May 11, 2023 • 43 mins
This week on the podcast we are continuing to share our adventures from Japan! In this episode, we're joining you from Tokyo and talking about our travels to Yudanaka and Shibu Onsen in Nagano prefecture where we stayed at a ryokan, enjoyed the onsens, and saw the snow monkeys! We also share a little bit about our time in Kanazawa, including what we did, where we went, and what we've been learning on this trip traveling with a baby. We really loved our time in Yudanaka and Kanazawa and would definitely recommend adding them to your list of awesome places to travel in Japan! Enjoy! In this episode:
- Visiting the town of Yudanaka and why we decided to go there in the first place
- Getting outside of the city of Tokyo and spending more time outside
- The ryokan we stayed at while in Yudanaka and experiencing authentic Japanese food
- Seeing the snow monkeys for the first time and what we observed
- The convenience of cheap and tasty food around Yudanaka
- Our experiences in the beautiful city of Nagano
- The ease of city to city travel in Japan
- Our time in Kanazawa and our favorite spots from our visit
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Hello, and welcome to the WorldWanders podcast, a proud part of the
wander Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan, I'm Amanda, and where are Your
House? We're a traveling couple anddigital nomads, taking you on our adventures
as we explore locations, destinations,and careers. Enjoy the show. Hello
everyone, and welcome back for anotherepisode of the World Wanders podcast. We
(00:25):
are here with our second full episodeon Japan. We are currently joining you
from Tokyo. We're back in Tokyoafter a number of weeks of big adventures
and if you haven't been listening tothe most recent episodes of the podcast,
we have an episode talking about howwe were preparing for this big travel,
(00:45):
a big long haul flight with ababy jet leg all that type of stuff,
and then our last episode is alittle update on how that all went,
plus what it was like to spendour first few days in Tokyo.
So when we left you last wehad just spent a couple of days in
Tokyo and we wanted to pick upfrom where we left off with a couple
of adventures that were actually new tous. Places we had never been before
(01:07):
for sure. So the first placewe went out of Tokyo was a small
town near Nakano, and then fromthere we went to Kennazawa town on the
other side of the island of Japan. Yeah, so we'll start with the
town that we went to outside ofNagano, which is called Udanaka. Excuse
(01:29):
us if that's pronounced incorrectly. TheJapanese over here is not so great,
although we have been practicing a littlebit. But this city slash town,
I think it's more of a townbecause it's pretty small. Is also commonly
known as sibu Onsen. So ifyou've been doing research of this area,
you might have heard of that soYudenaka or sibu Onsen. And the reason
(01:49):
that we went there is that it'sreally famous for its hot springs, and
it's also really famous for the snowmonkeys. There's actually a snow monkey park
there, which was one of thereasons that we decided to go there.
We can talk about how we endedup deciding on this place to go before
we kind of dive into a littlebit more about it and what it was
like there for sure. So oneof the things when we were talking in
(02:09):
our last episode was kind of doingour original planning in the fall, coming
back to it at the start ofthis year and realizing that just with everyone's
starting to book trips, things hadbecome a lot more expensive. So we
were, i think, originally lookingmore towards Hekone and then realized the prices
there were just wild, like crazyhigh one hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of
(02:31):
dollars to stay in like mediocre hotelrooms, and so we were thinking we'd
go to Kennezawa started looking like what'skind of on the way, would make
sense to go with the route andthen m yeah, near Nagano, came
across Sibu Onsen and found like anice little rio can which is like a
Japanese family in that had an onsendin the Rio Ken and it just seemed
(02:57):
like a nice area. And thenalso in the same own one of the
most famous things people do, thefamous attractions if you search like what to
do in Nagano is to visit theJapanese macaques. Some of it's a type
of monkey that lives in Japan,and people commonly referred to them as snow
monkeys because in this area it snowsnot gonna of course, hosted the Winter
(03:19):
Olympics in nineteen ninety eight, andso right near Yunanaka and she wants and
is the park where the Japanese macaquesare. So that's kind of one of
the most popular reasons why people gothere. Yeah, for sure. So
I think we mentioned this in oneof our other Japan episodes, But one
of our big intentions with this tripwas wanting to enjoy some nature. Of
course, we love the big citieshere. I mean, Tokyo is one
(03:42):
of the biggest cities in the world, and it's so diverse and it's so
fun, and we wanted to spenda good chunk of time in Tokyo as
we are right now, but wealso wanted to get outside in nature.
There is beautiful nature in Mexico,but it's just not as pristine, it's
not as well taken care of,it's a little harder to access, and
we really wanted to spend some timeoutside. And so our first thought was,
(04:02):
hey, let's go over to theMount Fuji side of things, which
is where Hakone is. And ifyou guys remember, if you've been listening
all the way for this long,when we went to Japan the first time,
which was in twenty seventeen, Wewent to a little town called Fujiyoshida,
and that's beautiful, spectacular views ofMount Fuji. You can do some
(04:23):
beautiful walks and hikes there. Theyhave amazing cherry blossoms, some amazing beautiful
temples. There's kind of this picturethat you see a lot of Mount Fuji
that has a temple and a cherryblossom in it. If you've done any
research on Japan and Mount Fuji inparticular, you might have come across this
photo and you can get to thatwhere that photo is taken from Fujiyoshida.
(04:43):
So just some context on that.So we went there last time. We
loved it. We didn't want togo back to the same spot. So
Hakone seemed really great. They havea lot of hot springs there, the
onsends, that type of thing.But like Ryan said, it, just
as we started doing research, itjust seemed really unfeasible and really outside of
our budgets. So we were like, Okay, where else could we go?
We knew we were going to Osakaafter that, and we had this
(05:05):
week off work. Both of uswere not working, and so we wanted
to do some stuff that was maybea little bit off the beaten path maybe
a little bit just more out innature and just really take advantage of that
time not working, to just enjoy. And so when we realized that,
you know, the eastern side ofthings by Mount Fuji was just not feeling
(05:26):
like it was going to work,we started looking at other places we could
go. And I first came acrossKanazawa's a really great option for kids,
super kid friendly, lots of parksand stuff, which we'll talk about in
a little bit, and then wewere kind of looking, Okay, where
could we go around there? Andthere's lots of places. There's a lot
of different options in terms of thingsyou can do that are more out in
nature in that area. And aswe were looking, Ryan came across sibu
(05:51):
Onsen and we realized, oh,there's there's snow monkeys there that would be
really cool and really fun with thebaby, and so oh yeah, we
decided to go there, and luckilywe were able to find this pretty well
reasonably priced family owned rio can orRyokan. Not sure how the pronunciation is
there, and decided to go forit and book it. And so the
(06:14):
way in which we got there waswe took a bullet train from Tokyo to
Naganau, which was really great.That was our first shinkansen experience since we'd
been in Tokyo the first few days, just riding like the local metro,
local subway, that type of thing. So got on the bullet train,
which was great. We're able toget to Nageneau pretty quick, and then
at Nagano station we transferred to kindof this like smaller, more old school
(06:39):
train. It was really well maintained, but it looked like it was out
of like the seventies or eighties.Hey. Yeah, I had like a
very seventies like bubble vibe to it. Bubble just like you know when you
picture like things people thought were coolin the seventies. I can imagine people
thinking that was cool in the seventies. Yeah, for sure, it's like
a retro vibe. It's it's definitelykind of old school, and with the
(07:00):
colors and even the fabric on thechairs was just like so old school.
But I feel like I give ita lot of character, especially going to
this kind of like cute little townin the mountains. And we arrived and
we had booked this day and theguy had to sign out and he was
just like some wild energy picked usand some other people up and took us
(07:23):
to the local place and him andanother woman I don't know if his wife
his wife or not, but himand this woman were running this local family
owned space that was just like supercute and super nice and I feel like
it was a really great space withthe baby. Do you want to talk
more about that? Yeah, forsure. Yeah. And I guess one
thing I'll add before. We mentionedon our first episode getting to Japan basically
about exactly the same time we didour first trip here. The first trip
(07:46):
here we had like hit perfect cherryblossom time. This year we were kind
of behind. So in Tokyo theywere already starting to go away a lot
of places. What was nice aboutgoing to Sheba once and at the time
we did, was that would bea place that would get cherry bossoms later
because of the altitude and elevation.And so you go to Naugenau and then
further up the hills to there,and the cherry blossoms were like I don't
(08:09):
know if they were in I don'tthink they were in full bloom. It
seems like there's like technical definition ofwhat that means. But for like a
amateur cherry blossom viewer, it seemedlike they were like they were just in
bloom everywhere, which was cool.Yeah, for sure. I think because
we'd had such amazing timing the firsttime we came here, and then we
booked this trip at the same time, my expectations had kind of just been
(08:31):
like, oh, we'll get thecherry blossoms again. And then as we
were arriving our friend Becky Tokyo.Becky would guys have heard on the show
before. She's like, I justwant to let you know that, like,
the cherry blossoms bloomed early in Tokyo, so you might not be able
to find that many. And thenwhen we first got to Tokyo, we
were staying right by the Skytree,and there just happened to be a number
of cherry blossom trees still in bloomthere, and I was like, okay,
(08:52):
no, we didn't miss them.But then as we explored Tokyo more
and more, it was like youcould just see the hints of like a
patche or a patch here, likea late blooming tree here, that type
of thing. And so we gotto Yudanaka shibu On sent area, and
yeah, I don't know if itwas full bloom or not, but it
seemed pretty well in full bloom.Like I think we got pretty prime time
with the cherry blossoms there because theywere they were beautiful and they were everywhere
(09:16):
there. It was a little bitcolder and obviously more high elevation since we
were in the mountains. Yeah,but the place we stayed, so this
is one of the things I thinkwe'd recommend a lot of people you'll here
recommend. It's like when you goto Japan, try to stay in a
rio can or ryocan. We shouldnail down with the pronunciation of that is.
Yeah, they're kind of more oflike a family style and where you're
sleeping on the ground on mats inyour room and a lot of places depending
(09:41):
on you know, if you're inlike an oncent town, a hot spring
town, they'll have like an onsetin the place and then you'll do meals
there and that type of thing.So ours was like it would be like
a big house. There's probably therewas like four other groups there when we
were there. At one point.I think they maybe like six rooms in
the full place, but really nicecalm space. You get kind of like
(10:07):
one big room. The bathrooms wereshared in the building, and so our
room just had like a table withsome seats on the floor, a bunch
of space, and then a coupleof mats laid out for the three of
us. And then it also hadtwo really nice on stands in the building.
