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This is a photographic record of the best holiday EVER undertaken by Man and Mewby.

(Just so you know, by “man” I am referring to myself… )

Our first evening, after a hard day’s spa and massage, was spent at the Bali Collection shopping and eating. The second day was mostly spent larking around on the beach or by the hotel pool before heading back to the Bali Collection in the evening…

A lot of restaurants in Bali give you a free taxi service back to your hotel after your meal. On the second night our taxi driver was a friendly chap named Made. We ended up hiring him as our driver for the rest of our trip. A great guy! And on our third night he drove us to the Mata Hari Cafe in Jimbaran for a sunset dinner on the beach. This was one of the best experiences of our trip. Many thanks to Made for introducing us to this place!

On Day 4 our friendly driver Made, took us to a number of places… Pictured here are the monkey temple at Ubud, and the Buana Amertha Sari coffee farm at Tampaksiring.

Day 5 – Sunrise at Nusa Dua. We got up at 5.30 am for this. Totally worth it.

On the 5th day we took HIS’s “New Tatsujin Tour” and the first stop was here: the royal temple of Taman Ayun which dates from 1634. “Taman Ayun” means “Garden Temple” I believe…

Stop 2 on our HIS tour was tea time overlooking the rice terraces at Pacung. Note the Batik dress worn by Mewby and my own Batik shirt, which were bought at Batubulan the day before.

The next stop on our HIS tour was Pura Ulun Danu Beratan – a temple afloat upon a lake.

Lunch-time on our HIS tour at Bagus Agro Pelaga.

The penultimate stop on our HIS tour was Pura Uluwatu, a temple on the cliffs. The monkeys here are way more aggressive than those in Ubud. If they see anything shiny they will grab it off you – a couple of people lost their glasses while we were there and some local chaps had to persuade the cheeky monkeys to give them up in exchange for fruit. Thus a valuable lesson has been learned in the monkey kingdom: Crime Definitely Pays.

This was the last part of our HIS tour. As the sun went down over Uluwatu we settled down in an open air theatre to watch the famous Kechak dance.
The story goes that while Rama is off out hunting a magical golden deer, Rama’s princess Sita is kidnapped by the evil king Ravana. Rama enlists the help of the Red Monkey King and the White Monkey to get her back….
After the show we retreated to another beach-front restaurant in Jimbaran for dinner. It wasn’t as nice as Cafe Mata Hari that Made had taken us to two days before but we did get serenaded by some singers on the beach and they sang something very romantic indeed…

Our last day in Bali. One last day relaxing by the pool and on the beach before Made came to drive us to the airport that night. An unforgettable holiday!

Made & Me

Finally- just a quick word about our driver, Made. If you need a driver in Bali, I Made Sukiada is your man. He speaks English. He drives safely. He’s friendly and funny and he can show you the real “Deep Bali”.
Highly recommended!
Tel: 08179712755
email: sukia_040373@yahoo.com

Friday being Shinran‘s birthday, I had the day off school and as it happens Mewby was free too. “Let’s go to Kobe!” she said. What a good idea! Now, one of the most popular spots for tourists in Kobe is the Ijinkan area, (lots of early 20th century pretty foreign residences), but we’ve both seen that a few times now. However, there’s lots to do and see in Kobe besides that -  we had a lovely time.
First off we took a stroll through China Town and had ourselves a little snack to tide us over from one of those street stalls… and then we strolled on through the city towards the sea and Meriken Park. I thought it might be nice to go up to the top of the Port Tower there… and I was right.

On one floor there’s a revolving bar you can sit at and watch the city turn about you. They sell a special “Meriken Beer” there – it’s actually very good.

I was pretty happy with my Meriken beer.

And once night has fallen the view from the top floor is lovely.

And here’s the view from the outside.

By the this time we were hungry so we headed over to the nearby Mosaic building. It’s full of restaurants but we had one in particular in mind.

The last time we came to Kobe, a year ago, we came here and really liked their pizzas. I was also pretty happy at the giant bottles of Moretti beer they had. Unfortunately, they’ve downsized the beers since then but the food did not disappoint.

Maguro Salad

Pumpkin bread - recommended!

A potato frite sardine salad type-o-thing - tasty!

Pizza Al Convent - sweet baby tomatoes, anchovies and lots o' greens!

