Rob Jackman – Page 7 – JACKMAN ESCAPADES

Norfolk And The Broads…..

Our First Stop – England….. Well an interesting start to our holiday. Flights from Melbourne to Helsinki via Singapore departed on time and both arrived early. Our last leg from Helsinki to London was not so good. We were scheduled to fly on a brand new Airbus A350-900 but on approaching the aerobridge the port engine collided with the aerobridge ripping a rather large hole in the engine cowling. Fortunately Finnair had spare A340-300 for the flight so 2 hours later we were on our way. Picking up the car from Hertz was painless and once we worked out how to start the engine we were on our way to Norwich. 3 hours and 160 miles later we checked in to our delightful B&B and headed to the local pub for a typical English roast dinner.

And The Broads…. We spent the next day exploring Norwich even taking in an organ concert in the Norwich Cathedral. It was then on to Wroxham to pick up our cruiser for our adventure on the Broads. The Broads were a man-made accident. The Broads were formed by the flooding of medieval peat excavations which provided fuel to Norwich and Great Yarmouth. As the sea levels began to rise, the pits began to flood. By the end of the 14th Century, the pits were abandoned and the Broads were formed. Rather than a long winded narrative of our time on “The Broads” if you “click here” you will see a short video on our adventure.

“Click Here” For Video – Our Adventure On The Broads

A Return To Dry Land…. After 4 fantastic days on “The Broads”it was time for a change and some land based activities. We took the opportunity to go on The Bure Valley Tourist Train for a 1 1/2 hour return scenic ride through Norfolk from Alysham to Wroxham. This train is still used by locals from other villages to go to Alysham for shopping.

We then drove to our beautiful cottage in a tiny village called Barton Turf about 14km from Wroxham. The cottage was very homely and comfortable and had the most sophisticated entertainment system we have ever seen.

We spent 4 Nights in the cottage and each day took time exploring the Norfolk coast from Lowestoft to King’s Lynn.
We watched seals at Horsey, had drinks with the President and Captain of Royal Cromer Golf Club and visited the tourist town of Great Yarmouth which was interesting to say the least. A typical English holiday town with dozens of entertainment parlors, fish and chip shops on every corner and of course tacky tourist shops selling souvenirs.

Seal At Horsey — Friendly Seal Close To Waters Edge At Horsey

Great Yarmouth — Liz Making Her Fortune 2 Pennies At A Time

From Barton Turf To Little Brickhill…. With a little sadness we left our lovely cottage at Barton Turf and drove to Cambridge. Couldn’t believe our luck in finding a multistory car park about 300 metres from the centre of Cambridge. We spent a couple of hours walking around admiring the beautiful old buildings and churches and undertaking some window shopping.

King's College — King’s College Chapel – Construction Started In 1446

Our next stop was Grantchester made famous by the mini series of the same name. Much of the mini series was filmed in the village. We felt obliged to stop at the Red Lion Pub for a beer before driving on to our next B&B at Little Brickhill.

Church At Little Brickhill — Beautiful Old Church In Little Brickhill

Bletchley Park – A Code Is Broken…. Bletchley Park housed the code breaking operations during World War Two and was the birthplace of modern computing. At its peak around 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park. They tackled the complex task of intercepting, deciphering, analysing and distributing the intelligence derived from enemy radio signals. Their work remained shrouded in the highest levels of secrecy.

Bletchley Park is now a museum and has recently come into prominence with the release of the film “The Imitation Game” starring Benedict Cumberbatch which focused on the breaking of the German Enigma code. The Mansion at Bletchley Park was used as the headquarters and recreational building.

The Enigma Machine had 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. Later the Germans developed even more complex machines with even more possible combinations.To quickly decipher the German codes scientists at Bletchley Park developed a machine that could quickly decipher the codes. It was called the Bombe machine. The museum contains an actual working model of this machine and gives hourly demonstrations on its use.

Bombe Machine Used To Decipher The Enigma Codes

We Leave England…. After 12 days we leave England for the next leg of our journey to Scandinavia. We have been blessed with perfect weather and a nice variation of experiences with the highlights being the Norfolk Broads boating, our beautiful cottage at Barton Turf and Bletchley Park Museum.

Back To The Big Smoke, Osaka

Another Pleasant Rail Journey ….
We departed Kanazawa shortly after 9:00AM for a very pleasant 2 1/2 hour rail journey to Osaka. Travelling by train in Japan is a great experience. Trains run on time, are spotlessly clean and very comfortable. There is so much to see with varying landscapes and an insight into the real Japan. Virtually every piece of level ground is either a house, a building or is being farmed. On the other hand the mountainous regions remain largely untouched and are so beautiful, particularly in Autumn. The 2 1/2 hour journey just flew by and before we knew it we were in Osaka.

