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Our Ryokan Experience

We spent the last two days at two different Ryokan’s in the Takayama, Gifu Prefecture. The first one was Kakurean Hidaji, and the second one was closer to the Shinhotaka Ropeway called Yarimikan.

Both represented the traditional Japanese folk homes with a service themed on onsen and delicious dinner and breakfast. The location of these two Ryokan was a bit far from Nagoya, and took us about 3 hours to get here by Nohi Bus with a single transit at Takayama.

For me the experience was a little too retro for my taste, but I did enjoy the outdoor onsen quite a bit. The tatami was also too much to get use to, so thank god for the soft beddings that they have available for sleeping. At Yarimikan, there wasn’t even a shower in our room. We have to goto the indoor baths to take showers. For the adventurous ones out there this may be an excellent experience, but for me I prefer more creature comforts.

The next time we do a Ryokan we are going to strictly limit our bookings to private baths within the rooms! However, no matter how retro these places get, the comfort of a warm toilet seat is always something to look forward to in a Japanese washroom! Carol’s video will show more of our relaxing times at the ryokan’s.

We also took the opportunity to take the cable car at the Shinhotaka Ropeway. Unfortunately, we were not able to make it to the top, because the second leg of the journey was under maintenance. We did meet a local who was visiting from Kyoto and strike up a good conversation in English. He suggested that we should also visit the Kamikochi area. We will not have time on this trip, but perhaps next time.

Below are the two videos from Carol, representing each day of our stay at the two different ryokan’s.

Nagoya

We said good bye to Hotel CLAD and took a taxi from the hotel to Mishima station, where we boarded the Shinkansen to Nagoya. I reserved the Shinkansen tickets early so that we can have reserve seating in the Green class (more comfortable class). The reservation also allowed for the oversize luggage that we had, which we stored in the allocated area behind our seats. This was super convenient.

To reserve our seats, we used the iOS app from the Central Japan Railway Company. Before I booked any tickets, I had to create an account first and for some reasons my TD Visa failed on the verification. However my AMEX card was fine with the registration. It looks like anything related to transportation, such as Pasmo and train reservation I have more success with AMEX.

During our stay at Nagoya, the Pasmo IC card in our Apple Wallet was super handy to take the local subways, buy stuff from local Seven Eleven and FamilyMart, which are literally on almost every other corner. In these convenience store we found a new love for Japanese sandwiches. They were simply delicious.

The JapanTravel iOS app was also very useful in navigating the subway lines and local transit.

Aside from snacks and finger food from the convenience stores, we also had a few meals from the local restaurants here. In one sushi restaurant, the food was a bit underwhelming to be honest. I could not tell the difference between this restaurant and a very good sushi restaurant from Toronto. Also the sushi chef did not really rolled out the red carpet for us, and we felt like we had finish our meal and leave in a hurry. It did not help that no one there speak any English. Perhaps, I am simply not a sushi connoisseur. The ramen and BBQ beef place was very good and I really enjoyed both meals especially for the price. We had the Hida Beef lunch at 飛驒牛一頭家馬喰一代名古屋WEST, and the ramen at 麺屋やま昇.

We also took time to visit the Nagoya Castle. Since we are staying right next door to it, we had to visit the signature tourist location of the city. I will let Carol’s videos speak volumes of our visit. The AirBnB place that we got was on the penthouse of the Howa BLDG. The place is really nice and I would not mind recommending this place to anyone else who is planning to visit Nagoya.

Transiting from Hotel Clad to Nagoya

Full day in Nagoya

Mount Fuji

When we got in last night, everything was dark. All we had time for was check into our hotel.

This morning we open up our hotel room shades to discover a wonderful and beautiful sight of nature. Mount Fuji was a sight to be seen!

We had a wonderful hotel buffet breakfast and then did a private onsen session in front of Mount Fuji for an hour. The bath was hot at 41ºC and it was hot. I had to get out of it every 10 minutes or so to cool down. After the bath, you just feel like jello, super relaxing and a great time for a nap! Carol loved it so much, she went back for another session in the evening. One session was good enough for me.

Below has a wonderful picture of the view we had from our room and the private bath. Click on the individual pictures to see it in its full resolution.

The hotel buffet breakfast was okay, and we really did not have much choice because no place was open until 10am or 11am. We had ramen for lunch at the outlet mall’s food court. The ramen was good, but I had an issue with Pasmo. This is a cashless payment card (one of many called IC cards in Japan). The idea is to have it top up with some cash, and you can use the cards with transit, vending machines, and retail shops. Our TD Visa card fail to validate with Pasmo, but our AMEX card worked okay.

Long story short, I ended up paying twice the amount for the ramen. The merchant says it was cancelled but the amount was already deducted from my phone. Not a very good experience. I suspect there is some incompatibility with its functionality and me having my iPhone on the VPN. With the language barrier I decided not to argue the point. Subsequent transactions worked flawlessly. I hope it is just an isolated scenario, but still quite worrisome.