We like Buco di Muro!

After a wee (fun!) detour through the game centre downstairs we were walking back towards the Sannomiya station area when I spotted this place.

I’d seen Pub James – Blues Land in my guidebook but wasn’t at all sure where it was exactly, so finding it was a real stroke of luck. On entering I immediately felt right at home – as did Mewby.

This place is great, soft lighting, comfy chairs, lots of space and great music!

They were playing some music by a gravel voiced local bluesman named Kougen. Really nice! The owner said he was a friend of his, and seemed delighted that I liked it. I think I might have to invest in an album… You can check out a video of him in performance here. I wonder if he ever plays in Kyoto… Anyway, we both agreed that we were definitely coming back to this bar next time we are in Kobe!

Back in the Sannomiya, the streets were rolling with people out on the town. It’s incredible round that area on a Friday night; like one big street party – Kyoto’s Kiyamachi really doesn’t compare. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many happy/drunken party people in one place! We were tired though so we retreated to a cheap hotel and got ourselves a good night’s kip.

Next day, we visited Ikuta Shrine – and on the Ikuta road I spotted this statue of a lady who appears to be studying a turd. Odd.

The shrine itself, is really old, among the oldest in Japan in fact. There is a record of it in the Nihongi as having been founded by the Empress Jingu after she came back from raiding Korea in the 3rd century AD. It’s a pretty spot and a welcome break from concrete and neon.

From there we headed to Rokko and took a cablecar up into the mountains. The cablecar itself is gorgeous.

But the ride itself was certainly enhanced by the presence of an onboard jazz band!

From the top we went to Rokko Garden Terrace, they have a tower there which affords some stunning views of the city (if the weather is clear enough).

After that, lunch; pork for Mewby and sea bass for me.


And then succumbing to weariness (and perhaps also to the wine we had with our lunch) we wound our way back home. Kobe’s a great place to visit – but it’s nice to be back in dear old Kyoto too!

If you read the last post you might think I have a rather loose idea of what the word tomorrow means. I haven’t posted the rest of my Ehime pictures up till now because I wanted to find an easy to use plugin for wordpress that would enable me to embed simple slideshows of my pictures without using a third party website. Having been stung by the sad demise of bubbleshare I’d rather not get stung again. However, though I tried a variety of plugins, I found they were either over-complicated, required too much coding, or just didn’t do a satisfactory job. I spent several hours experimenting and then gave up, swore a little, and decided to use slide.com instead. I think it works alright but I’m open to other suggestions…
Anyhow, getting back to our Ehime trip… Last Tuesday, Mewby and I awoke in our little cottage in Kumakogen’s Furusato Folk Village and after a simple breakfast of sata andagi we’d bought in Matsuyama the day before, we went for a walk.  By a little mill-pond we found some hungry ducks…

After that we took a taxi to see a big rock called 御三戸嶽 (which I think is pronounced Mimidodake) at the village of Mikawa and were impressed by its size and girth. Personally, I was expecting just a rock (and not really looking forward to it),  but this really was a humongously huge and very impressive rock. One that commanded respect and awe.

Whilst in Mikawa we lunched on some of the local speciality soba noodles. Very nice…

And then back to the folk village. We walked up to the planetarium and asked about our reservation at the observatory that night. At first we thought we would be out of luck as it had clouded over and they told us the observatory would be closed but they called us up an hour later and miraculously, the skies having cleared a bit we were able to get a look at the twinkly heavens and there was a nice and knowledgeable chap who told us what we were looking at (Altair, Deneb, and Vega).

Our heads full of stars we walked back in the dark to our little cottage for a nice dinner of hot potatoes and cream cheese, broccoli and shrimp in mayonnaise, with pan-fried salmon and eringi shrooms and a big old bottle of champagne I’d been saving up. I cannot tell you how well salmon and eringi suit each other. And then we went outside and turned our flashlights into lanterns and lit candles and let off fireworks and had the rest of the champagne… And ended the evening with senkou hanabi (線香花火). Do you know senkou hanabi? They are very small small teeny tiny fireworks and they are curiously fascinating. Here’s a video.