And then we were able to dodinners there and breakfast there, which
were like full on, Like Ithink our dinner was like seven different courses
(10:30):
of lots of stuff. We didn'texactly know what it was, but like
really good, really authentic Japanese food. Yeah, and it was the first
time we got to try the Kobebeef, which was really good. We
had like these little grills each andthen the meat was brought out and it's
just so beautiful, Like the meatuncooked is really beautiful, like just the
care that goes into it and theway they cut it. It just looks
really nice, and then you cookit and it's absolutely fantastic. So yeah,
(10:54):
we decided to stay there two nights. So we arrived we like left
Tokyo kind of right after our checkouton whatever day that was, I think
it was a Tuesday, and thenwe took the train to Nagano. And
then we just had a couple ofminutes between that and our transfer, and
then it took us about an hourhour and a half to get from Nagano
(11:16):
to Yudhanaka, and then it wasjust like a two to three minute maybe
five minute drive from the station becausethe town's pretty small to our Ryokan.
And then yeah, we basically gotthere, settled in, took a little
walk, and then it was basicallydinner time. Maybe Lou took a nap
or something like that, but itwas very relaxed, and I feel like
the pace there was really really greatwith an infant. And the other thing
(11:39):
I'll say about that was that it'sactually really nice being on the t tommy
mats on the floor, especially witha child that is of Lo's age,
because she is very able to crawl. At the time of recording, she's
very close to walking. She isable to get up and kind of yell
from the bed, but she's definitelylike a little bit of she's a little
(12:01):
bit dangerous if she's just on abed by herself, So it's so nice
to just have her on the matsright beside us. And in the middle
of the night, she was ableto just like kind of crawl onto my
mat and give me the sign thatshe wanted milk, and I was able
to nurse her and we just sleptlike that. So I really loved that.
And then the other thing that wasreally great for me, and I
don't know, maybe people here knowthis, maybe you don't, but traditionally
(12:22):
with the onsens or the hot springs, they're a public bath that's sorted based
on gender, so there's one formen and there's one for women, and
you normally don't mix that. Sothat's a little bit tricky when you have
a small infant. It's like superhot water, so she can't necessarily just
submerge the way that we can.And the other thing is that I have
(12:43):
some small tattoos, which in mostpublic baths in Japan is not allowed.
That just states back for many,many years, and we actually did stay
at a hotel in Kinnazawa with apublic on send in the hotel and they
asked that anyone with tattoos didn't goin. So one thing that I really
loved about this space was that wewere able to go into the onset as
(13:03):
a family, so we're able tohave like the space just for our family.
They never asked about tattoos. Wewere able to go in, you
know, man and women, bringthe baby in, and they actually had
this like little baby bath. Soit was made of wood and it kind
of looked like an old wine barrelthat had been cut kind of in maybe
like quarters or thirds, so itwas quite small, but a perfect size
(13:24):
for our little, our little chubbyfourteen month old. Yeah, that's a
really good point, and it seemslike something you never really expect, and
then obviously once you kind of learnedthe role, you'd take it for granted.
But yeah, if you want togo to an onseen and you have
tattoos, or you have a baby, or you want to go with your
partner, you've got to find aplace where you have a private one.
(13:46):
And so some of them, likethe nicer places have like you can get
a room that has its own onsenin it. The one we're at had
like two. For the hotel,there's only like six firms, and so
you could just kind of have itto yourself privately. And then bigger hotels
they have like a men's one anda women's one and then there's actually public
one. So like in the town, you can go to that aren't in
(14:09):
your hotel at all, So that'skind of the mixture. But yeah,
this was super nice to be ableto go to not have to pay the
prices that you had to pay toget one in your room, but to
have the private one and have hadthat experience, Like we have a super
cute photo of her in the littlebarrel splashing around, so that was really
nice. Yeah, for sure.And I know we have some other friends
who traveled to Japan a couple ofyears ago with a baby who is really
(14:31):
similar age to what Lou is now, and when they did the hot spring
areas, I think they did differentareas than we did, but they booked
places with kind of the Onsen stylethat we had, or private Onsen for
the exact same reason, just becauseit is hard just depending on the gender
of your baby or the gender ofyour child. You know, if you
have a little boy, then thelittle boy can only go with the dad,
(14:54):
a little girl can only go withthe mom, and so it just
makes it a little bit challenging tokind of one pair ant with a small
child and like a public bath,and I think also to the public baths
are very quiet. People go inthere to relax, and obviously when you
have a toddler, that's not reallytheir vibe in general. So I would
say, if you are traveling witha kid, or you are somebody with
tattoos, or you're just a couplewho would like to be able to have
(15:16):
that experience together, or you know, a man and a woman couple,
then it would be best to getsomebody private or find something that's smaller like
we had, where you can useit as a family. And I'm so
happy that we had the opportunity todo that. And so we arrived,
like I said, in the afternoon, we just relaxed, We had delicious
dinner, like we said, kindof early bed time since we were sharing
(15:39):
a room with lou And then wegot up the next day and we got
a ride from the owners of thespace we were staying to the mountain where
the snow monkeys are, so youcan take a bus and stuff in town
if you don't have a car oraccess to somebody to drive you. It's
not very far. I think weonly drove for maybe ten minutes maximum,
(16:00):
and he kind of dropped us offat the base of the hill and then
you walk for about twenty five minutesto get up to where the snow monkeys
are, and at the bottom thereis this like TV screen and on it
it just says like no monkeys,and we're like, okay, no monkeys.
It was pretty early. We gotthere, like pretty close to when
it opened. I think it openedit like eight thirteen. We got there
(16:21):
at maybe like eight thirty five,eight forty, so the monkeys weren't there
yet, and then we walked tothe top. It maybe was nine by
the time we got up there.It's a beautiful walk, not super hard.
It was really nice to just beout in the fresh air, you
know, cool mountain vibes. Definitelyreminded us of being back home in Canada
and kind of those like fall springhikes and stuff like that. So we
really enjoyed that. And we gotthere and we were sitting inside kind of
(16:45):
waiting for the monkeys, and thensomebody goes, monkeys are coming. Monkeys
are coming. Hurry, hurry,you go outside, monkeys are coming.
I feel like this was one ofthe coolest experiences we've had in so long,
maybe ever. Definitely like bucket listworthy. I don't even know this
was on my bucket list, butdo you want to talk about like going
out and seeing all the monkeys comedown from the mountain. Yeah, so
yeah, I think it's valuable toput some kind of like context around it.
(17:06):
So there's you're in a big nationalpark and this is like a small
park within it. It's not azoo. I think the monkeys are like
technically semi wild. So there's likean area where they have like you pay
for a ticket to go in,and they have a little like hot spring
that the monkeys sit in. Ifyou google like snow monkeys Japan, you'll
see photos of them in this hotspring. They only really seem to go
(17:29):
in it in like the snowy monthswhen it's winter, and they kind of
hang out by it. But sothere's guides who feed them and kind of
make sure everything's good. But they'rekind of like in the forest, and
so in the morning they come outof the forest because they know they can
get food down by where like thevisitor center is. And so yeah,
we were there right at that time, probably like eight forty five or fifty
(17:51):
I guess maybe some days they're thereearlier, And so we were there right
as they showed up and kind ofwere like Okay, cool, like leave
the cabin because we're trying to justgive Liu a break. I don't know
what I was expecting. To mymind, I was kind of thinking like
probably less monkeys and just like themcoming out of the forest down the hill
and like into the onset. Butso we come outside and we're like,
(18:14):
okay, where are these monkeys?And then you see like across the gully
kind of barreling down the hill towardsthe river. And then also just kind
of like right behind us, justthis massive flow of monkeys, just some
of them ripping by, some ofthem coming a bit slower, some of
them coming like right beside you.Some had babies on their backs, some
like stopped near where the people were, and some kind of kept rushing towards
(18:36):
where the hot spring was. Butyeah, probably like two hundred monkeys,
one hundred and fifty monkeys, lotsof baby ones. Apparently it's mostly mums
and babies, and the men kindof stick to themselves or only a few
men hang around in the actual group. And so yeah, some of them
flying by, some of them comingby slowly, some of them like hanging
out, but really really cool experience. And then they kind of all make
(18:59):
their way to this like main areanear their hot spring where there's like more
food and stuff to play around with, and so be'er kind of just slowly
made our way over there as well. Yeah, for sure, And I
think it was a really cool experienceto have with Lou because she's like really
into animals. She loves animals alot, and she's like really into waving
at basically all things, airplanes,people, monkeys, and so we were
(19:22):
just like holding her and as themonkeys were flying by, she's just pointing
at them and waving at them.She seemed like so excited by them.
And you don't touch them, youdon't interact with them. There's nowhere to
like buy food to feed them.It's only the people who work there that
are putting food out for them.They seem very relaxed and tame around people.
Although there's like I wouldn't say likestrict rules, but they do have
(19:45):
signs and stuff that say like nobags, no food in the area.
I'm sure that if you like tookout like a paper bag with a sandwich
in it, you'd probably attract somemonkey attention and the monkeys would possibly steal
your food. I think it's probablysomething that I just would risk personally.