Overall today was a good experience around the outlet mall with the Fuji Mountain constantly within our views. Carol of course did a much better job of capturing the day with the following video:

We Are in Japan!

On October 30th, we started our trip to Japan with a private shuttle service to Toronto International Airport. Since we have already performed our online check-in, we just needed to drop off our single bag.

I have worked with the check-in kiosks numerous times before, and knew that it should be able to print out the baggage tags, and receipt. This worked okay, with the exception that it needed to scan my passport to look up my booking. Me entering the booking reference number did not work for some reasons.

The automated baggage drop off was a new experience for me. We had to perform multiple attempts, ensuring that the bag was oriented correctly so the machine can read the bar codes. We were also given a tip by a fellow passenger that it also helps to stand at the appropriate spot. The important thing was that we got it to work in the end!

The waiting and boarding is the MOST stressful part of the entire airport process. I really do not understand why the airlines cannot streamline this part of the journey.

As the above picture show, it was just chaos. With a full flight and the possibility of no more overhead baggage storage made it more stressful.

The flight is a long one something like 14 hours, but also felt really long. Air Canada really skimped on the food. We just had a late lunch and a hot breakfast. Between the lunch and breakfast was something like more than 8 hours. The electrical plug at the seat was so loose that my usual block adapter did not work. Luckily my wife had a smaller plug that use to come with the iPhones, and that worked. The washrooms on these long flights are also beginning to show its age and wear.

To top it all off, we had another 2.5 hours drive from the airport to our hotel, named Hotel CLAD. Even with the plane landing at 5pm, we didn’t get into our rooms until after 9:15pm.

Once we landed we had our handy QR codes from Visit Japan Web, where we pre-filled out our immigration and custom information. This saved us a lot of time. I highly recommend any one traveling to Japan to do the same thing.

We also purchased a 20GB 30 day data only eSim from Airalo. This worked really well as soon as I figured that the eSim from Airalo must have Data Roaming turned on. To avoid any roaming charges from my primary Koodo line back in Canada, I made doubly sure that the Koodo line Data Roaming is turned off, and I do not answer any calls from the Koodo line. Once we landed I switched to the Airalo eSim and both of our phones have data, while our social accounts still use the Canadian number.

Below is my wife’s video account of our journey:

Video of our flight and drive to Japan from Oct.30 to Oct. 31.

Driving to Calgary (Sault Ste. Marie to Home)

Today is the last leg of our journey. I have driven almost 8,200km, and we have successfully drove our Tesla Model Y from Richmond Hill, Ontario to Calgary. Jasper being the furthest point from home.

As with most of our days, we started off with the hotel offered breakfast, and then we set about our ways on the road. Since we did the outbound trip via the ferry from Tobermory, most of this stretch (anything East of Espanola) will be new to us. The speed limit increased from the meagre 90kph to 110kph in the Northern portion of Highway 400. This was of course a pleasant surprise.

We also stopped at our first Tesla Supercharging station at Port Severn that look like a really well thought out rest stop for both EV and regular gasoline vehicles.

The major let down of the whole trip was that on the previous night, unbeknownst to me, I accidentally unplugged our portable fridge and all the delicious Mackay’s Ice Cream that we purchased in Alberta were all melted. Ruined on the last leg!

Lesson learned. Always check the temperature of the fridge when entering the vehicle.

This concludes our road trip. I will be doing another post on the charging statistics in a separate post.

Here is Carol’s video account of our day.

Driving to Calgary (Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie)

Today was a pretty tiring drive. Tiring yes, but at least this time it was not foggy like the outbound trip to Calgary. We can actually take in some of the beautiful lookouts of Lake Superior. Unfortunately, the nice scenery did not shorten the long trip. It felt forever before we arrived at Sault Ste. Marie.

However, as we get closer to Sault Ste. Marie, the trees begin to catch the autumn fires! The red orangey colours were pretty spectacular and wide spread.

I also miss the Supercharger stations in the prairies and Alberta. They were always close to a Walmart or a Tim Horton’s. The Supercharger stations in Ontario are in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes a washroom is hard to find around the station. The gas stations wants you to be a customer, so I just offer to by a $5 LottoMax ticket. Perhaps this washroom tax will have some anti-karma, lucky benefits.

Tonight we stuck with something simple, like Subway for dinner. We did get a chance to walk around the local mall called Station Mall. The pandemic really hit this city hard. The mall only had about 50% occupancy. Poor Sault Ste. Marie!

I got a double scoop Laura Secord ice cream cone while Carol got some New York Fries for some added dinner snacks.

Carol’s record of today’s tiring drive.

Driving to Calgary (Winnipeg to Thunder Bay)

This is going to be a pretty short summary. We are back in Ontario today! It is nice to be amongst Ontario plates again!

