Today is the day of unpacking the Earthcruiser from its container, and then unpacking everything from the Earthcruiser!
Customs officers were waiting when we arrived at the shipyard storage area. They spoke very little English. But they busily took photos through the process. We had the impression this was a new experience for them!
The container was on a truck, so ramps were put in place. After removing the straps a slightly built Japanese man crawled underneath, and up and over into the truck, then into the camper. He switched the batteries on, and then she started perfectly.
He backed her down the ramp and we were greatly relieved. There is a scratch on the drivers side mirror mount, from when she was put into the container in Brisbane, and no other damage!
Then came the unpacking. Everything was taken out, although they did not make us take the bedding out. All the contents were laid out beside the truck, and our packing list was amended by the shipping company agents.
Customs did drug swabs all over the vehicle, looked in various drawers and then went. Apparently they will inspect the amended list and apply whatever taxes they think appropriate.
We were finished by midday, which was a good thing because we were booked into Koya-San
This booking was made a month ago, in the futile expectation that we would be on the road a few days ago! So instead of driving into the mountains we took the train.
Koya-San is a temple area in the mountains SE of Osaka. It was established 1000 years ago! In fact 2015 will be the 1200th anniversary of the establishment of Koyasan. That is antiquity that impresses me! It is the headquarters of a sect of Budhism. There are many temples here, and 50 or so of them provide lodgings for visitors.
Since the monks are vegan the food served is completely animal/cruelty free! It's heaven for vegans!
The cuisine is called Shojin Ryori Kaiseki -Budhist cuisine high style. (The "Kaiseki" means "fine dining, multiple courses" -or something similar. ) From memory there was cold roasted potato and carrot and eggplant in a sauce, kelp, ginger root, cognac root sliced to look like fish, with a sweet sauce, and with round balls which look like fish roe but weren't, a jelly like tofu with wasabi. In the pot was silken tofu boiling (there was a flame under the pot) in a vegetarian miso. Delicious. There were 5 fava beans in a sweet sauce. There were grapes, and two cherry tomatoes which had been peeled and marinated in a very slightly sweet sauce. There was also tofu skin ( the skin that forms when soy milk is boiled). There was pickled radish. Of course there was rice and green tea.
It is also very beautiful here, with the cherry blossoms not yet finished, and traditional looking temples.
When we finished dinner we found our room transformed into a bed room. Since it gets quite cold up here, and the temples are not heated, they have found a solution to keep your feet warm in bed!
That lump at the foot of the bed is a table with an infrared light under it. So we can both have our feet in there keeping warm! Ingenious eh?
Koya-San is certainly about temples. They were everywhere.
I don't know what this fellow was about but he was hanging in our room in the temple at Koya-San! Some similarity to some Xtian mythology?
And lastly, I can't resist some cherry blossom photos....
The blossoms are starting to finish at KoyaSan, and this is because the leaves are starting to appear, giving the trees a brownish tinge. I think this is also beautiful!
Tomorrow -more beaurocracy and hopefully we will be starting the next phase of our trip. We have bought a wi-Fi mobile hot spot, so I should be able to continue uploading blogs and receiving emails, albeit a little less often probably.
It is with a little trepidation that we approach this next leg. We can see that it will not be like camping in Australia. There is very little wilderness. There are huge sprawling built up areas. Country towns are like cities in Australia. And all of the road signs are in Japanese! We do have an off-line map, with Japanese and English, and our GPS location, so that should help a lot.
Our plan is to immediately get onto a freeway OUT of the city. That means Sout East into Wakayama prefecture. Wish us luck! I'll let you know how it goes ........
Yippee Kai Yay for you two!! Well done on the safe arrival of your "hotel on wheels". Hope the import duties aren't too high (not so easy to accept with new items you have already paid taxes on when you purchased) You might like to try the app "Pocket Earth" on your iPad, its brilliant - we used it all last year driving 8 months through Asia. The trick is to download the maps you need when you have fast internet, and then use them offline. We used it also to record every place we camped, and made an accurate map as we travelled. Cheers from Wanderoos
ReplyDeleteThanks for that App info. I had two mapping Apps for Japan, but they are not very good. Pocket Earth looks much better, so I have download it with maps for the next section of travel. Thanks again.
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