But the monkeys seemed like pretty usedto having a bunch of humans kind of
(20:06):
in their space, pretty content aroundhumans, but not really like that interested
in interacting, which I feel likeis kind of the perfect mix. Like
we've been to Ubud and Bali andwe've been to like the monkey sanctuary there,
and those monkeys are like kind ofaggressive. I feel like like they're
like ready to steal your jewelry,your cell phone and your water bottle,
(20:26):
whatever it is. I feel likethese monkeys were like a bit more tame,
maybe well behaved, you could say, but we spent a while they're
just like watching the monkeys and engagingwith the monkeys. It was pretty busy
and getting busier like as we left, So I'm glad that we did go
when we did, like getting therekind of first thing in the morning,
I mean, one because we gotto see them come down the mountain,
which was super cool, but thenalso just kind of beating beating the crowds
(20:48):
a little bit. I would say, yeah, yeah, I think we
had like perfect timing. I feellike we got super lucky. But yeah,
you can tell that, like becausethey've got like there's people around,
So some people got close to amonkey at one point trying to take photos
and then like someone like blew awhistle and it was like get away from
the monkeys. But because of that, I think the monkeys know that,
like like if you go to Bali, if you go to other places where
(21:12):
the monkeys consistently get food from people, they view every person as like a
potential source of food and kind ofare more like in your face, whereas
these ones weren't, yeah, forsure. And so we spent a little
bit of time with the monkeys,took some photos and videos. We have
lots of stuff that we'll share onsocial media from this experience. And then
we made our way hiking back downthe mountain, and we didn't have a
(21:36):
ride going back, so we hadto hike a little bit further and then
catch a bus. The bus droppedus off pretty close to where we were
staying, and at that point Louwas pretty due for a nap, so
we had just a pretty relaxed kindof afternoon, got some lunch from seven
to eleven, which maybe we cantalk about seven eleven lunches because they know
on my personal Instagram. I've gottenlots of comments about eating at seven to
(21:56):
eleven. Maybe let's talk about thatbefore you talk about shibu wants And yeah,
So one of the things I thinkyou find that's really fun in Japan
is like there's amazing, super highquality food, but just like all through
the spectrum because I don't know theprobably outs of reasons for it, but
like you go to a convenience storeand you can also find like really tasty,
(22:17):
really good food. Set plates pastaswere a big kinds of owning geary,
which are like kind of like asushi triangle. And yeah, but
then beyond that, there's all sortsof other cool projects, like projects products
like seaweed flavored chips, sesame crackers, delicious chocolates, chocolate covered almonds,
Macha chocolate, single serve ice creams, fun coffee machines. It's kind of
(22:44):
like all an adventure. Like ifyou I was thinking a while ago,
if you told me like, hey, you know, you get like a
paid trip to Japan, but you'reonly allowed to eat in convenience stores,
I'd be like, okay, sure, like I'd do that. I'd have
a good time, yeah, forsure. And I've been posting about things
we've been eating at seven eleven,and a friend of mine who's who's a
foodie and a food blogger sent methis reel that he found that's like,
you spend x amount on flights,and who spend x amount on train tickets,
(23:07):
and it's like X amount on accommodationand all that's relatively expensive right with
Japan. And then it's like andthen all you do is eat at seven
eleven. I was like, yeah, that sounds about right, and we
certainly have been eating many places outsideof seven eleven, but it's so convenient
to go just get a couple ofonigiris. It's always very fresh, it's
always very tasty, it's quick,it's affordable, and they're everywhere. They're
(23:30):
by all the train stations. Youknow, even if you're out in like
the suburbs of a major city,it's like you've got a seven eleven close
to you. So you've always gotthis like quick, convenient food. And
so for us, you know,where we were staying, had really great
breakfast, had really great dinner,but it didn't offer any type of lunch,
and we were a little bit outsideof kind of the main streets of
Sheibu on Send, So it wasjust really convenient for us to just get
(23:52):
some some products at seven eleven callit a day. But then we went
and explored Sheibu on Send. Wewere a little bit of a bus ride
from there, maybe like ten minuteson the bus and within walking distance,
but probably about thirty minutes. AndI don't really know the differentiation between Udanaka
and shibu Onsen, but it seemslike they're kind of the main place,
(24:15):
and then there's just kind of themain sort of area that has a lot
of public baths and it's got someparks and some really beautiful buildings. But
we just went and kind of walkedthrough the streets, and I think one
thing that really struck both of uswas it was a lot quieter than I
would have imagined. I don't knowif we've kind of hit it on off
season now that I guess cherry blossomseason has kind of passed, but there
(24:36):
was just not really many people outand about, like we were often the
only people walking on the streets inthis kind of cute small town. It
seemed like a lot of businesses wereclosed, etc. Etc. Yeah,
it was interesting. I think Tokyowas so crazy busy. Naugana seemed busy
the limited time you're there getting upthere, even on the train was like
not full, but like have lessof people on it. But then yeah,
(24:57):
walking around. I don't know ifit's because just the culture there.
It's like you go and you spendthe time in the on send or what.
It was. Yeah, very quiet, that was like the only real
Like Yudanaka seemed more it's like alittle like center around the train station with
a couple of hotels. But Shibaand Sen was a bit more of like
(25:17):
a little town. So really prettybeautiful to walk around in. But yeah,
very very quiet, yeah for sure. And so I think what a
lot of people do, and thisis there's even like a train slash entry
ticket slash bus ticket that you canbuy from Nagano station. Is a lot
of people, I think just gofor a day, Like they'll stay in
Naganou and then they'll take the trainup to Udanaca and then to the monkeys.
(25:44):
So like I said before, it'san hour or two an hour and
a half on the train and thenprobably like another fifteen minutes on the bus
to get up to the monkeys.They go see the monkeys and then they
do that return trip. Maybe theydo like a public bath or something like
that. Because of the baby andjust wanting to be in smaller towns,
we decided to stay overnight in Unanaka, like we've mentioned, and I really
liked that. But I think theother way would work too, if you're
(26:04):
not traveling with an infant and you'vejust got a little bit more capacity and
energy. But we did, youknow, the following day after that,
we did make our way back toNagano. We only had a couple of
hours in Nagano kind of in betweenour train from Unenaca and then our train
onwards to Kanazawa, but we hadenough time to leave the station and do
a walk kind of along one ofthe main streets to a big shrine in
(26:26):
Nagano, and I was really impressedwith what I saw. I thought it
was a really beautiful, kind ofon the smaller side type of city.
Yeah. I think both of usin Nagano kind of like noted it as
a plaints where we'd love to goand check out a little bit more.
We looked up the population number.I think it was like half a million
something like that. Really beautiful bigtemple, and so you kind of leave
(26:49):
this train station and start walking andyou'll notice like, oh, there's other
foreign people walking up and down thisstreet, lots of them with like bags.
And that's because right at the topof the street is where the famous
temple is. It's also a beautifulbig park there, and then around not
Gonna there's lots of small towns,ski hills, that type of thing.
So it seems like a beautiful areato explore and to get to know more
(27:10):
of. But one of the coolthings I was going to say is in
Japan they're so good about like allthe small details of things. But every
train station has locker stores, lockerstorage, and even other places like even
here's Yuku here in Tokyo. Hewalked by and there's like storage lockers for
a bag. So it's really easyto like go from one place, show
(27:30):
up at a train station, youput your bags in the train station,
and then you go explore. Andso we were able to do that.
We did that before last time.We're here to go to Universal Studios.
Another cool thing they have is mosthotels have really really affordable onwards shipping of
suitcases, so you're at your firsthotel, you're going to your next hotel,
clus like I saw one the otherday, twenty five hundred yen,
(27:51):
which is about twenty five dollars twentyUS dollars to send a bag from one
city to another city, which isway cheaper than I would have imagined it.
So lots of nice things to kindof take care of it and make
it easier for you if you wantto go, Hey, we're taking the
train, exploring the city, goingto the next place, which is really
cool. Yeah, for sure.And because we're taking the Shinkinson and the
(28:11):
metro everywhere, we're not really takingcars and that type of thing. We
are traveling pretty light, like everythingis totally feasible for us. We've both
got you know, backpacks that fiton our back, small backpacks, and
then one carry on suitcase, onebigger checked suitcase, a stroller with it
contains loose diaper bag, and thenin general we've had one other small bag
(28:32):
that's contained like snacks and stuff forour travels. So it's all really manageable.
But I think that just being ableto store you know, pretty much
everything that we don't need is justamazing, and I think it cost us
we needed two storage lockers, andI think they were like one was five
dollars for the day and the otherone was like three dollars, So for
eight dollars Canadians or even less anAmerican, we were able to store our
(28:53):
stuff for We could have stored itall day, but we stored it for
a couple of hours, which wastotally worth it for us to just be
pretty like hands free and just focuson us and the baby for exploring for
a couple of hours. And thenfrom there we took a train onwards.
It was just a couple of hours. It's not that far from Nagano to
Kanazawa. Again, we were onanother shinkinsen, which was really fun.
(29:15):
They're just like amazing. We woulddefinitely recommend at least taking a shinkinsen once
if you're traveling in Japan, andif you're going to be taking multiples,
definitely get the JR Pass. Aslong as you're not Japanese and not a
resident of Japan, then you qualifyto to get one of those, and
we had ours for three weeks,which was really nice, so we were
able to just hop on and hopoff trains whenever we wanted. You can
(29:37):
also easily make reservations, which iswhat we did just because we have stuff
in the baby and whatnot. Wewanted to make sure we had dedicated seats,
but they always have like non reservedcars where you can just sit wherever,
and it's like really great system.That's how we did it a lot
on our last trip, and wearrived in Kanazawa and then we went and
again we were pretty well timed tojust check into our hotel. We were
(30:00):
staying at a hotel that had apublic on send like Ryan mentioned earlier or
maybe I mentioned, as well asa sauna which was really nice and pretty
good hotel size room size for whatit was, and we were super centrally
located. So we were in Kanazawafor three nights and it was really amazing
(30:22):
because we didn't take any public transitand that time we were just walking everywhere
we were going, which while Ilove the trains, I love the systems
here, it's also nice to justtake a break from doing that and just
be really central so you can kindof walk everywhere you go. But why
don't we talk a little bit aboutKanazawa and what Kanazawa is all about.
Yeah, so Knazawa is on theI guess you're called the West side.
(30:45):
It's like you go kind of northand kind of west from Tokyo. I'm
not sure much about like the historyof it, but like a smaller city,
still like substantial with a couple ofbeautiful parks within a city, and
then the mountains are nearby, soit's kind of known as a great jumping
off point for getting into nature.Also a really famous fish market there,
(31:06):
and a couple other things that arekind of really well known. I think
gold jewelry is one of their thingsas well, So I think going to
kind of Zawa, one of ourideas was, well, we're gonna use
it and kind of get out andgo do some other stuff. By the
time we got there, we bothkind of felt just a little bit exhausted
of everything that was involved in likean hour long trip, especially with the
(31:27):
baby, and wanting to like,hey, we want to get into a
rhythm and get her good naps thattype of thing. So we booked a
hotel that had really nice onst init. Unfortunately, Amanda wasn't able to
take advantage of it because she's metmade some bad tattooed decisions in her life.
