Cirque du Soleil – Corteo!

In 1996, I came to Europe to do some work experience in corporate studio photography. I was working with a guy named, Jay Myrdal who had a lot of big clients (Boeing, Rolls Royce, Honda, all sorts) doing large format 8” x 10” creative advertising photography. It was quite the experience, I learned a lot, but I also had a lot of free time in London that winter.

One of the things that I did was go to the Royal Albert Hall to see Allegria with BluddyMary – it was the first Cirque du Soleil show that I ever went to and I fell madly in love with the format. The acrobatics and gymnastics, the athleticism combined with the artistry, whimsical and accomplished music and fabulously creative sets, make up and costumes. Loved it.

I swear I took a very similar picture with an Allegria truck parked outside this building 30 years ago! 🙂

Ever since, whenever we are travelling, I usually check to see if there are any of their travelling shows on – either static theatre shows or travelling under the Big Top in towns we are visiting. This is how I have come to see Amaluna in New York, Kurios in Vancouver, Varekai in Beaumont Texas, La Nouba in Orlando, Totem in Sydney, and a bunch of shows in Las Vegas. So, coming to London for a few weeks, I thought I’d have a look and see if anything was on – and yes, we were in luck! Cortéo is showing at the Royal Albert Hall! Kinda cool – back to where my love affair with the Cirque all started.

So Stephola and I had been plotting to do this before the cruise to New Zealand (a trip which is suspiciously missing from here because my site has been busted and I haven’t been able to write…hopefully I will get around to fixing some backlog if it doesn’t get forgotten entirely). We paid £120 each for what I would call rather pricey but very average seats. We had a decent view, but we were up in the Rausing Circle, which is the second very back row of the highest gallery in the Royal Albert Hall… oddly enough, only about two rows back from where I remember seeing it last time! 🙂 I didn’t mind though, I am just glad to be able to go and see the Cirque, and I was happy Stephola was keen to check it out too.

Visiting the Royal Albert Hall is in itself a bit of a treat if you are not used to seeing all sorts of shows here. The building is beautiful, and lovingly preserved. The hallways, staircases and bars are just lovely.

Cortéo literally means ‘cortège’ in Italian, and the story is based around a clown named Mauro who is reflecting back on his life and circus achievements and friends from his deathbed. I know, sounds a little dark, but it works. The production moves from one energetic and creative vignette to another tied together by Mauro’s bed moving in from scene to scene. It was excellent.

There were two little people in the cast, one of whom was suspended by these enormous balloons, and floated out over the crowd. It was delightful and the engagement with the audience was really effective.

As per usual with a Cirque production, the clowns were sophisticated and hilarious – they were speaking a LOT more than you usually see in a Cirque show, and in multiple languages… you could make out a smattering of French and Italian and quite a lot of English. They were really good and always make for a lovely interlude between acts or provide an excellent distraction while other cast members are setting up for the next performance.

The ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall: it has these amazing mushroom in it, which apparently improve the acoustics. I know nothing about sound engineering, but I know they look very funky when all lit up!

Another fabulous act were the gymnasts on the giant bars – there was 8 or maybe 10 strong guys all swinging on these bars at the same time; all in perfect synchronicity with complex choreography, flipping between bars and across each other. I wonder how many times they have smooshed into another gymnast during practice!

The absolute highlight were the aerialist pair that started on blue ribbons – they were spectacular! Oh my god, just so athletic, yet graceful and artistic. I didn’t take any photos of their act as they were just enthralling and I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

All up 10 out of 10 – would go again!

Edit: So… I’m still in the UK, and exactly 9 days after seeing this, I got an email from the Cirque saying that Cortéo is coming to Australia later this year! 😀 I have a feeling I will be going again, now!

Help… I’m stuck in Transit Hell.

Jesus titty fucking Christ I have just had the worst transit since the Allah-Awful 40hour plus nightmare transit that was getting back from Islamabad to Brisbane in 2007…!

I woke up, it was a lovely morning, I had slept well, the sun was shining and it was looking like a good day.  I was looking forward to my flights, and hopefully a comfortable and minimum fuss transit day.  I left home at a reasonable at 0800 on Friday morning to leave via the Brisbane International Terminal.  I realised the last few international flights I have taken have all gone out via Sydney, so it’s been a while since I checked in at BNE Intl.  When I got to the Qantas counters, I saw all the usual premium check-in counters were gone.  No premium check-in line, no ‘Platinum people go here’… just a Business and StatusWhores line that lead directly to a bank of SELF CHECK IN MACHINES! The horror!