Typical landscape as seen from the bullet train

A Contrast To Tokyo ….
The subway trip from Shin-Osaka Shinkansen station to Shinsaibashi was painless, followed by a 400 meter walk to our apartment. This country is so easy to get around even though there are limited English signs. The constant announcements in Japanese at the train stations and on the buses seem largely redundant. The area where our apartment is located is called Amerikamura and is close to the famous Shinsaibashi Arcade. It is an interesting area, predominantly for the youth generation with funky shops, night clubs and restaurants. It is very similar to Harajuka district in Tokyo. It is a great place to have an apartment for the week. After a walk around the area I decided that Japanese must get very tired during the day as you can rent hotel rooms by the hour in this area. Some of these rooms are very fancy with round beds and mood lighting. Seems pointless if all you want is a power nap.

Miniature Statue of Liberty on top of a building in the Amerikamura district

Typical night scene in the area of our apartment

Orientating Ourselves ….
Our first afternoon we spent orientating ourselves and finding a supermarket for some basic supplies for our apartment. We were lucky to stumble upon a huge supermarket in Namba, the neighbouring suburb and had a great time exploring the products on offer. There is no English on any labels and you rely soley on pictures to decide what to buy. Even to buy milk is difficult as we found out when we had the strangest tasting Corn Flakes one morning followed by white tea that was undrinkable. What is fantastic and cheap are the pre-prepared meals and the sushi and sashimi which we both love. Food in general seems to be 20 to 30% cheaper than Australia and alcohol about half what we pay. A bottle of whisky or gin is about AUD$10.

Frozen food in the supermarket. You need a good picture to work out the contents

Freshly prepared sushimi at the supermarket. Tasty and relatively cheap

Freshly prepared satay sticks avaiable at the supermarket

Off Exploring ….
On our first full day in Osaka we decided to walk the Tenjinbashi-suji arcade. This is a covered street full of retail shops, restaurants, bars and pachinko parlors and is 2.6 km long, the longest straight shopping arcade in Japan. It is where the locals shop and has a great atmosphere. During our walk we lunched on okonomi-yaki, a delicious pancake filled with cabbage, egg, green onion, shredded meat and a most delicious sauce, not unlike chinese plum sauce. We stuck our heads into a couple of pachinko parlors but these places are deafening as the game uses 10mm ball bearings in what looks like a vertical pin ball machine with up to 20 balls rattling down at a time on each machine and there are hundreds of machines.

Entrance to the 2.6 Km long Tenjinbashi-suji Arcade.

Pachinko Parlour in the Tenjinbashi-suji Arcade

Liz enjoying a delicious okonomi-yaki in the Tenjinbashi-suji Arcade

One of the fresh food shops in the Arcade

The Best View In Osaka ….
Our next stop was the Aerial Garden Observatory at the Umeda Sky Building. This observatory is on the 40th floor bridging two buildings and provides a 360 ° view of Osaka. We timed our visit to coincide with sunset and had drinks overlooking the skyline of Osaka. Well worth a visit if you are in Osaka.

Evening drinks at the Umeda Sky Building Observatory

View of Osaka from the Observatory at night

Osaka At Night ….
The city takes on a completely different atmosphere at night when the neon lights come on. It transforms into one big party like New Years Eve in Melbourne, minus any drunks. Shinsaibashi arcade at 8:00 PM at night is amass with shoppers. Dotonbori, the night club and restaurant district is packed with people and everyone is happy and laughing with no signs of bad behaviour. It may be different at midnight but us oldies are in bed by then.

The famous Shinsaibashi arcade at 8:00 PM at night

The Dotonbori district of Osaka. A restaurant and night club district

The Glico Man. The most photographed neon in Dotonbori

The Crab restaurant. The second most photographed landmark

Another Side Trip ….
Saturday was a perfect day weatherwise so a quick decision was made to visit Kobe. On the subway to Shin-Osaka station, hop on a bullet train and 13 minutes later we were in Kobe. Our first stop was the Nunobiki Herb Gardens and Ropeway (read cable car). It is one of Japan’s largest herb gardens with 75,000 herbs and flowers. We caught the Ropeway about 1 km up to the top of the mountain and then slowly walked down through various displays of herbs and flowers including glass houses with more exotic varieties of plants. Upon reaching the end of the gardens at the middle ropeway station we then caught the ropeway back to the top station where we enjoyed a light lunch. This visit turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip.

Ropeway (Cable Car) to the top station of the Herb Garden

Interior of one of the glass houses at the Herb Garden

Going Loopy Again ….
We then hopped on the Kobe Loop Bus for a quick tour of the city finally ending up in Chinatown where we enjoyed a Peking duck snack before walking the full length of the Motomachi Arcade back to the Kobe train station to hop on a local train back to Osaka. Kobe is a fairly modern town with the buildings being relatively new as many of the buildings were destroyed in 1995 by an earthquake which killed 5000 people.

Back In Osaka ….
We awoke to a wet Sunday so decided on a visit to The National Museum Of Art, Osaka which displays works of both Japanese and foreign artists. This was followed by a visit to the Osaka Science Museum which is interesting given that everything explaining the displays was in Japanese, not unlike the supermarket. But we now know the Japanese for milk, ミルク and skim milk ミルクのスクリーニング. We’re working on yogurt next.

Exploring Namba ….
Namba is one of the main shopping districts in Osaka. There are multiple shopping centre developments and department stores in this area all interconnected by basement walkways and intergrated with subway and regional railway stations. In total it is a massive development and on top of one of the 8 story buildings is a two story garden complex which is very impressive particularly given it is all decorated with Christmas lights. We estimate the total Nanba Shopping District would be at least 5 times bigger than Chadstone Shopping Centre.