But I was able to get intoSauda, which was nice, and
then kind of the most famous centralpark, Canasawa Castle Park was about fifteen
(31:52):
or so minutes and we we're walkingor from where we're staying, sorry,
and we're also staying right beside ome Chow Market, which is like the
famous market, and so yeah,I went multiple times through the park.
And then there's also ken Roku whichis attached to the park. It's I
guess a separate park. You haveto pay entry fee, but that's more
of the like zen Garden park versuslike just an open kind of castle park.
(32:15):
And so apparently it's one of thetop parks in Japan, which is
saying something because there's beautiful parks likeeverywhere you turn, but big, beautiful,
like really intentionally designed. So there'slike, you know, water features,
amazing trees, beautiful seviews. Thatpark, but they think because it's
kind of a top attraction, wasquite busy when we went in, so
(32:36):
it was a little bit less relaxing. I'd say the other park where the
castle is one beautiful and there's acouple of spaces or just like beautiful green
open fields where you're kind of ableto like sit and play and hardly any
people around. So yeah, wewent back there a couple of times and
really enjoyed that. Yeah, forsure. I actually have a number of
photos of just kind of nature andjust pictures of the city that there's like
(33:00):
basically no people in, including ourselves. And as I was posting stuff on
Instagram, I had a number ofpeople says, They're like, anybody there
is this place just dead. Andit definitely wasn't dead. We definitely saw
people in spaces like Ryan just mentioned, But overall, I felt like this
was a really relaxed city. Andbecause we were so central, like I
(33:20):
said, we didn't have to youknow, take trains, we didn't have
to take buses. We were ableto just walk. So you know,
in the morning, we could gowalk through Omi Joe Market. They had
really great you know, fresh fishthat we could get for breakfast and stuff
like that. We were able towalk in kind of Zawa Castle Park,
which as you're walking you actually likewalk through like the castle and stuff,
which is which is pretty neat andthere's a big amount of history there.
(33:45):
And then we were able to goto the Zen Garden and stuff, and
it's the third most important zen gardenin Japan, so there's a lot of
history there. There's a lot ofthings that you can learn about like the
placement of the space and how intentionalit is and stuff like that, which
is pretty interesting. And then afew other things that we did. We
(34:06):
went to the Hagashi Chaya district whichhas some like old houses and whatnot that
you can look at by the river, which is really cool. And then
we went down and checked out thearea where the samurai were and we actually
toured a old samurai house which waspretty interesting. They had a zen garden
in the backyard with koi fish,which Lou loved and yeah, it was
(34:28):
pretty pretty interesting to go do that. Yeah, really cool they had.
So it was like the house thatI guess the samurai lived in. I
can't remember that the time range onit. Beautiful home again, beautiful zen
garden within the home. And thisone thing that strikes you being here is
just like the attention that's put onlike creating and like really like balanced but
(34:49):
nice living spaces. Like it's likethis person obviously at the time, has
like this area to live in,and half the area is dedicated to like
this beautiful zen garden, but oneof the rooms in the house had like
the old samurai swords and knives.I think there was some Samuri armor in
there. Do we see that?Yeah? I think so that was there.
(35:10):
And then lewis kind of crawling aroundas well, which was fun.
And the whole area that neighborhood isreally cool and kind of walking down there
and up there, got to seea different side of Kennasaua. I feel
like everything we're doing this trip,we're only a kind of scraping the surface.
Because one that's true of like anytravels in Japan or in general,
(35:30):
but two because we only have afew hours a day of like actual exploring
time. Like kenna Zo was notlike when you're in central Kennazowa, you're
not on the coast, But Kennasowas basically on the coast, so you
can take a train out to theocean. There's parks up by the ocean.
There's so much stuff to do itthat we didn't get a chance to
do. But again, that wouldbe a city i'd love to go back
(35:51):
to and check out more of.Yeah, for sure, And you kind
of mentioned this before, but Ithink when we originally booked this time,
we had these big plans of like, okay, we'll spend maybe like one
day will power explore the whole city, and then we'll spend the other days
like getting out into nature. Wehad a couple of places marked that are
like, you know, an hourtwo hours away. And I think one
thing we're really learning through our travelsin general with an infant, but I
(36:14):
think this trip in particular is justthe power of slowing down. I think
it's really exhausting for us to justlike go go, go, go go,
and it's really hard for her.She needs a nap, sometimes two
naps a day, and it's justnot fun for anyone when she's like tired,
cranky, fussing, that type ofthing, and so pushing her really
(36:36):
hard to do things that are notreally that fun for her is just it
just doesn't really work. And Ithink we've had a couple days where we've
kind of pushed the limits, testedit a little bit and it just hasn't
gone that well. So we've triedto have a good balance of like you
know, get up in the morningand she's up pretty early, and so
we try to use that like firstperiod of time to get out go explore
something that is open early, breakfast, coffee, do a big walk,
(37:00):
come back, get her a goodnap, she can sleep however long she
wants, and then we do likeanother outing. But it's definitely different from
how we used to travel, whereit's like you just get up, you
go, you go all day,you come back kind of after dinner or
drinks in the evening, you know, crash hard, sleep, go do
it all over again. And Imean, quite honestly, I think that
might be a little exhausting for usat this point in life too, but
(37:23):
it's definitely just not feasible with asmall child. So I think that going
into the second half of our trip, we really kind of tapered expectations and
just we're trying to do like whateverwe could do, and going into a
place or an experience with less expectationsand more just like, Okay, let's
just enjoy what we can of this, and if we need to go back
(37:45):
home or you know, she getstired, then that's fine. You know,
we can always explore more. Andso I think there's been like some
good kind of big learnings that havehappened on this trip. But I think
the biggest one has just been likewe just can't do as much as we
used to be able to you.Yeah, I think that's definitely the case.
And I think the other thing.One of the things about like coming
(38:06):
to Japan in general, it's justit's so nice to like be here and
kind of just go about your day. I think maybe this is just where
we're at with traveling in general,but especially like there's so many cool stuff,
so much cool stuff to see,and so many things to do and
so much fun stuff to eat,that you're never going to get to the
end of it. There's no feelinglike, well, I've got to get
like here here and here and seethis, this and this, So just
(38:30):
like being here is fun. Solike go out for a morning walk,
You're in a beautiful neighborhood, seeinteresting things, get some cool new food,
and having that general sense about itI think has been has been good.
And the baby's kind of like beena good push for embracing that too,
because like one of the some ofthe my favorite moments have just been
like, oh, find a nicegreen patch in the park and like let
(38:51):
like kind of roam around, andthat's been really fun. Yeah, for
sure, And I feel like thatwas a lot of what we ended up
doing in kind of Zawa's just likerevisiting the same kind of Zowa Castle Park
and just walking different areas of itand just checking out different areas of the
zen garden or different zen gardens ingeneral. And you know, she's desperately
trying to walk right now, andso she really wants us to toddle around
(39:15):
with her, and that's when she'shappiest. And that's you know, it's
slow, it's tedious, it's notthe most efficient way, but it's something
that she wants to do. Sowe've really been trying to incorporate, you
know, her needs and wants intothe way that we do the day,
which really like slows things down.But it's been nice to just be like,
okay, we've been like walking fora while, let's just like get
her out of the stroller, gether out of the carrier, just like
(39:37):
let her play right now. Sowe've had lots of good just kind of
park moments. But I think kindof Zowa was really like letting go of
expectations maybe, or just like originalplans or it was like, hey,
let's do a lot of stuff,and then it kind of went down to
like, maybe we just do oneof our days outside of the city,
to Okay, we're not going todo any of our days outside of the
city. We're just going to explorehere, take it easy, be pretty
(40:00):
chill, pretty slow about everything,And I don't know, I really enjoyed
that portion of our trip. Ifeel like, looking back on it,
I'm like, Okay, that waspretty nice, especially because while Japan is
very quiet and it's very calm,it's also a lot of people and a
lot of energy, and especially whenyou're in the big cities like Tokyo and
Osaka, you spend a lot oftime on trains going from place to place,
(40:22):
and that gets pretty tiring just ingeneral. So I feel like it
was nice to have a couple ofdays to relax. But I would one
hundred percent recommend Kanazawa. I thinkit's super family friendly, and I think
even if you're not traveling as afamily, it's a really great place to
maybe get to the coast, Imean, lots to explore within the city,
and then certainly to use as ajumping off point for other things to
(40:43):
explore nearby. One hundred percent yeah, Unlike if you've in Japan for you
know, two weeks. I don'tknow if it would hit that list,
but it strikes me a great cityto explore if you've explored like the main
couple things like Kyoto, Tokyo alreadyand then again kind of like and like,
what would be a cool city tolike spend a few months if you're
a nomad and you're trying to likemaybe get out of like Tokyo and get
(41:05):
out of the main cities like thatstrikes me as a place that could be
cool. Now going to strikes meas a place that could be cool to
like have access to hiki and allthose things. So yeah, cool city,
definitely worth exploring. Definitely enjoyed ourtime there, Yeah for sure.
And I think I've recently had conversationswith two people who are planning trips first
time to Japan and they've kind ofasked where I should go, and Kanazawa
(41:28):
hasn't really come up for me.I do feel like it's a great like
second third trip type of place,But yeah, I think I would agree
with you. I think the routewe did the first time we went that
was Tokyo to Mount Fuji to Kyoto, you know, couple day Trips day
trip to Osaka Universal Studios, thattype of thing, then onwards to Hiroshimo
(41:49):
and then back to Tokyo was likea really great kind of kind of like
the Starters Pack almost. I feellike hits kind of the top main things.
But on this trip, like we'vementioned, we wanted to do some
different stuff, and I feel likeKanazawa was a great like, Okay,
we're exploring some different stuff this time. See, I definitely recommend it if
you are interested in that, ormaybe you've traveled to Japan before and we're
(42:09):
looking for something different to do.And so, like we said at the
beginning, we're back in Tokyo.We're on our last week here in Japan,
but we've still got lots of stuffto share. After Kanazawa, we
headed to Osaka, where we spenta good chunk of our trip over the
last little bit, and we didlots of exploring and lots of fun stuff
from there. So really excited tocontinue this journey and share what we've been
(42:30):
up to with you guys. Doyou have anything else to add before we
wrap up? No, I justhope everyone's having a wonderful week and some
awesome travel adventures. Are planning somethingfun and exciting to do and as I
always really appreciate you guys taking thetime to listen amazing. We'll see you
next episode. By for now,thanks for listening to this episode. If
you want more to make sure tocheck out the World Wanders Insider available on
(42:52):
Patreon at patreon dot com. Slashthe World Wanders for show notes, head
over to the World Wanders Do.Find us on social media at the World
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(43:15):
and leave a review. It reallyhelps us find new listeners. See you
next time.