What (and I cannot stress this enough), the actual fuck is going on here?  I am flying for the first time with the P1 fanciness under my belt and I’m expecting a friendly crew member welcoming me and doing all the things while checking on my upgrade requests.  Instead there was about 8 machines, six people standing around and two confused looking staff dealing with some guys checking in a bunch of oversized ski equipment bags.   I could see no option but to use the self check-in machine, so I did.  It printed me a bag tag and some boarding passes, which I then had to put on my luggage myself (I hate those fucking stupid sticker things; if I don’t get them on crooked, I invariably end up with an annoying paper cut), and no bright orange Priority Luggage tag on it, which was sad-making all of itself.  We then had to take them over to self-drop bag check-in off area, where predictably, the luggage drop scanner couldn’t read my bag tag.  I stood there stupidly for about five minutes trying to flag down one of the three staff who walked past me all saying, ‘Just a moment, I’ll be right with you.’  

Eventually, someone came to see why the machine wasn’t working, and said ‘Oh it hasn’t read your boarding passes…’ but it had.  Fucking twice – it was only working now because I had been jostling the suitcase around trying to get the scanner to see it while waiting from someone to come sort it.

I go downstairs to get ready to go through security and through border control, only to realise that my lack of greeting also meant I didn’t have a security express pass.  I’ve marched up to the express pass lane anyway – because that’s where we go, and the staff member there stopped me and asked me for my pass… I said, probably somewhat curtly, that there is no staff up there anymore and no one gave me one.  I showed her my boarding pass and she sent me straight through – I gotta wonder why they are asking for them, if Qantas has stopped issuing them.  I go down the queue and the express lane got funnelled into a special assistance queue full of non-frequent travellers who had wheelchair and crutches, and a woman with an arsenal of liquids holding up the queue.  So standing around way longer than necessary.  My mood was now thoroughly nonplussed and heading to annoyed. 

I get to the Business Lounge and was finally greeted by a lovely lady named Maria, she was the first interaction I had with any airline staff.  She had the misfortune to ask how my morning was going.  I responded by asking her what was going on at the check-in counters… and her “Oh, I know! Everyone is appalled.”, reaction told me everything I needed to know.  Too much cost cutting, and new staff dealing with the new check-in counters.  I said, ‘We fly a lot, we fly Qantas for a predictable experience, but this has been absolute rubbish. What’s the point in having airline status if you can’t reduce your aggravation points during checkin processes?’  Maria encouraged me to write a letter… but noticeably, she did not give me an email address to send it to. 

The Lounge was quiet-ish, but overall, I’m just not feeling the love today.  Flying is a shitty experience in general and the more you do it, the less ‘fun’ it becomes.  Ticket prices are higher than ever, Qantas has posting record quarter on quarter profits, and yet, the customer experience is declining rapidly… even for people like us at the top of their loyalty program.  So what the fuck? 

I found myself thinking about the check-in BS the whole time I was sitting there: I got no, ‘welcome’ at all, no priority luggage tag, no express security pass and WOW if this is how their highest level loyalty customers are going to get treated now, they can get fucked.  ALL the touch points imaginable and no personalised anything… so why be brand loyal if all the perks are disappearing?

We are eventually boarding and thankfully everything there at least went smoothly.  Normally I get a “Welcome back Ms Borys” when I load onto the plane, and I didn’t even get that – weird. Once we were loaded and ready to go, we had 40 mins waiting at the gate before pushing back late due to undefined ‘technical issues’.  That ol’ chestnut! Eventually we get out on the tarmac and thankfully weren’t pushed too deep into the take off pattern and were in the air about 45 mins late in total.   Unexpected bonus on the plane – it was an Airbus A330 and we had wifi that would hold as long as we were over Australia… though the boys were probably wishing I didn’t have connection as I spent the time lamenting the poor airport experience. Pic for Yale who is flying cattle to Las Vegas next week!

Just after we got past Darwin, as we were heading out over the sea, an announcement came over the PA asking if there were any medical professionals on the flight.  Oh dear lord, I’ve been here before and last time it resulted in being rerouted to Bahrain and a 19 hour delay in getting where we were going.

Thankfully whatever doctors came and assessed the situation must have decided it was safe to continue our flight, but advised the Captain to get there as quickly as possible.  Pilot put the hammer down and we had a very bumpy flight and we arrived in Singapore a full hour and an bit early after leaving nearly an hour late. 

