Let the hols begin

Last Monday was Ruby’s long-awaited brass band performance, after two and a half solid weeks of rehearsal during the holidays (including weekends). We all trooped in to downtown Hiroshima to see the Regional High Schools Brass Band Competition involving some 68 schools. Each school had just ten minutes (one piece) to strut their stuff. And I have to say that Ruby’s school acquitted themselves quite well, given that about half of the band had never played their chosen instrument before, including Ruby, who was forced to take up the trumpet against her will.

But the point of all this is that the holiday period has now officially begun and our kids are free. Apart from the mountains of homework of course. And the two “compulsory attendance days” that are, perversely, scheduled by both schools right during the middle of the holidays. Plus the voluntary school clean-up days, both conveniently on Sunday mornings. Such a fun summer activity for kids and parents alike! (We have decided to be away on these days. Even if we’re not away, we’ll be away, if you get my drift.)

So last week the kids were able to laze around the house in the time-honoured manner. Ruby spent a great deal of time on the computer and Felix played with his New Best Friend, a Year 6 boy called Shigeta who lives 15 minutes away in town but appears here every holiday period when he is unceremoniously dumped at his grandfather’s place in the next street.

And on Sunday, we headed off to Nagoya to visit Miyuki, a friend of Eleni’s from the Tokyo days. We took advantage of a special ticket called the Youth 18 ticket, which despite the name is open to all ages. For about $30 you can travel as far as you like anywhere in Japan for an entire day but — and here’s the catch — using only local trains. Nagoya is about 450 km away and takes about three hours on the Shinkansen, whereas on the Youth 18 ticket it’s more like seven hours all up and you have to change trains about six times. But you save about $300, which is kind of nice.

We broke up the trip by stopping off along the way at Himeji Castle, said to be one of the finest original castles in Japan. (Mind you, that’s not such a big deal when you consider that virtually all of them are concrete replicas.) Tragically half of it was closed for reconstruction works but this was possibly just as well as we’d only allowed two hours and that was never going to be long enough for a proper tour. Nevertheless the bit of it we did see was very nice (and not made of concrete), and along the way we managed to run into a couple of ninjas:

When we finally rolled into Nagoya that night Miyuki whisked us off to Nagoya Castle (concrete) where there was a big festival on to commemorate 400 years of something-or-other. Ruby and Felix played a couple of those festival games where you win plastic, and Ruby duly scored a set of plastic flashing ears:

As part of the festivities they had set up a huge stage and we witnessed a very impressive wadaiko drumming performance (see video snippet below). So, two castles in the one day! Pretty good effort that.

The next day we trooped off to Monkey Park, a combined monkey zoo and fun park that Ruby and I had visited three years ago only to discover to our bitter disappointment that the roller-coaster was closed for repairs. It looked so fantastic winding in and out of the trees that we were determined to come back again. This time around the roller-coaster was in operation and, amazingly for the middle of summer, there were no queues whatsoever, so we went on it several times. Here’s Felix coming around the bend:

The other main reason for going to Nagoya was to eat pizza. It’s a long story. Naho is a longstanding friend who we met by chance during our stay in Italy in 2003. She was at that time married to Alessandro, who ran our favourite Bar Appennini in downtown Sansepolcro. Alessandro turned out to be feckless/gormless/witless and Naho returned to the family home in Nagoya with their baby son Giovanni. She has since hooked up with another Italian, a very handsome Calabrian dude called Adamo, and together they have opened a pizzeria on the outskirts of Nagoya. So of course we had to go there.

And it was without a doubt the best Italian meal we’ve had since Sansepolcro, which caused us to be not only full to the point of bursting but also terribly nostalgic for the heady days of 2003. If only Nagoya weren’t so far away. Sigh.

On the way back we stopped off at Inuyama (which means Mount Dog — love that name) to visit Inuyama Castle, which I only found out about by chance the previous day when I saw a sign while waiting at the train station for Monkey Park. It turns out that Mount Dog Castle belongs to the select club of non-concrete castles in Japan and is a designated National Treasure. Having had my appetite for Real Wooden Castles whetted at Himeji Castle, I was very keen to visit another one. And I’m so glad I did — the massive beams, the smooth wooden floors, the creaky old ladders, the big tatami rooms, the smell of cedar, plus little chutes in the walls for throwing rocks down at your enemies as they try to scale the walls, which add a nice touch. It’s a cute little castle too, not too big and not too small, not many visitors, with that off-the-beaten-track feel to it. Highly recommended if you’re ever up north of Nagoya.

On Wednesday we headed off to Kyoto, a mere three hours up the road. Miyuki had the bright idea of hiring a car rather than buying five sets of train tickets, so we cruised over in air-conditioned style along the expressway. However when we arrived in Kyoto it was 36 degrees and we ended up cowering inside our air-conditioned apartment for the afternoon, only daring to venture out at about five o’clock to see a few sights. Here’s Ruby (sporting new sunnies) and Felix in the Shijo shopping district:

This morning, the last day of our holiday, I tried to go for an early morning walk around Kyoto but it was already stiflingly hot by seven-thirty. Clearly there was no point trying to do the tourist thing for another day. We bought some bento boxes at the department store and splurged on Shinkansen return tickets and zoomed back to Mihara, arriving by about three o’clock. The house was like the proverbial oven — 35 degrees downstairs and 40 upstairs — so we spent the afternoon in the upstairs office with the aircon on full blast and ate fruit salad for tea.

All in all, it was an action-packed five-day break and we had lots of fun…. but it was just soooo hot. At Monkey Park we had to admit defeat by about two o’clock; we didn’t even get to see the monkeys. Sightseeing in Kyoto was reduced to a matter hours. Really, the heat is your enemy when you want to get out and see stuff (or it is when you’re a Class A thermophobe like me). So we decided that next summer, we wouldn’t be going anywhere. After all, the logical thing to do in summer is to go to the beach, right? We already live at the beach. We don’t need to go anywhere. You know it makes sense.

To finish off with, here’s a video of a few random things from our holidays.

The first part is from the local festival held at our very own Sunami Heights park just up the road last Saturday, the night before we left on our holiday. This was a low-key affair much like the one where Eleni’s drumming group had a workout a couple of weeks back. Felix had been invited to join in a couple of rehearsals with other local kids for dancing to be performed at the festival, but he’d dismissed it as too daggy. However on the night they said he could just join in anyway and follow the others. Ruby took great delight in capturing his performance on camera.
The next bit of the video is the spectacular wadaiko drumming performance that we saw at Nagoya Castle.
And the last bit is just some random shoppers walking along in the Shijo area of Kyoto.