Hello, and welcome to the WorldWanders podcast, a proud part of the
wander Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan, I'm Amanda, and where are Your
House? We're a traveling couple anddigital nomads, taking you on our adventures
as we explore locations, destinations,and careers. Enjoy the show. Hello
everyone, and welcome back for anotherepisode of the World Wanders podcast. We
(00:25):
are here with our second full episodeon Japan. We are currently joining you
from Tokyo. We're back in Tokyoafter a number of weeks of big adventures
and if you haven't been listening tothe most recent episodes of the podcast,
we have an episode talking about howwe were preparing for this big travel,
(00:45):
a big long haul flight with ababy jet leg all that type of stuff,
and then our last episode is alittle update on how that all went,
plus what it was like to spendour first few days in Tokyo.
So when we left you last wehad just spent a couple of days in
Tokyo and we wanted to pick upfrom where we left off with a couple
of adventures that were actually new tous. Places we had never been before
(01:07):
for sure. So the first placewe went out of Tokyo was a small
town near Nakano, and then fromthere we went to Kennazawa town on the
other side of the island of Japan. Yeah, so we'll start with the
town that we went to outside ofNagano, which is called Udanaka. Excuse
(01:29):
us if that's pronounced incorrectly. TheJapanese over here is not so great,
although we have been practicing a littlebit. But this city slash town,
I think it's more of a townbecause it's pretty small. Is also commonly
known as sibu Onsen. So ifyou've been doing research of this area,
you might have heard of that soYudenaka or sibu Onsen. And the reason
(01:49):
that we went there is that it'sreally famous for its hot springs, and
it's also really famous for the snowmonkeys. There's actually a snow monkey park
there, which was one of thereasons that we decided to go there.
We can talk about how we endedup deciding on this place to go before
we kind of dive into a littlebit more about it and what it was
like there for sure. So oneof the things when we were talking in
(02:09):
our last episode was kind of doingour original planning in the fall, coming
back to it at the start ofthis year and realizing that just with everyone's
starting to book trips, things hadbecome a lot more expensive. So we
were, i think, originally lookingmore towards Hekone and then realized the prices
there were just wild, like crazyhigh one hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of
(02:31):
dollars to stay in like mediocre hotelrooms, and so we were thinking we'd
go to Kennezawa started looking like what'skind of on the way, would make
sense to go with the route andthen m yeah, near Nagano, came
across Sibu Onsen and found like anice little rio can which is like a
Japanese family in that had an onsendin the Rio Ken and it just seemed
(02:57):
like a nice area. And thenalso in the same own one of the
most famous things people do, thefamous attractions if you search like what to
do in Nagano is to visit theJapanese macaques. Some of it's a type
of monkey that lives in Japan,and people commonly referred to them as snow
monkeys because in this area it snowsnot gonna of course, hosted the Winter
(03:19):
Olympics in nineteen ninety eight, andso right near Yunanaka and she wants and
is the park where the Japanese macaquesare. So that's kind of one of
the most popular reasons why people gothere. Yeah, for sure. So
I think we mentioned this in oneof our other Japan episodes, But one
of our big intentions with this tripwas wanting to enjoy some nature. Of
course, we love the big citieshere. I mean, Tokyo is one
(03:42):
of the biggest cities in the world, and it's so diverse and it's so
fun, and we wanted to spenda good chunk of time in Tokyo as
we are right now, but wealso wanted to get outside in nature.
There is beautiful nature in Mexico,but it's just not as pristine, it's
not as well taken care of,it's a little harder to access, and
we really wanted to spend some timeoutside. And so our first thought was,
(04:02):
hey, let's go over to theMount Fuji side of things, which
is where Hakone is. And ifyou guys remember, if you've been listening
all the way for this long,when we went to Japan the first time,
which was in twenty seventeen, Wewent to a little town called Fujiyoshida,
and that's beautiful, spectacular views ofMount Fuji. You can do some
(04:23):
beautiful walks and hikes there. Theyhave amazing cherry blossoms, some amazing beautiful
temples. There's kind of this picturethat you see a lot of Mount Fuji
that has a temple and a cherryblossom in it. If you've done any
research on Japan and Mount Fuji inparticular, you might have come across this
photo and you can get to thatwhere that photo is taken from Fujiyoshida.
(04:43):
So just some context on that.So we went there last time. We
loved it. We didn't want togo back to the same spot. So
Hakone seemed really great. They havea lot of hot springs there, the
onsends, that type of thing.But like Ryan said, it, just
as we started doing research, itjust seemed really unfeasible and really outside of
our budgets. So we were like, Okay, where else could we go?
We knew we were going to Osakaafter that, and we had this
(05:05):
week off work. Both of uswere not working, and so we wanted
to do some stuff that was maybea little bit off the beaten path maybe
a little bit just more out innature and just really take advantage of that
time not working, to just enjoy. And so when we realized that,
you know, the eastern side ofthings by Mount Fuji was just not feeling
(05:26):
like it was going to work,we started looking at other places we could
go. And I first came acrossKanazawa's a really great option for kids,
super kid friendly, lots of parksand stuff, which we'll talk about in
a little bit, and then wewere kind of looking, Okay, where
could we go around there? Andthere's lots of places. There's a lot
of different options in terms of thingsyou can do that are more out in
nature in that area. And aswe were looking, Ryan came across sibu
(05:51):
Onsen and we realized, oh,there's there's snow monkeys there that would be
really cool and really fun with thebaby, and so oh yeah, we
decided to go there, and luckilywe were able to find this pretty well
reasonably priced family owned rio can orRyokan. Not sure how the pronunciation is
there, and decided to go forit and book it. And so the
(06:14):
way in which we got there waswe took a bullet train from Tokyo to
Naganau, which was really great.That was our first shinkansen experience since we'd
been in Tokyo the first few days, just riding like the local metro,
local subway, that type of thing. So got on the bullet train,
which was great. We're able toget to Nageneau pretty quick, and then
at Nagano station we transferred to kindof this like smaller, more old school
(06:39):
train. It was really well maintained, but it looked like it was out
of like the seventies or eighties.Hey. Yeah, I had like a
very seventies like bubble vibe to it. Bubble just like you know when you
picture like things people thought were coolin the seventies. I can imagine people
thinking that was cool in the seventies. Yeah, for sure, it's like
a retro vibe. It's it's definitelykind of old school, and with the
(07:00):
colors and even the fabric on thechairs was just like so old school.
But I feel like I give ita lot of character, especially going to
this kind of like cute little townin the mountains. And we arrived and
we had booked this day and theguy had to sign out and he was
just like some wild energy picked usand some other people up and took us
(07:23):
to the local place and him andanother woman I don't know if his wife
his wife or not, but himand this woman were running this local family
owned space that was just like supercute and super nice and I feel like
it was a really great space withthe baby. Do you want to talk
more about that? Yeah, forsure. Yeah. And I guess one
thing I'll add before. We mentionedon our first episode getting to Japan basically
about exactly the same time we didour first trip here. The first trip
(07:46):
here we had like hit perfect cherryblossom time. This year we were kind
of behind. So in Tokyo theywere already starting to go away a lot
of places. What was nice aboutgoing to Sheba once and at the time
we did, was that would bea place that would get cherry bossoms later
because of the altitude and elevation.And so you go to Naugenau and then
further up the hills to there,and the cherry blossoms were like I don't
(08:09):
know if they were in I don'tthink they were in full bloom. It
seems like there's like technical definition ofwhat that means. But for like a
amateur cherry blossom viewer, it seemedlike they were like they were just in
bloom everywhere, which was cool.Yeah, for sure. I think because
we'd had such amazing timing the firsttime we came here, and then we
booked this trip at the same time, my expectations had kind of just been
(08:31):
like, oh, we'll get thecherry blossoms again. And then as we
were arriving our friend Becky Tokyo.Becky would guys have heard on the show
before. She's like, I justwant to let you know that, like,
the cherry blossoms bloomed early in Tokyo, so you might not be able
to find that many. And thenwhen we first got to Tokyo, we
were staying right by the Skytree,and there just happened to be a number
of cherry blossom trees still in bloomthere, and I was like, okay,
(08:52):
no, we didn't miss them.But then as we explored Tokyo more
and more, it was like youcould just see the hints of like a
patche or a patch here, likea late blooming tree here, that type
of thing. And so we gotto Yudanaka shibu On sent area, and
yeah, I don't know if itwas full bloom or not, but it
seemed pretty well in full bloom.Like I think we got pretty prime time
with the cherry blossoms there because theywere they were beautiful and they were everywhere
(09:16):
there. It was a little bitcolder and obviously more high elevation since we
were in the mountains. Yeah,but the place we stayed, so this
is one of the things I thinkwe'd recommend a lot of people you'll here
recommend. It's like when you goto Japan, try to stay in a
rio can or ryocan. We shouldnail down with the pronunciation of that is.
Yeah, they're kind of more oflike a family style and where you're
sleeping on the ground on mats inyour room and a lot of places depending
(09:41):
on you know, if you're inlike an oncent town, a hot spring
town, they'll have like an onsetin the place and then you'll do meals
there and that type of thing.So ours was like it would be like
a big house. There's probably therewas like four other groups there when we
were there. At one point.I think they maybe like six rooms in
the full place, but really nicecalm space. You get kind of like
(10:07):
one big room. The bathrooms wereshared in the building, and so our
room just had like a table withsome seats on the floor, a bunch
of space, and then a coupleof mats laid out for the three of
us. And then it also hadtwo really nice on stands in the building.
