Yet another post about Japan

(I originally started writing this on September 20th).

Michael and I are waiting until 12:45 when we disembark the ship and travel to Beijing with our group. In the meantime I thought I would share some pictures of our trip to Nara and Kyoto and answer some of the questions my Dad asked in his comments to my previous post. You can find some Nara/Kyoto pictures here.

Did you drink any sake? Was it good if you did?

We had sake a few times. The best sake I tried was some pear sake at a bar. In each case though the sake was excellent and I sort of prefer it to most other alcoholic drinks. It’s a shame it’s not really available in the U.S.

How about tea? Did you drink any and how was it?

The green tea that they served was either sencha, most of which was on the bitter side, or Houjicha which is roasted green tea. I tend to like the sweeter kind of sencha but that is usually only available in the early spring when the green tea is first harvested. The Houjicha was excellent though, and in the summer they serve it both chilled and warm. It has a sweet woody taste and is a yellowish/brown color. When we were in Kyoto and I was purchasing tea I turned around to find Michael and John, who is filming video footage for the Fall 2007 DVD, drinking small cups of tea that were being handed out. They told me to try some with the warning that it was salty. I took a big sip and almost gagged, it was like drinking salt water. I don’t know if that was a special local variety of tea or if they have a custom of adding salt to their green tea, but it was terrible. Thankfully none of the green tea I bought is salty.

Did you like the sushi? Did you have any sashimi?

There were a few firsts for me on this trip. I ate some sort of sushi that looked like an omelette and tasted a lot like eggs. I also had shrimp, both as sushi and tempura style. It was pretty good but I don’t think I could eat it again. We also ate what was essentially Japanese caviar which was just as salty as the tea and the little eggs were oddly crunchy like Rice Krispies. I also tried eel which was really soft and had a weird texture. We did not try any sashimi though.

How was the bullet train ride? How fast did the train go? What were the seats like? Was the train crowded?

The bullet train was really neat. I don’t know how fast it went but it took us about two hours to get to Kobe, the normal train service or a car would have taken about 10 hours. The seats were pretty comfortable and there was a surprising amount of leg room. The train was not crowded at first but after we got to Shin-Osaka station tons of people got on. For the rest of the ride people stood in the aisle. On the bullet train to Kyoto one of the girls in our group of five and I were looking for seats on the crowded train and a Japanese man who noticed we couldn’t find two seats together got up and offered his seat and the empty one next to his. We didn’t say a word to him; he just smiled and motioned to his seat. It was this sort of unspoken kindness that I really liked about Japan.