Predisposed to being critical – I had a very ordinary meal on the way here. The dessert choices always suck, so it’s cheese or cheese.

We disembarked in Singapore, and I had a slow walk through the terminal.  I know Changi is supposed to be the best airport in the world, but if you can’t get enthused for high end shopping, and don’t feel like exploring a humid butterfly garden or something, what’s the point?  
Sorry Mr K, no Tumi surprises for you this trip.

I pretty much ended up heading to the Qantas First Class Lounge to find somewhere comfortable to settle in for what was now going to be a 6 hour layover thanks to the early arrival.  The lounge was PACKED. There were loads of people in there on Fiji Air boarding passes and Cathay and lord knows what.  This place needs to be twice this size given that there are so many affiliates using the facility. 

The lounge was also a bit weird… there were staff members wandering around offering people drinks and menus, but for some reason when found a comfy spot, and settled in, I waited about 10 mins and no one had come to offer me a drink – could have been resting bitch face by this point, but I gave up waiting for a server and went and helped myself to a fridge.  Thankfully, there are also nice clean and well appointed showers so at least we can freshen up and feel more human before hitting the connections.

Wasn’t there long before being told that QF1 from SYD was going to be delayed.  Oh joy!  It was about 1800 local when I was told this, and it was due at 2150, but expected now at 2250.  Our originally scheduled departure was supposed to be 2305, so that was never going to happen and we were bound to be a solid 60-90 mins late.  I was correct and they told us we would be leaving around 0030. 

Edit:  
I don’t know wtf is going in with this flight. 
Original ETD: 2305 and arriving 0615. 
First delayed to ETD:  0030 arriving 0740. 
Now it’s saying ETD of 0100 arriving 0640…? 
How does that work?

We all dutifully left the lounge and went down to the gate for 0000 as told for a 0030 departure, only to be told we had another 30 min delay due to that famous scapegoat, ‘technical issues’ once more. None of us embarked until around 0110-ish.  No greetings and things on boarding – I know they must be a little harried, but I’ve been on way delayed flights before and the staff are usually so friendly.  Things were looking good and then nope!  Apparently we had an ‘engineering issue’ this time so that delayed us another 30mins.  Our 2305 flight was eventually pushing back at 0140, only now we had lost all places in the runway queue so we took the scenic route out to a different runway where we waited another waited another 20 mins for clearance.  

After about 35 mins of that wait, we had the Captain coming on apologetically explaining that we had lost radio comms, and had to go back to the gate to fix it.   He sounded as exasperated as I felt. At this point it is now 0225 and I’m 1hr 15mins into a cheerful WWII movie, and I am utterly exhausted.  Been awake forever. We take the scenic route back to the gate… taxing back and forth around Changi wasn’t how I was hoping to spend the wee hours of this morning at all!   I was just sitting there with fingers crossed hoping we weren’t all deplaned and sent to a hotel to wait for new aircraft!  Half of the business cabin has their jammies on and are into our second or third glass of champagne. The crew are going to run out of nuts at this rate! Not even the view of the Scoot Pokemon planes are not making this incessant waiting more fun.

We get back to the gat at 0235 – and ‘lo and behold, there is no one there to operate the aerobridge to let the comms engineers on. FFS… my <6 hour layover is now pushing well into a 9 hours layover due to arriving early and now leaving with all these delays.  It currently 0445 Saturday AM Brisbane, a full 24 hours since I last slept.

The fun it never ends… This is the plane that won’t take off!  
0330 update – comms engineers have fixed the radios and it will be 15 mins until we can try to leave again. Wonder how long we will wait on the tarmac for a place in the runway queues this time. So much for a 2305 departure, huh? 

Pushback take two finally occurred around 0340, and after another shorter wait (thank fuck!) on the tarmac, our flight just left after 0410.  Now all we want is to go to sleep, but of course the crew have all only been awake for a couple of hours, and they’re about to run their food service because that is what they do – regardless of schedule.  A late ‘dinner’ that would have been served at midnight is now being offered at fucking 5am.  I wasn’t hungry at all, but thought I’d have the mid-flight sandwich to tide me over as dinner was 8 hours ago, and breakfast was definitely 13 to 14 hours away.  