And then we were able to dodinners there and breakfast there, which
were like full on, Like Ithink our dinner was like seven different courses
(10:30):
of lots of stuff. We didn'texactly know what it was, but like
really good, really authentic Japanese food. Yeah, and it was the first
time we got to try the Kobebeef, which was really good. We
had like these little grills each andthen the meat was brought out and it's
just so beautiful, Like the meatuncooked is really beautiful, like just the
care that goes into it and theway they cut it. It just looks
really nice, and then you cookit and it's absolutely fantastic. So yeah,
(10:54):
we decided to stay there two nights. So we arrived we like left
Tokyo kind of right after our checkouton whatever day that was, I think
it was a Tuesday, and thenwe took the train to Nagano. And
then we just had a couple ofminutes between that and our transfer, and
then it took us about an hourhour and a half to get from Nagano
(11:16):
to Yudhanaka, and then it wasjust like a two to three minute maybe
five minute drive from the station becausethe town's pretty small to our Ryokan.
And then yeah, we basically gotthere, settled in, took a little
walk, and then it was basicallydinner time. Maybe Lou took a nap
or something like that, but itwas very relaxed, and I feel like
the pace there was really really greatwith an infant. And the other thing
(11:39):
I'll say about that was that it'sactually really nice being on the t tommy
mats on the floor, especially witha child that is of Lo's age,
because she is very able to crawl. At the time of recording, she's
very close to walking. She isable to get up and kind of yell
from the bed, but she's definitelylike a little bit of she's a little
(12:01):
bit dangerous if she's just on abed by herself, So it's so nice
to just have her on the matsright beside us. And in the middle
of the night, she was ableto just like kind of crawl onto my
mat and give me the sign thatshe wanted milk, and I was able
to nurse her and we just sleptlike that. So I really loved that.
And then the other thing that wasreally great for me, and I
don't know, maybe people here knowthis, maybe you don't, but traditionally
(12:22):
with the onsens or the hot springs, they're a public bath that's sorted based
on gender, so there's one formen and there's one for women, and
you normally don't mix that. Sothat's a little bit tricky when you have
a small infant. It's like superhot water, so she can't necessarily just
submerge the way that we can.And the other thing is that I have
(12:43):
some small tattoos, which in mostpublic baths in Japan is not allowed.
That just states back for many,many years, and we actually did stay
at a hotel in Kinnazawa with apublic on send in the hotel and they
asked that anyone with tattoos didn't goin. So one thing that I really
loved about this space was that wewere able to go into the onset as
(13:03):
a family, so we're able tohave like the space just for our family.
They never asked about tattoos. Wewere able to go in, you
know, man and women, bringthe baby in, and they actually had
this like little baby bath. Soit was made of wood and it kind
of looked like an old wine barrelthat had been cut kind of in maybe
like quarters or thirds, so itwas quite small, but a perfect size
(13:24):
for our little, our little chubbyfourteen month old. Yeah, that's a
really good point, and it seemslike something you never really expect, and
then obviously once you kind of learnedthe role, you'd take it for granted.
But yeah, if you want togo to an onseen and you have
tattoos, or you have a baby, or you want to go with your
partner, you've got to find aplace where you have a private one.
(13:46):
And so some of them, likethe nicer places have like you can get
a room that has its own onsenin it. The one we're at had
like two. For the hotel,there's only like six firms, and so
you could just kind of have itto yourself privately. And then bigger hotels
they have like a men's one anda women's one and then there's actually public
one. So like in the town, you can go to that aren't in
(14:09):
your hotel at all, So that'skind of the mixture. But yeah,
this was super nice to be ableto go to not have to pay the
prices that you had to pay toget one in your room, but to
have the private one and have hadthat experience, Like we have a super
cute photo of her in the littlebarrel splashing around, so that was really
nice. Yeah, for sure.And I know we have some other friends
who traveled to Japan a couple ofyears ago with a baby who is really
(14:31):
similar age to what Lou is now, and when they did the hot spring
areas, I think they did differentareas than we did, but they booked
places with kind of the Onsen stylethat we had, or private Onsen for
the exact same reason, just becauseit is hard just depending on the gender
of your baby or the gender ofyour child. You know, if you
have a little boy, then thelittle boy can only go with the dad,
(14:54):
a little girl can only go withthe mom, and so it just
makes it a little bit challenging tokind of one pair ant with a small
child and like a public bath,and I think also to the public baths
are very quiet. People go inthere to relax, and obviously when you
have a toddler, that's not reallytheir vibe in general. So I would
say, if you are traveling witha kid, or you are somebody with
tattoos, or you're just a couplewho would like to be able to have
(15:16):
that experience together, or you know, a man and a woman couple,
then it would be best to getsomebody private or find something that's smaller like
we had, where you can useit as a family. And I'm so
happy that we had the opportunity todo that. And so we arrived,
like I said, in the afternoon, we just relaxed, We had delicious
dinner, like we said, kindof early bed time since we were sharing
(15:39):
a room with lou And then wegot up the next day and we got
a ride from the owners of thespace we were staying to the mountain where
the snow monkeys are, so youcan take a bus and stuff in town
if you don't have a car oraccess to somebody to drive you. It's
not very far. I think weonly drove for maybe ten minutes maximum,
(16:00):
and he kind of dropped us offat the base of the hill and then
you walk for about twenty five minutesto get up to where the snow monkeys
are, and at the bottom thereis this like TV screen and on it
it just says like no monkeys,and we're like, okay, no monkeys.
It was pretty early. We gotthere, like pretty close to when
it opened. I think it openedit like eight thirteen. We got there
(16:21):
at maybe like eight thirty five,eight forty, so the monkeys weren't there
yet, and then we walked tothe top. It maybe was nine by
the time we got up there.It's a beautiful walk, not super hard.
It was really nice to just beout in the fresh air, you
know, cool mountain vibes. Definitelyreminded us of being back home in Canada
and kind of those like fall springhikes and stuff like that. So we
really enjoyed that. And we gotthere and we were sitting inside kind of
(16:45):
waiting for the monkeys, and thensomebody goes, monkeys are coming. Monkeys
are coming. Hurry, hurry,you go outside, monkeys are coming.
I feel like this was one ofthe coolest experiences we've had in so long,
maybe ever. Definitely like bucket listworthy. I don't even know this
was on my bucket list, butdo you want to talk about like going
out and seeing all the monkeys comedown from the mountain. Yeah, so
yeah, I think it's valuable toput some kind of like context around it.
(17:06):
So there's you're in a big nationalpark and this is like a small
park within it. It's not azoo. I think the monkeys are like
technically semi wild. So there's likean area where they have like you pay
for a ticket to go in,and they have a little like hot spring
that the monkeys sit in. Ifyou google like snow monkeys Japan, you'll
see photos of them in this hotspring. They only really seem to go
(17:29):
in it in like the snowy monthswhen it's winter, and they kind of
hang out by it. But sothere's guides who feed them and kind of
make sure everything's good. But they'rekind of like in the forest, and
so in the morning they come outof the forest because they know they can
get food down by where like thevisitor center is. And so yeah,
we were there right at that time, probably like eight forty five or fifty
(17:51):
I guess maybe some days they're thereearlier, And so we were there right
as they showed up and kind ofwere like Okay, cool, like leave
the cabin because we're trying to justgive Liu a break. I don't know
what I was expecting. To mymind, I was kind of thinking like
probably less monkeys and just like themcoming out of the forest down the hill
and like into the onset. Butso we come outside and we're like,
(18:14):
okay, where are these monkeys?And then you see like across the gully
kind of barreling down the hill towardsthe river. And then also just kind
of like right behind us, justthis massive flow of monkeys, just some
of them ripping by, some ofthem coming a bit slower, some of
them coming like right beside you.Some had babies on their backs, some
like stopped near where the people were, and some kind of kept rushing towards
(18:36):
where the hot spring was. Butyeah, probably like two hundred monkeys,
one hundred and fifty monkeys, lotsof baby ones. Apparently it's mostly mums
and babies, and the men kindof stick to themselves or only a few
men hang around in the actual group. And so yeah, some of them
flying by, some of them comingby slowly, some of them like hanging
out, but really really cool experience. And then they kind of all make
(18:59):
their way to this like main areanear their hot spring where there's like more
food and stuff to play around with, and so be'er kind of just slowly
made our way over there as well. Yeah, for sure, And I
think it was a really cool experienceto have with Lou because she's like really
into animals. She loves animals alot, and she's like really into waving
at basically all things, airplanes,people, monkeys, and so we were
(19:22):
just like holding her and as themonkeys were flying by, she's just pointing
at them and waving at them.She seemed like so excited by them.
And you don't touch them, youdon't interact with them. There's nowhere to
like buy food to feed them.It's only the people who work there that
are putting food out for them.They seem very relaxed and tame around people.
Although there's like I wouldn't say likestrict rules, but they do have
(19:45):
signs and stuff that say like nobags, no food in the area.
I'm sure that if you like tookout like a paper bag with a sandwich
in it, you'd probably attract somemonkey attention and the monkeys would possibly steal
your food. I think it's probablysomething that I just would risk personally.