I was going to upload my summer holiday photos (in time-honored mikeylambe.com tradition) via those nifty little bubbleshare widgets but I just learned that they will cease to exist (along with bubbleshare.com) this November. I suppose I should have seen it coming (I mean the name: bubble!) but it means all the photos I have uploaded via bubbleshare  onto this blog and onto Deep Kyoto over the last 3 years will dissappear and thus will need replacing and that has put me in a bad mood…  However-

I did just have a nice 3 day break in Ehime prefecture, Shikoku. The kanji for Ehime is quite pretty 愛媛. The one on the left is the kanji for love and the one on the right is the old kanji for princess. It’s far more elegant (but harder to write) than the modern simplified version 姫. We took the shinkansen Monday morning at 6:56 am to Okayama and there changed to the express train headed for Matsuyama. Arriving in the afternoon we stuffed our bags in a locker and after lunch decided to wander round town. This is Matsuyama castle:

It sits on top of a big hill. And it was a very hot day. Maybe not as hot as Kyoto but pretty hot anyway. So we took one sweaty-oh-god-i’m-already-dying-in-this-heat-type look at it and thought “Nah…”. Japanese castles look much better from the outside anyway. Instead we wandered round the castle gardens further down the hill. Japanese gardens are just brilliant for bringing you peace of mind and refreshing the soul. This one had lots of cool shady groves, mind cooling flowing waters and massive koi carp that came up to greet you like happy dogs when you clapped above their pool. This is Mewby standing triumphant among the flowing waters:

This is me lurking in the trees (that long white thing being an entirely unnecessary umbrella by the way) by a lovely waterfall:

These are the friendly koi (I let them have a bit of my cheese sandwich):

And this is a view of the gardens from amidst a shady bower:

So that was nice. Later we caught a bus that took us on a hour and a half journey up high into the mountainous wilds of KumaKogen, collapsed into a cottage at Kumakogen Furusato Folk Village and cooked ourselves some nice yakisoba for our dindins. Tomorrow I’ll post some more pics and tell you about day two of our holiday, a very big rock and stargazing in the deepest forests of Shikoku.

Here finally are the rest of my pictures from South Africa.

Day 5 – On this day we went to see the penguins. These African penguins are sometimes called “Jackass penguins” because of the braying call they make. Then we went further south to the Cape of Good Hope, and I wandered from there to Cape Point and met an Ostrich on the way.

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Day 6 – Fumi went back to Japan on this day and Udo had some work to do so I walked from Seapoint along the coast to the Waterfront entertainment area. I had myself some fish and chips and had to fight the seagulls for them. They didn’t get any chips but they got their revenge by taking a crap on my shoulder. That night I took some pictures of the “jewel box” from Signal Hill, some African musicians, and very unwisely we had a late night game of pool.

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Day 7 – A twelve hour drive north from Cape Town to the Orange River on the border with Namibia with plenty of beautiful landscapes and spring flowers along the way. That night we camped out under the stars and watched the constellations and the Milky Way wheeling over us and told each other some tall tales.

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Day 8: Canoeing down the Orange River. Maybe the best part of the trip for me. We saw a lot of birds of all sizes and descriptions; Goliath Herons, Giant Kingfishers (actually pretty damn big), cattle egrets, long-necked darters… We forgot to bring sunblock so I suggested rubbing mud on our noses so we wouldn’t get sunburnt (hence my little rhino horn in the pictures below).

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My last full day in Africa, a short look at the desert, some petraglyphs left by the bushmen and the long drive back to Cape Town with again some awesome landscapes and a rainbow or two.

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Many, many thanks to Udo and Fumi for a wonderful trip!
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September is here, summer is over and I’m back at work already. This time last week I was in an African desert, but tomorrow I’ll be standing in front of Japanese teenagers once again teaching the past tense of irregular verbs. I got back last Saturday and I’m still jet-lagged so forgive the late posting. I didn’t have much access to the internet while away. I’m going to post my pictures in two stints and give you some accounting of the trip while I’m at it.