The flat land gave away to gentle hills as we roll into Thunder Bay. We hope to catch some restaurants open this time. Last time, most restaurants were closed by 8pm! This time we thought we found one that closes at 9pm, but as we got closer to the city we called our designated restaurant named Lucky’s, and were somewhat disappointed to find out that they close their dinning room at 8pm, and it is take-out only service during their last hour. The owner told us that if we make it by 7:30pm, we can be served. We got there at 7:25pm, just made it to order some Thai and Vietnamese dishes! If we did not make it in time, it would be some fast food joint again.

Another interesting fact, it looks like Tesla raised their Superchargers pricing during our road trip. On our way to Calgary, we were only paying around $0.47 to $0.49 per kWh. It looks like the $0.60 per kWh is not an Alberta thing. Here in Ontario, the current prices now ranges from $0.59 to $0.60 per kWh. I wonder if Tesla adjust the pricing based on actual oil market price.

Carol’s video of our mundane transition from Manitoba to Ontario.

Driving to Calgary (Regina to Winnipeg)

We did a Tim Hortons bagel breakfast this morning while we charge our car to start our drive to Winnipeg.

To combat the monotonous nature of these drives, I started an interesting practice yesterday, and I continue to practice it today.

I started to download the audio stream (no video) of some of the YouTube channels that I have been following as part of my day-to-day doom-scrolling activity. These audio streams are stored on my NAS server at home, where I create my own podcast feed (podcast.lufamily.ca), which can be accessed using the Overcast iOS App. Now I can get my daily dose of international news, propaganda, and individual opinions.

Our Tesla Model Y front is continuously battered by bugs, pebbles, and small stones as we cross the warm and windy prairies. We have been fairly lucky to escape any major damages, until today when our windshield became a casualty. There is a very nice star like crack on the lower passenger side of the windshield. I guess after about 6,000km and passing endless gravel trucks, this is not that uncommon, but still a bummer. We’ll get this sorted once we get back home.

Today’s trip is not all bad. We found Sun Fortune Restaurant, opened by a Hong Kong expat, serving the Chinese community here in Winnipeg for more than 20 years. My cravings for Chinese food and especially RICE has been satisfied tonight!

Checkout Carol’s video and be sure to watch to the end for the scrumptious Cantonese dishes we had tonight.

Driving to Calgary (Edmonton to Regina)

We started the morning with a very hearty breakfast at Denny’s, which was located near a local truck stop. I can’t lie, the breakfast was delicious and the Philly Cheese Steak Omelette was pretty tasty and satisfying.

We set out to Regina. It was a super windy day. The drive itself was pretty uneventful other than the fact that we had to charge at every Tesla Supercharge station from Edmonton to Regina. The open land and the wind really took a toll on our efficiency and therefore our range. Our total charge cost turned out to be $88.79. Adding salt to injury for some reason it costs more here, $0.60/kWh instead of $0.47/kWh from Ontario. I am beginning to think that Alberta does not like electric vehicles. The price is still reasonable considering that we covered more than 700km.

Nonetheless I cannot fault the Supercharging Network. We had no problems charging the car and there were plenty of available chargers. Knock on wood, but we have not had to line up during our trip save the time when we were in the big Crossiron Mall in Calgary.

The silver lining to all the stops, was that we got my wife, Carol, a Series 9 Apple Watch. We found a Best Buy at Lloydminster, Alberta. This is literally the last town before exiting Alberta and onto Saskatchewan. As a matter of fact, the border is within the town itself. Once again, we are delighted to take advantage of the lack of provincial sales tax in Alberta.

The sky was clear and on our drive into Regina we had a beautiful sunset to our right, while the moon welcome us into Regina on the horizon. We checked into our hotel, and I was on a hunt for some Chinese food. Unfortunately it seems like all Chinese restaurants in Regina closes on Tuesday. Just our luck! Instead, we settled for some Vietnamese Pho and sandwiches, both were delicious (maybe it’s our hunger speaking).

Once again Carol’s video is worth way more than my words.

Driving to Calgary (Jasper to Edmonton)

We left Jasper in the morning after a relaxing breakfast at the Forest Park hotel. If we were to stay in Jasper again, we should probably pick a weekday instead of a weekend. The prices of the hotels during the weekend is doubled. In hindsight this is probably obvious, but our schedule just happens to land us in Banff and Jasper on the weekend. Most of the stores close after Thanksgiving, and the scenic highway 93 from Banff to Jasper also closes as it becomes harder to maintain during the winter storms.

After about 50km East of Jasper we left the Jasper National Park. It is phenomenal that when we left the park, so did the picturesque view of the mountains, and the skies become dominant again on the horizon.

Today was not a long drive. We left Jasper at around 10:30am, and we got to Edmonton at about 2:30pm. We charged in a small town called Edson. We took the extra time to visit West Edmonton Mall and just so happened to frequent an Apple Store and picked up their last iPhone 15 Pro in inventory. What luck! Also being in Alberta we pay less HST, 9% less than Ontario.

Found 100°C Tea House Cafe, and I was dying for some Chinese food, not as good as Toronto, but beggars cannot be choosers.