But the monkeys seemed like pretty usedto having a bunch of humans kind of
(20:06):
in their space, pretty content aroundhumans, but not really like that interested
in interacting, which I feel likeis kind of the perfect mix. Like
we've been to Ubud and Bali andwe've been to like the monkey sanctuary there,
and those monkeys are like kind ofaggressive. I feel like like they're
like ready to steal your jewelry,your cell phone and your water bottle,
(20:26):
whatever it is. I feel likethese monkeys were like a bit more tame,
maybe well behaved, you could say, but we spent a while they're
just like watching the monkeys and engagingwith the monkeys. It was pretty busy
and getting busier like as we left, So I'm glad that we did go
when we did, like getting therekind of first thing in the morning,
I mean, one because we gotto see them come down the mountain,
which was super cool, but thenalso just kind of beating beating the crowds
(20:48):
a little bit. I would say, yeah, yeah, I think we
had like perfect timing. I feellike we got super lucky. But yeah,
you can tell that, like becausethey've got like there's people around,
So some people got close to amonkey at one point trying to take photos
and then like someone like blew awhistle and it was like get away from
the monkeys. But because of that, I think the monkeys know that,
like like if you go to Bali, if you go to other places where
(21:12):
the monkeys consistently get food from people, they view every person as like a
potential source of food and kind ofare more like in your face, whereas
these ones weren't, yeah, forsure. And so we spent a little
bit of time with the monkeys,took some photos and videos. We have
lots of stuff that we'll share onsocial media from this experience. And then
we made our way hiking back downthe mountain, and we didn't have a
(21:36):
ride going back, so we hadto hike a little bit further and then
catch a bus. The bus droppedus off pretty close to where we were
staying, and at that point Louwas pretty due for a nap, so
we had just a pretty relaxed kindof afternoon, got some lunch from seven
to eleven, which maybe we cantalk about seven eleven lunches because they know
on my personal Instagram. I've gottenlots of comments about eating at seven to
(21:56):
eleven. Maybe let's talk about thatbefore you talk about shibu wants And yeah,
So one of the things I thinkyou find that's really fun in Japan
is like there's amazing, super highquality food, but just like all through
the spectrum because I don't know theprobably outs of reasons for it, but
like you go to a convenience storeand you can also find like really tasty,
(22:17):
really good food. Set plates pastaswere a big kinds of owning geary,
which are like kind of like asushi triangle. And yeah, but
then beyond that, there's all sortsof other cool projects, like projects products
like seaweed flavored chips, sesame crackers, delicious chocolates, chocolate covered almonds,
Macha chocolate, single serve ice creams, fun coffee machines. It's kind of
(22:44):
like all an adventure. Like ifyou I was thinking a while ago,
if you told me like, hey, you know, you get like a
paid trip to Japan, but you'reonly allowed to eat in convenience stores,
I'd be like, okay, sure, like I'd do that. I'd have
a good time, yeah, forsure. And I've been posting about things
we've been eating at seven eleven,and a friend of mine who's who's a
foodie and a food blogger sent methis reel that he found that's like,
you spend x amount on flights,and who spend x amount on train tickets,
(23:07):
and it's like X amount on accommodationand all that's relatively expensive right with
Japan. And then it's like andthen all you do is eat at seven
eleven. I was like, yeah, that sounds about right, and we
certainly have been eating many places outsideof seven eleven, but it's so convenient
to go just get a couple ofonigiris. It's always very fresh, it's
always very tasty, it's quick,it's affordable, and they're everywhere. They're
(23:30):
by all the train stations. Youknow, even if you're out in like
the suburbs of a major city,it's like you've got a seven eleven close
to you. So you've always gotthis like quick, convenient food. And
so for us, you know,where we were staying, had really great
breakfast, had really great dinner,but it didn't offer any type of lunch,
and we were a little bit outsideof kind of the main streets of
Sheibu on Send, So it wasjust really convenient for us to just get
(23:52):
some some products at seven eleven callit a day. But then we went
and explored Sheibu on Send. Wewere a little bit of a bus ride
from there, maybe like ten minuteson the bus and within walking distance,
but probably about thirty minutes. AndI don't really know the differentiation between Udanaka
and shibu Onsen, but it seemslike they're kind of the main place,
(24:15):
and then there's just kind of themain sort of area that has a lot
of public baths and it's got someparks and some really beautiful buildings. But
we just went and kind of walkedthrough the streets, and I think one
thing that really struck both of uswas it was a lot quieter than I
would have imagined. I don't knowif we've kind of hit it on off
season now that I guess cherry blossomseason has kind of passed, but there
(24:36):
was just not really many people outand about, like we were often the
only people walking on the streets inthis kind of cute small town. It
seemed like a lot of businesses wereclosed, etc. Etc. Yeah,
it was interesting. I think Tokyowas so crazy busy. Naugana seemed busy
the limited time you're there getting upthere, even on the train was like
not full, but like have lessof people on it. But then yeah,
(24:57):
walking around. I don't know ifit's because just the culture there.
It's like you go and you spendthe time in the on send or what.
It was. Yeah, very quiet, that was like the only real
Like Yudanaka seemed more it's like alittle like center around the train station with
a couple of hotels. But Shibaand Sen was a bit more of like
(25:17):
a little town. So really prettybeautiful to walk around in. But yeah,
very very quiet, yeah for sure. And so I think what a
lot of people do, and thisis there's even like a train slash entry
ticket slash bus ticket that you canbuy from Nagano station. Is a lot
of people, I think just gofor a day, Like they'll stay in
Naganou and then they'll take the trainup to Udanaca and then to the monkeys.
(25:44):
So like I said before, it'san hour or two an hour and
a half on the train and thenprobably like another fifteen minutes on the bus
to get up to the monkeys.They go see the monkeys and then they
do that return trip. Maybe theydo like a public bath or something like
that. Because of the baby andjust wanting to be in smaller towns,
we decided to stay overnight in Unanaka, like we've mentioned, and I really
liked that. But I think theother way would work too, if you're
(26:04):
not traveling with an infant and you'vejust got a little bit more capacity and
energy. But we did, youknow, the following day after that,
we did make our way back toNagano. We only had a couple of
hours in Nagano kind of in betweenour train from Unenaca and then our train
onwards to Kanazawa, but we hadenough time to leave the station and do
a walk kind of along one ofthe main streets to a big shrine in
(26:26):
Nagano, and I was really impressedwith what I saw. I thought it
was a really beautiful, kind ofon the smaller side type of city.
Yeah. I think both of usin Nagano kind of like noted it as
a plaints where we'd love to goand check out a little bit more.
We looked up the population number.I think it was like half a million
something like that. Really beautiful bigtemple, and so you kind of leave
(26:49):
this train station and start walking andyou'll notice like, oh, there's other
foreign people walking up and down thisstreet, lots of them with like bags.
And that's because right at the topof the street is where the famous
temple is. It's also a beautifulbig park there, and then around not
Gonna there's lots of small towns,ski hills, that type of thing.
So it seems like a beautiful areato explore and to get to know more
(27:10):
of. But one of the coolthings I was going to say is in
Japan they're so good about like allthe small details of things. But every
train station has locker stores, lockerstorage, and even other places like even
here's Yuku here in Tokyo. Hewalked by and there's like storage lockers for
a bag. So it's really easyto like go from one place, show
(27:30):
up at a train station, youput your bags in the train station,
and then you go explore. Andso we were able to do that.
We did that before last time.We're here to go to Universal Studios.
Another cool thing they have is mosthotels have really really affordable onwards shipping of
suitcases, so you're at your firsthotel, you're going to your next hotel,
clus like I saw one the otherday, twenty five hundred yen,
(27:51):
which is about twenty five dollars twentyUS dollars to send a bag from one
city to another city, which isway cheaper than I would have imagined it.
So lots of nice things to kindof take care of it and make
it easier for you if you wantto go, Hey, we're taking the
train, exploring the city, goingto the next place, which is really
cool. Yeah, for sure.And because we're taking the Shinkinson and the
(28:11):
metro everywhere, we're not really takingcars and that type of thing. We
are traveling pretty light, like everythingis totally feasible for us. We've both
got you know, backpacks that fiton our back, small backpacks, and
then one carry on suitcase, onebigger checked suitcase, a stroller with it
contains loose diaper bag, and thenin general we've had one other small bag
(28:32):
that's contained like snacks and stuff forour travels. So it's all really manageable.
But I think that just being ableto store you know, pretty much
everything that we don't need is justamazing, and I think it cost us
we needed two storage lockers, andI think they were like one was five
dollars for the day and the otherone was like three dollars, So for
eight dollars Canadians or even less anAmerican, we were able to store our
(28:53):
stuff for We could have stored itall day, but we stored it for
a couple of hours, which wastotally worth it for us to just be
pretty like hands free and just focuson us and the baby for exploring for
a couple of hours. And thenfrom there we took a train onwards.
It was just a couple of hours. It's not that far from Nagano to
Kanazawa. Again, we were onanother shinkinsen, which was really fun.
(29:15):
They're just like amazing. We woulddefinitely recommend at least taking a shinkinsen once
if you're traveling in Japan, andif you're going to be taking multiples,
definitely get the JR Pass. Aslong as you're not Japanese and not a
resident of Japan, then you qualifyto to get one of those, and
we had ours for three weeks,which was really nice, so we were
able to just hop on and hopoff trains whenever we wanted. You can
(29:37):
also easily make reservations, which iswhat we did just because we have stuff
in the baby and whatnot. Wewanted to make sure we had dedicated seats,
but they always have like non reservedcars where you can just sit wherever,
and it's like really great system.That's how we did it a lot
on our last trip, and wearrived in Kanazawa and then we went and
again we were pretty well timed tojust check into our hotel. We were
(30:00):
staying at a hotel that had apublic on send like Ryan mentioned earlier or
maybe I mentioned, as well asa sauna which was really nice and pretty
good hotel size room size for whatit was, and we were super centrally
located. So we were in Kanazawafor three nights and it was really amazing
(30:22):
because we didn't take any public transitand that time we were just walking everywhere
we were going, which while Ilove the trains, I love the systems
here, it's also nice to justtake a break from doing that and just
be really central so you can kindof walk everywhere you go. But why
don't we talk a little bit aboutKanazawa and what Kanazawa is all about.
Yeah, so Knazawa is on theI guess you're called the West side.
(30:45):
It's like you go kind of northand kind of west from Tokyo. I'm
not sure much about like the historyof it, but like a smaller city,
still like substantial with a couple ofbeautiful parks within a city, and
then the mountains are nearby, soit's kind of known as a great jumping
off point for getting into nature.Also a really famous fish market there,
(31:06):
and a couple other things that arekind of really well known. I think
gold jewelry is one of their thingsas well, So I think going to
kind of Zawa, one of ourideas was, well, we're gonna use
it and kind of get out andgo do some other stuff. By the
time we got there, we bothkind of felt just a little bit exhausted
of everything that was involved in likean hour long trip, especially with the
(31:27):
baby, and wanting to like,hey, we want to get into a
rhythm and get her good naps thattype of thing. So we booked a
hotel that had really nice onst init. Unfortunately, Amanda wasn't able to
take advantage of it because she's metmade some bad tattooed decisions in her life.
But I was able to get intoSauda, which was nice, and
then kind of the most famous centralpark, Canasawa Castle Park was about fifteen
(31:52):
or so minutes and we we're walkingor from where we're staying, sorry,
and we're also staying right beside ome Chow Market, which is like the
famous market, and so yeah,I went multiple times through the park.
And then there's also ken Roku whichis attached to the park. It's I
guess a separate park. You haveto pay entry fee, but that's more
of the like zen Garden park versuslike just an open kind of castle park.