It was brilliant. Udo was a great guide and storyteller (though his jokes leave a lot to be desired “Gerroff the stage!“) and South Africa is a fantastic country (leaving aside poverty and crime and lingering racism and that sort of thing…). On the first day I arrived, after a short nap, Udo said “A trip up Table Mountain would be a great start” and so up we went in a cable car full of Japanese tourists with one young chap saying “sugoiiiii! sugoiiii! sugoiiii!” all the way up. We mooched around up there admiring the scenery for a bit and taking lots of pictures. Then in the evening we had dinner at a swanky restaurant at the Waterfront. And then we did something silly – drinks at the corner bar till 3 in the morning. We had a good chat but we felt rough for it in the morning. Here’s the pics (hover your mouse over them for any extra info or right click for a closer look):

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The following day, feeling worse for wear, we took things easy, visiting the beautiful Cape Town Castle (the oldest building in South Africa) and the District 6 museum. District 6 was a cosmopolitan area right in the heart of Cape Town that the apartheid regime forcibly cleared of 60,000 residents during the 70s. Now they are slowly getting their land back but the museum stands as a memorial to their experiences. That night we ate at the Ritz Hotel (the restaurant rotates!) with its magnificent night views of the city and (oops! somebody’s silly suggestion!) another late night at a Korean karaoke bar. But it was a good laugh and Udo got his mojo back apparently, which is nice (even if he did steal all my songs). Pics below (hover your mouse over them for any extra info or right click for a closer look):

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On day 3 we went to Intyatyambo which I have mentioned on this blog before (link!) and spent some time with the wee kiddies. Check out the pictures to see just how cute they are. And then fork out some cash. Just kidding. Actually, I’m not – FORK OUT SOME CASH!!! Intyatyambo is in the township of Khayelitsha, and after visiting the orphanage we had a beer at one of the few houses in the neighborhood (most people living in shacks) getting some rather odd looks from the passers by and a lady from the orphanage keeping a watchful eye on us to keep us out of trouble. I overheard Udo saying something about the “murder capital of the world” and said “Where’s that then?” and he said “Here.” and I sipped my beer a little faster. After that we went to a winery in Stellenbsoch that had pretty little gardens that made me feel like I was in Italy. A country of extreme contrasts is South Africa. The sunset that night was particularly beautiful so I’ve included some pictures in the next set (hover your mouse over them for any extra info blah blah blah…):

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And on Day 4 we went to Aquila Game Reserve which to be honest I was a little dissapointed by. I was hoping for a real safari type experience, with all the animals wandering free, but Aquila is a little too small for that, so (for example) they have to keep the lions penned up to stop them from eating the other animals (and each other) which makes it a slightly less than natural experience, more like a very very large zoo. However, I shouldn’t complain too much as Aquila is doing its bit for conservation and the animals look a lot healthier and happy than the poor sods locked up in Kyoto Zoo. Also I wouldn’t have been able to see such glorious beasties otherwise due to the brevity of my trip and Kruger National park being on the other side of the country. I shall, as Udo said, just have to go back. At least 21 days he said. Very precise.

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More pictures in my next post!

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I’m off to Africa today. AFRICA!! Fancy that! Specifically, Cape Town in South Africa to visit Udo and Fumi. They live in Seapoint which I believe is a bit posh and they can it seems see whales gambolling in the ocean from their balcony. Fancy that! I told my mother about the whales and she said “What?! Wales?!” Bit of a poor sense of geography my mum.

There’s one more fresh post on Deep Kyoto before I go, this time on Les Freres Moutaux, a cafe/bakery on Aurakoji dori.

And here are a few pics from Saturday night. First the obligatory pictures of flaming Daimonji (taken from Hyakumanben) and then a couple of Mr. Masuda on the occasion of his 32nd birthday. Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.

Masuda and Koji:

Masuda:

I’ll be back in Japan on August 30th. Expect lots of pictures.

As I mentioned previously I went to an onsen hotel in Kaga city last weekend, which I chose simply because it was cheap. This isn’t always the best criterion. “What’s in Ishikawa prefecture then?” I asked. “Mountains,” said the travel agent. “They have mountains, I think.” They do have mountains. But they are very far away. Kaga city sits in the middle of a flat plain (fringed with mountains) and is basically a bit of a dump. It consists of various box-like buildings, chain restaurants, convenience stores and featureless shopping malls and overlooking it all is a massive statue of Kannon-sama which is the essence of pure kitsch. The statue is gold in color (not real gold mind you) and has a red light on the forehead that comes on at night. I was expecting a quaint little onsen town but what I discovered was sprawling scene of urban desolation, haunted by very dodgy looking kids in tracksuits and (most excellently) sporting mullet haircuts. Well, the hotel was fine. Nice hot spring baths and good food. Just not much of a view from the veranda.