Rooftop Garden at the Namba Parks Shopping Centre complex

Christmas lights at the Namba Parks Shopping complex

A Delicious Dinner ….
Whilst in the Namba area we decided to have dinner, so up to the restaurant floors we went and chose a nice restaurant. We were given the menu with not a word of English in sight. Unfortunately milk and skim milk weren’t on the menu so we had to rely on glossy pictures and sign language from the waitress. Our meal was delicious but we had ordered far too much as the actual plates were far bigger than the pictures on the menu.

A specials menu at the restaurant were we had dinner. Not a word of English in sight.

Our dinner. The plates were much bigger than the photos

Our Final Day ….
We awoke to a perfect autumn day and decided to visit the Osaka Castle. Construction of this castle began in 1583 but has been rebuilt several times due to lightening strikes and wars. The latest of these rebuilds occurred in 1931 and as well as a viewing platform on the 8th floor contains a museum documenting the history of the castle and the many wars that took place in its vicinity. The castle is set in a beautiful park containing two massive moats, the outer moat filled with water.

View from the 8th floor Observation Deck balcony of the castle

We Leave Japan ….
After three great weeks we leave Japan with fond memories of the friendly people, the vibrant cities and the beautiful country side.

My favourite sign of the trip. You see a lot of Jinglish signs in Japan

A Side Trip To Hiroshima

Back On The Bullet Train ….
Whilst in Osaka we planned a 2 day side trip to Hiroshima with the primary objectives of visiting the island of Miyajima and the Peace Park in Hiroshima. Our 87 minute Shinkansen journey took us to Hiroshima and we immediately hopped on another train for a short journey to Miyajimaguchi where the ferry terminal is located to get us across to the island of Miyajima.

Miyajima Island, A World Heritage Site ….
The ferry trip across to the island took about 15 minutes and was free if you had a Japan Rail Pass. One of the highlights of Miyajima is the O-Torrii Gate, a massive 60 ton cypress wooden gate that sits in the water about 50 meters away from the Itsukushima Shrine. At high tide it is in the water but at low tide people can walk out to the gate on the sand. The Itsukushima Shrine is also built over the water at high tide and is an impressive orange structure. Construction of the shrine first started in the year 563 and was later remodeled in 1168. The shrine consists of a main shrine, a drama stage, music rooms, halls and several other smaller shrines surrounding the main shrine.

O-Torrii Gate that welcomes you to Mirajima

Walkways on the impressive Itsukushima Shrine

We See A Wedding ….
During our walk around the shrine we were lucky to witness a traditional Japanese wedding with the bride in a Kimono and the groom in traditional costume. Lots of formalities, drum banging and chanting. Very interesting.

A wedding in progress at the shrine. Very formal

Another Shrine And A Pagoda ….
A walk up a rather steep hill and we were at the Five Story Pagoda and the Toyokuni Shrine. Whilst we were there we witnessed a special ceremony where we assumed new buddhist monks were being ordained. Once again, lots of drum banging, speeches and chanting for this very formal ceremony.

A Delicious Lunch ….
We were recommended to try Okonomi-yaki for lunch in Miyajima and it did not disappoint. This delicious dish was invented in Japan dating back more than 70 years and became very popular as a street stall snack following the A Bomb attack. Flour is mixed with water to provide a pancake style mixture and then on the top was added spring onions. Over the years it has been refined and now includes chopped cabbage, noodles, bean sprouts, pork and egg or beef, scallops or oysters then covered with a delicious sauce topping. Healthy, nutricious and very tasty. Another popular treat on the island are fresh oysters baked in their shell then served.

My half eaten Okonomi-yaki Lunch. I was too hungry to take the photo before I started

Back To Hiroshima ….
After several hours in Miyajima visiting shrines, temples, gardens and compulsory gift shops we were back on the ferry and train headed for Hiroshima. We checked into our hotel, The Parkside, right next to the Peace Park and then just as dusk fell went out to walk around the Peace Park developed to commemorate the loss of life and devastation caused by the dropping of the first ever atomic bomb in wartime which occurred at 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945. Walking this park is a very moving experience particularly as dusk fell and there was the orange glow from the setting sun on the buildings, monuments and the autumn colours on the trees. The most dramatic monument is the A Bomb Dome, another world heritage site, which was originally built as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotions Hall but now stands witness to the devastation caused by an atomic bomb. Our day finished with a walk up the Hondori St covered arcade and then a delicious meal at a restaurant right on the water overlooking the Peace Park. The end to an interesting day.

An Early Start ….
Up early the next morning to walk around the Peace Park visiting many of the monuments commemorating loss of life as a result of the atomic bomb and then a visit to the Peace Memorial Museum, the National Peace Memorial Hall for the bomb victims and the Childrens Peace Monument. We walked to Hiroshima Castle and then on to the Shukkeien Traditional Japanese Garden to complete a full and interesting day. It was then back on the Shinkansen to our cosy little apartment in Osaka.