All posts by Benjamin Welby

About Benjamin Welby

Hi, I'm Benjamin Welby. I'm a displaced northerner currently living in Croydon, I church with a group of Christians who meet in a Soho nightclub on Wednesdays and I support Bradford City. I've an academic background in History, Politics and International Development. I work for the Government Digital Service but I left my heart in local government. This blog is infrequently updated and may feature any, all or none of these things...

Temples, gardens, shrines, pavilions

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We loved Kyoto and spent quite a lot of time immersed in history with several visits to temples and shrines so these are our experiences from Friday 26th April, Monday 29th April and Tuesday 30th April.

On the Friday we visited Fushimi-Inari Taisha; a shrine complex consisting of thousands of orange-red torii arranged along pathways around Mount Inari. Having seen it as a filming location in Memoirs of a Geisha we found it stunning in real life. We walked the 4km route up through the wooded slopes of the mountain which was wonderful in the late afternoon, early evening sunshine.

Neverending torii

Continue reading Temples, gardens, shrines, pavilions →

Arashiyama

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Saturday 27th April 2013

After Hiroshima we headed back along the Shinkansen to Kyoto and settled into our new home for the next few days. Our first full day in Kyoto got off to a bad start when a miss set alarm clock threatened to derail a unique experience.

Through luck rather than judgment we’d managed to coincide our visit to Kyoto with the annual Miyako Odori – one of the events in the Geisha calendar – which takes place for the month of April.

Continue reading Arashiyama →

Observations #3 – cutting edge no more?

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Japan was never the primary reason for this trip – that was New Zealand – this part of our trip came from the fact that breaking our journey didn’t affect the price of our flights.

A few years ago Christine had been to a conference in Taiwan and had spent a couple of days in Hong Kong, she thought I would love to visit so we looked at making that our stop. We couldn’t do that so we chose Japan instead.

What was going to be a couple of days in Tokyo ended up being 12, allowing us to explore the country and see some wonderful things. And whilst we knew the romantic side of the country I was also keen to see the cutting edge technology which I’d always understood was a big part of Japan.

And yes, we saw heated toilet seats with built-in bidets; we were surrounded by chrips and bleeps; we ordered food from vending machines; we travelled on incredibly fast trains; and cashiers had tills that gave them the correct change. We also saw ASIMO do his stuff at the National Museum of Science and Emerging Technology.

Continue reading Observations #3 – cutting edge no more? →

Nobody had to excavate these ruins

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Hiroshima.

Everybody knows what happened here.

What you can never appreciate from afar, no matter how good your teachers or how comprehensive a documentary is the reality of what took place at 8.15am on August 6th, 1945. ‘Little Boy’ was smaller than the bomb which would fall on Nagasaki a few days later but in a second it reduced most of Hiroshima to rubble and many of its people to ash.

An enormous effort was made to identify those killed, and to provide, where possible, remains to families for burial.  But they were reduced to ash.  How do you identify a pile of ash? Continue reading Nobody had to excavate these ruins →

Observations #2 – the correct change

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If you’re visiting somewhere then you’re probably going to use public transport.

If you’re visiting somewhere then you’ve probably not got lots of change in your pocket.

That’s unlucky for anyone who visits York. In our ten years there we came to dread the moment you got on a bus bearing paper money because of the sour and unhelpful disdain with which you’ll be treated.

Taking a bus in Kyoto has been lovely – you pay a flat fare wherever you’re headed and chuck the correct coins into the machine next to a friendly driver.

And change? Not a problem because they have a machine next to the driver that will take whatever you’ve got in your wallet and change it to a selection of change that will cover the fare.

It may make getting off a bus a little sluggish but it’s no slower than the palava of sorting out a ticket or sufficient credit before you board or interacting with the driver as you board. The best thing is that this lo-tech solution works perfectly no matter what you’ve got in your pocket.

It’s this attention to detail that is one of the most striking things about Japan. We popped into a supermarket the other day and when the cashier put our items through and I handed over the money the till produced the correct change for her – genius.

Letters from Miyajima

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Thursday 25th April 2013

On our journey down from Tokyo we’d been a bit worried about the weather – it had been absolutely bucketing down the whole way. Gladly Thursday was a perfect day for wandering around the beautiful island of Miyajima in shorts and t-shirt.

We set off from our hotel, picked up a bit of breakfast and were soon stood on platform 1 waiting for the train bound to Iwakuni. 40 minutes later we got off the train at Miyajima-guchi and headed for the ferries to make the short crossing from the mainland. One of the brilliant things about the JR rail passes is that not only can you travel on shinkansen but you can use any other part of the JR transport network – even their ferries.

As we approached the island we saw the sight which is rated amongst the top 3 views in all of Japan: the floating torii gate of Itsukushama. We’d hoped to get to the island for high tide and although we were a little late we weren’t disappointed and as the ferry passed we had the perfect combination of viewing angle, sunshine and water level to see why people rave about it.