(32:15):
And so apparently it's one of thetop parks in Japan, which is
saying something because there's beautiful parks likeeverywhere you turn, but big, beautiful,
like really intentionally designed. So there'slike, you know, water features,
amazing trees, beautiful seviews. Thatpark, but they think because it's
kind of a top attraction, wasquite busy when we went in, so
(32:36):
it was a little bit less relaxing. I'd say the other park where the
castle is one beautiful and there's acouple of spaces or just like beautiful green
open fields where you're kind of ableto like sit and play and hardly any
people around. So yeah, wewent back there a couple of times and
really enjoyed that. Yeah, forsure. I actually have a number of
photos of just kind of nature andjust pictures of the city that there's like
(33:00):
basically no people in, including ourselves. And as I was posting stuff on
Instagram, I had a number ofpeople says, They're like, anybody there
is this place just dead. Andit definitely wasn't dead. We definitely saw
people in spaces like Ryan just mentioned, But overall, I felt like this
was a really relaxed city. Andbecause we were so central, like I
(33:20):
said, we didn't have to youknow, take trains, we didn't have
to take buses. We were ableto just walk. So you know,
in the morning, we could gowalk through Omi Joe Market. They had
really great you know, fresh fishthat we could get for breakfast and stuff
like that. We were able towalk in kind of Zawa Castle Park,
which as you're walking you actually likewalk through like the castle and stuff,
which is which is pretty neat andthere's a big amount of history there.
(33:45):
And then we were able to goto the Zen Garden and stuff, and
it's the third most important zen gardenin Japan, so there's a lot of
history there. There's a lot ofthings that you can learn about like the
placement of the space and how intentionalit is and stuff like that, which
is pretty interesting. And then afew other things that we did. We
(34:06):
went to the Hagashi Chaya district whichhas some like old houses and whatnot that
you can look at by the river, which is really cool. And then
we went down and checked out thearea where the samurai were and we actually
toured a old samurai house which waspretty interesting. They had a zen garden
in the backyard with koi fish,which Lou loved and yeah, it was
(34:28):
pretty pretty interesting to go do that. Yeah, really cool they had.
So it was like the house thatI guess the samurai lived in. I
can't remember that the time range onit. Beautiful home again, beautiful zen
garden within the home. And thisone thing that strikes you being here is
just like the attention that's put onlike creating and like really like balanced but
(34:49):
nice living spaces. Like it's likethis person obviously at the time, has
like this area to live in,and half the area is dedicated to like
this beautiful zen garden, but oneof the rooms in the house had like
the old samurai swords and knives.I think there was some Samuri armor in
there. Do we see that?Yeah? I think so that was there.
(35:10):
And then lewis kind of crawling aroundas well, which was fun.
And the whole area that neighborhood isreally cool and kind of walking down there
and up there, got to seea different side of Kennasaua. I feel
like everything we're doing this trip,we're only a kind of scraping the surface.
Because one that's true of like anytravels in Japan or in general,
(35:30):
but two because we only have afew hours a day of like actual exploring
time. Like kenna Zo was notlike when you're in central Kennazowa, you're
not on the coast, But Kennasowas basically on the coast, so you
can take a train out to theocean. There's parks up by the ocean.
There's so much stuff to do itthat we didn't get a chance to
do. But again, that wouldbe a city i'd love to go back
(35:51):
to and check out more of.Yeah, for sure, And you kind
of mentioned this before, but Ithink when we originally booked this time,
we had these big plans of like, okay, we'll spend maybe like one
day will power explore the whole city, and then we'll spend the other days
like getting out into nature. Wehad a couple of places marked that are
like, you know, an hourtwo hours away. And I think one
thing we're really learning through our travelsin general with an infant, but I
(36:14):
think this trip in particular is justthe power of slowing down. I think
it's really exhausting for us to justlike go go, go, go go,
and it's really hard for her.She needs a nap, sometimes two
naps a day, and it's justnot fun for anyone when she's like tired,
cranky, fussing, that type ofthing, and so pushing her really
(36:36):
hard to do things that are notreally that fun for her is just it
just doesn't really work. And Ithink we've had a couple days where we've
kind of pushed the limits, testedit a little bit and it just hasn't
gone that well. So we've triedto have a good balance of like you
know, get up in the morningand she's up pretty early, and so
we try to use that like firstperiod of time to get out go explore
something that is open early, breakfast, coffee, do a big walk,
(37:00):
come back, get her a goodnap, she can sleep however long she
wants, and then we do likeanother outing. But it's definitely different from
how we used to travel, whereit's like you just get up, you
go, you go all day,you come back kind of after dinner or
drinks in the evening, you know, crash hard, sleep, go do
it all over again. And Imean, quite honestly, I think that
might be a little exhausting for usat this point in life too, but
(37:23):
it's definitely just not feasible with asmall child. So I think that going
into the second half of our trip, we really kind of tapered expectations and
just we're trying to do like whateverwe could do, and going into a
place or an experience with less expectationsand more just like, Okay, let's
just enjoy what we can of this, and if we need to go back
(37:45):
home or you know, she getstired, then that's fine. You know,
we can always explore more. Andso I think there's been like some
good kind of big learnings that havehappened on this trip. But I think
the biggest one has just been likewe just can't do as much as we
used to be able to you.Yeah, I think that's definitely the case.
And I think the other thing.One of the things about like coming
(38:06):
to Japan in general, it's justit's so nice to like be here and
kind of just go about your day. I think maybe this is just where
we're at with traveling in general,but especially like there's so many cool stuff,
so much cool stuff to see,and so many things to do and
so much fun stuff to eat,that you're never going to get to the
end of it. There's no feelinglike, well, I've got to get
like here here and here and seethis, this and this, So just
(38:30):
like being here is fun. Solike go out for a morning walk,
You're in a beautiful neighborhood, seeinteresting things, get some cool new food,
and having that general sense about itI think has been has been good.
And the baby's kind of like beena good push for embracing that too,
because like one of the some ofthe my favorite moments have just been
like, oh, find a nicegreen patch in the park and like let
(38:51):
like kind of roam around, andthat's been really fun. Yeah, for
sure, And I feel like thatwas a lot of what we ended up
doing in kind of Zawa's just likerevisiting the same kind of Zowa Castle Park
and just walking different areas of itand just checking out different areas of the
zen garden or different zen gardens ingeneral. And you know, she's desperately
trying to walk right now, andso she really wants us to toddle around
(39:15):
with her, and that's when she'shappiest. And that's you know, it's
slow, it's tedious, it's notthe most efficient way, but it's something
that she wants to do. Sowe've really been trying to incorporate, you
know, her needs and wants intothe way that we do the day,
which really like slows things down.But it's been nice to just be like,
okay, we've been like walking fora while, let's just like get
her out of the stroller, gether out of the carrier, just like
(39:37):
let her play right now. Sowe've had lots of good just kind of
park moments. But I think kindof Zowa was really like letting go of
expectations maybe, or just like originalplans or it was like, hey,
let's do a lot of stuff,and then it kind of went down to
like, maybe we just do oneof our days outside of the city,
to Okay, we're not going todo any of our days outside of the
city. We're just going to explorehere, take it easy, be pretty
(40:00):
chill, pretty slow about everything,And I don't know, I really enjoyed
that portion of our trip. Ifeel like, looking back on it,
I'm like, Okay, that waspretty nice, especially because while Japan is
very quiet and it's very calm,it's also a lot of people and a
lot of energy, and especially whenyou're in the big cities like Tokyo and
Osaka, you spend a lot oftime on trains going from place to place,
(40:22):
and that gets pretty tiring just ingeneral. So I feel like it
was nice to have a couple ofdays to relax. But I would one
hundred percent recommend Kanazawa. I thinkit's super family friendly, and I think
even if you're not traveling as afamily, it's a really great place to
maybe get to the coast, Imean, lots to explore within the city,
and then certainly to use as ajumping off point for other things to
(40:43):
explore nearby. One hundred percent yeah, Unlike if you've in Japan for you
know, two weeks. I don'tknow if it would hit that list,
but it strikes me a great cityto explore if you've explored like the main
couple things like Kyoto, Tokyo alreadyand then again kind of like and like,
what would be a cool city tolike spend a few months if you're
a nomad and you're trying to likemaybe get out of like Tokyo and get
(41:05):
out of the main cities like thatstrikes me as a place that could be
cool. Now going to strikes meas a place that could be cool to
like have access to hiki and allthose things. So yeah, cool city,
definitely worth exploring. Definitely enjoyed ourtime there, Yeah for sure.
And I think I've recently had conversationswith two people who are planning trips first
time to Japan and they've kind ofasked where I should go, and Kanazawa
(41:28):
hasn't really come up for me.I do feel like it's a great like
second third trip type of place,But yeah, I think I would agree
with you. I think the routewe did the first time we went that
was Tokyo to Mount Fuji to Kyoto, you know, couple day Trips day
trip to Osaka Universal Studios, thattype of thing, then onwards to Hiroshimo
(41:49):
and then back to Tokyo was likea really great kind of kind of like
the Starters Pack almost. I feellike hits kind of the top main things.
But on this trip, like we'vementioned, we wanted to do some
different stuff, and I feel likeKanazawa was a great like, Okay,
we're exploring some different stuff this time. See, I definitely recommend it if
you are interested in that, ormaybe you've traveled to Japan before and we're
(42:09):
looking for something different to do.And so, like we said at the
beginning, we're back in Tokyo.We're on our last week here in Japan,
but we've still got lots of stuffto share. After Kanazawa, we
headed to Osaka, where we spenta good chunk of our trip over the
last little bit, and we didlots of exploring and lots of fun stuff
from there. So really excited tocontinue this journey and share what we've been
(42:30):
up to with you guys. Doyou have anything else to add before we
wrap up? No, I justhope everyone's having a wonderful week and some
awesome travel adventures. Are planning somethingfun and exciting to do and as I
always really appreciate you guys taking thetime to listen amazing. We'll see you
next episode. By for now,thanks for listening to this episode. If
you want more to make sure tocheck out the World Wanders Insider available on
(42:52):
Patreon at patreon dot com. Slashthe World Wanders for show notes, head
over to the World Wanders Do.Find us on social media at the World
Wanders podcast and enjoin the private Facebookcommunity at World Wanders, a community for
travelers. You can always get intouch with us at info at the World
wanders dot com. And if youenjoy the show, don't forget to subscribe
(43:15):
and leave a review. It reallyhelps us find new listeners. See you
next time.
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