any time soon because lackluster service + average food does not equal happy, repeat customers.

Anyway, thank you to Pasta Zanmai for the complimentary Hamburg and ice cream for desert. While it was a nice gesture (and the nice supervisor did apologise profusely to us afterwards) we are not looking forward to a free meal at the expense of a raised blood pressure any time soon! So there!

Japanese Urge Parisians To Keep The City Tidy

A group of Japanese eco-enthusiasts gathered under Paris' iconic Eiffel Tower at the weekend, in a bid to get tourists and locals to make more of an effort in keeping the city clean. Joined by passers-by of several nationalities, the Green Bird squad - part of a volunteer movement in Japanese and European cities - was aiming to encourage residents and visitors alike to keep the French capital tidy.

"I don't think that Paris is particularly dirty, but it's a good way to set an example and make our cities clean," said Masataka Tanigawa, 25, a Japanese expatriate who joined Saturday's effort.