Floating torii at Miyajima

We got off the ferry and walked along the waterfront to Itsukushama-jinja, the shrine which gives the island its true name. This shrine can trace its history back to the 6th century but has been in its current form since 1168. Back then the island’s holy status meant visitors had to approach through the torii gate and disembark onto the shrine’s pier-like construction.

[We got some great photos at this point but because I left my camera on the train we have a single image: the one I instagrammed. Thankfully we only lost one day of pics but I’m still annoyed with myself]

The shrine is the thing for which Miyajima is famous but it’s not a one-trick pony by any means. All the guidebooks recommend spending a night on the island to enjoy a tranquillity that’s hard to find when the island is filled with (mostly Japanese) tourists. Christine and I couldn’t manage it but everybody’s right – you should make a night of it.

We spent the rest of our time on the island enjoying Mount Misen. We chose to take the cable car (ropeway) up to the summit. This journey was in two stages – the first in a small gondola that’s ideal for a few people and the second on an ‘aerial tramway’ that’s much shorter and much larger. It gives brilliant views out over the Seto Inland Sea and of course saves you the effort of making the 530m climb to the top.

Seto Inland Sea

The ropeway leaves you with another 20 minutes to get to the top but there’s plenty to see as you’re retracing the final part of Kobo Daishi’s route. He meditated in the temple close to the summit for 100 days following his return from China in the 9th century; the fire that he lit (and which provides the spark for the Flame of Peace in Hiroshima) is said to have been burning without interruption for the past 1200 years.

The walk down the mountain gave another perspective on the island – with several routes to choose from (and most people choosing the comfort of the ropeway to travel in both directions) we were able to enjoy the peace, quiet and shade of the path to the bottom and I don’t think it took that much longer. It was made even better by knowing that we had delicious beef noodles to look forward to once we got down.

With a quick stop off to admire a five storey pagoda we headed back to the ferry. By this point the tide had gone out and the torii was no longer floating but surrounded by people who had walked out on the sand to get a closer look – once the torii was no longer floating and people could walk out to it it seemed to lose something of the reverence and majesty it had had that morning.

We had planned to spend the rest of the day around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park but as we stepped off the tram I realised I’d lost the camera. We hurried back to the station and found friendly, helpful staff who tried various different avenues of enquiry but unfortunately we didn’t manage to track it down. We replaced it with something fairly cheap but by that point we’d lost the rest of the day.

The day did end on a positive note though, with the discovery of Okonomyaki but more of that another time.

Daily distance travelled: 32km

Total distance travelled: 10,283km

Canny ways we saved some money #2: Mifis and local data

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In our daily lives at home the internet is pretty ubiquitous. Often people want to go on holiday to get away from all the fuss and bother of technology but we weren’t having one of those unplugged holidays.

We were warned that Japan is not totally straightforward if you only speak English. And so having access to maps, translations and the internet on demand seemed a good way of making sure we didn’t sink.

We’re going away for a long time and we want to make sure we can keep in touch with our families. In the UK hotels charge a premium for internet and we didn’t know what we’d find in Japan or New Zealand so having something we could control ourselves was attractive.

We also wanted to keep our phones on us and not even run the risk of ludicrous roaming data charges so we needed to keep data switched off, our phone numbers live and still be able to access the internet from the palm of our hands.

When we get to the Cook Islands we will be pretty much cut off from the rest of the world and with little or no access to any form of internet. 16 days of being unplugged will do us some good.

Having had use of a GDS Mifi for the last few months I knew how effective they were and when a friend endorsed their travelling credentials a few weeks ago our decision was made. We bought the Huawei E331 and equipped with the knowledge from the excellent Prepaid with Data wiki ordered our BMobile sim card – 1GB of data over a 14 day period for under £30.

(Christine’s edit: I honestly don’t believe Ben can go ‘unplugged’ for any significant period of time. The Cook Islands will be interesting…)

Canny ways we saved some money #1: JR Passes

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If you’re heading to Japan and planning to use shinkansen (or maybe even the bog-standard train for more than a handful of journeys) then chances are buying yourself a JR Pass will be worthwhile.

You have to buy them outside Japan (which seems a bit harsh if you’re Japanese and wanting to travel around the country) and then exchange them when you want to use them. They can be used for 7, 14 or 21 days of unlimited travel across the JR network.

We bought ours via jrpass.com and the excellent Japan Guide has a full description of what they are and how to use them. They cost us £196 each but because the Yen is one of very few currencies that’s weaker than Sterling that’s actually gone down to £182 now.

Hello world!

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In the last fortnight Christine and I have moved away from York and left our current jobs to take a once in a lifetime opportunity to spend three months together and travel around Japan, New Zealand and the Cook Islands.

I wrote a little about the whys a couple of weeks ago but this blog is where we’re going to record our adventures.

We also need to introduce you to Jim. Continue reading Hello world! →