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From Kaga, you can take a tourist bus to various sites of dubious value. Natadera (那谷寺) was probably the best of the pick – a large wooded complex that takes a good couple of hours to get around. The garden there was (as Buddhist gardens tend to be) good value and worth the extra ￥200 on top of the temple entrance fee.

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Zourokuen (蔵六園) was basically a house full of old stuff, most impressive being the hina doll collection. They also had a nice garden. And then there was a bit of seaside and a walk among the pines before heading back to haunt the shopping malls of Kaga (with those kids in tracksuits I felt like I was back on Teeside) till my train arrived.

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Now I’m back in Kyoto and the cherry blossom is blooming… but no word from Kageyama about this year’s hanami party. The man has completely vanished from our lives! Here are some more pictures of a drinking party I had with my students at NEC in Osaka. It was the last class on Thursday so we went out for a few and I missed my last train and Hiroshi and Yasu were good enough to stay out with me till dawn. Needless to say I was feeling a bit rough yesterday. All’s well now though.

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Now I just have time for a couple of links. Here’s something Kumar Sivabramanian sent me on a landmark case in comics history. Kumar writes: For those who don’t know, Jerry Siegel died almost penniless, and was a mail courier for much of his later career, as I recall. Siegels Awarded Superman Rights

And here’s a very special message from a very special person to the people of Tibet. LINK

I received a very entertaining rant yesterday from a friend of mine on why he finds it difficult to get used to life in Australia:

…how do you have an intelligent conversation of any kind with someone who either thinks that A) sports is the center of the universe, B) Kylie Minogue is the center of the universe, or C) the horoscope is the center of the universe? Don’t these people realize that comics is the center of the universe! Also, anytime anyone uses a word like “brekky” instead of “breakfast” or “tradey” instead of “tradesman” I have no choice but to assume that either A) they have the mind of a 3-year old, or B) they feel the need to treat me like *I* have the mind of a 3-year-old. Either way it’s a conversation-killer as far as I’m concerned. Too bad 99% of the country does it.

Said friend will of course remain anonymous as:

…I would get beat up, I have no doubt! I forgot to mention that Australians also can’t handle any form of criticism about Australia because Australia is the greatest country in the world and they know that even if they’ve never been to another country and never would because why would they when Australia is so awesome and Australia is the center of the universe, and if you don’t believe that they will furrow up their brow in bafflement and not want to talk to you anymore, incredulous that ANYONE could ever think Australia was not the center of the universe.

Though he doesn’t seem to like Australia much, I think anonymous would like my latest posting on Rock Bar Chigaihouken over on the sister blog. And I know he’d like this free downloadable issue of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing too.

A fresh review up on Deep Kyoto today of the restaurant/gallery Neutron Cafe.

Yesterday, Kageyama-san, Betty and I went on a little day trip to Kobe. Kageyama-san is an excellent guide to Kobe as he often “escapes from Kyoto” to enjoy the more cosmopolitan atmosphere there and also – the good food. The first place he took us was a real Italian restaurant (with a real Italian pizza chef!) near Sannomiya Station called Ristorante R. Valentino. Here’s some pictures of the food:

前菜

Tuna & Olive Spaghetti

Pizza Margheritta

A set lunch consists of pizza or pasta, coffee or tea and desert. We ordered three set lunches; one pasta and two pizzas and shared. It was good value and damn tasty but the pizzas are pretty massive so we might have been better off ordering for two. After that we wandered round the Kitano-cho area to view some of the famous European residences there. This may have been a mistake as it was a super hot and muggy day and pretty soon we were wilting in the heat and ducking into air-conditioned shops at every opportunity. Kageyama-san also took us on a window-shopping tour of some the stores under the railway tracks and finally to bar Piccolo. Kageyama-san described it as the Tsurugi of Kobe and in that it is a “rock bar” it does bear some resemblance. The master here is also a sometime visitor to Tsurugi himself. However, Piccolo opens promptly at 7.30 p.m. and rapidly fills up with a young and varied crowd. It is also spacious and neat and organized. Cool place. Nice beers. Here are some more pictures, just hover your cursor over them for extra information or double click for a closer look:

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