Big mistake, I should have skipped it and kept everyone away from me.  0455 – I’ve been awake for over 24 hours now and a FA smashes a glass on top on the side table. Tiny shards of glass go everywhere; all over me, my electronics, the little blanket, my seat and the floor.  She doesn’t apologise or say anything and goes away.  I start collecting the larger pieces of glass before trying to find all the little splinters (some of which I found with my fingers) and she eventually comes back with a dustpan and brush to sweep up the mess.

I’m so done with this fucking transit… I ate half my sandwich (which turned out to be served on such stodgy, two-inch thick focaccia that I couldn’t even get my mouth around it), popped a Valium and tried to go to sleep and forget the whole fucking mess.  After I woke up some four hours later, the Cabin Manager came over and introduced herself and thanked me for being a loyal customer – all very business as usual until my dead pan face and monosyllabic responses seemed to prompt a, ‘We are so sorry for all the delays.’  

At some point people start opening the windows, it looks lovely out there – I’m sure it won’t stay that way seeing we are heading to London. In February.

I didn’t know what to say other than most of my long haul flights last year were with Emirates or Cathay and I’m kinda wishing I was on an Emirates flight right now.  She apologised again and left me alone for the rest of the flight. 

We somehow magically touched down in London at 0920 – not too bad all things considered, only three hours late. Thank fuck it was a Saturday and I wasn’t working today!  I picked a splinter of glass out of my hand as we taxied to the air bridge and I deplaned with that delightful feeling of mal d’ebarquement, coupled with a sleep deprived sensation that people around me were talking underwater.  

I walked away from the whole nightmare as fast as my overtired little body would carry me.  FARK!

Further edit: Oh Qaint-arse… are you guys gonna regret sending me this!

Hatsune Miku

For a few years now, there’s been two things I wanted to experience in Japan… 1) go to a sumo wrestling event and 2) go see a Hatsune Miku concert and find out how that works and what the big deal is. So when we were making plans for this trip and found out that Hatsune Miku was going to be ‘playing’ in Brisbane literally the day we get home from Japan, it kinda felt like we had to go.

For anyone who happens to stumble accidentally over my dribble driven blog, and is unfamiliar with Hatsune Miku, the whole thing is totally weird, and also very typically Japanese. Hatsune Miku is a Vocaloid (a vocaloid is a like a digital software voicebank, in this case one that was developed by a company called Crypton Future, which is capable of talking and singing entirely with a large pre-reordered database of vocal data). Hatsune Miku is officially known as CV01, and is a likeness of a 16 year old Japanese girl with extremely long turquoise hair that she wears in huge long pigtails. The personification of Hatsune Miku has been very cleverly marketed and branded and is effectively a virtual rockstar or teen idol? The representation of Hatsune Miku perform at “live virtual concerts” (oxymoronic much?) on a stage as a high tech animated holographic projection. The image is rear projected on a special glass screen… so we are effectively all here to watch a big TV screen with a pretend pop star playing a pre-recorded show that is synced to live music; cos yes, there’s a back up band!

Yale and I had really good seats actually, we were in the stalls, probably about 25 rows deep. We got a great view of the hologram, and it afforded us an opportunity to really observe the crowd – which I found quite twice as fascinating as the show. I did feel like I was Jane Goodall amongst her subjects though, just completely fascinated by how enthralled and engaged the audience was with this ‘artist’.

Cos Hatsune Miku is computer generated, I got AI to create me a selfie of me as Jane Goodall observing the concert… stupid AI wouldn’t make me into an age appropriate Jane Goodall though, would it?! But other than the grey hair and the obvious wrinkles, yeah not a bad representation. 😁

The music was largely unfamiliar to me, if you want to see Hatsune Miku videos, there’s heaps of them on YouTube, and it’s all super poppy, with high pitched young squeaky voices… not my thing at all – which is probably evident when you consider the only other concerts I’ve been to this year are Rammstein and the Hu..!

She (I don’t know?! Can you misgender a holographic vocaloid?) also had a bunch of holographic vocaloid friends that were part of the show too (I’m reluctant to say they ‘performed’, for obvious reasons!). So I spent the show watching the quality of the display, but also watching the crowd, and they were soooo into this!

My iPhone coped really well with the lighting conditions, the projection and the 30m or so to the state to get some great renderings of the rendering!

Hatsune Miku is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, I would have loved to be able to go to one of these shows in Japan to see how over the top the crowd was, but I imagine, in order to be right up in the middle of it, I would have totally bawked at the cost of tickets. As it is, we were surrounded by fans who had the offical Hatsune Miku Glowsticks that look like this:

They sell for AUD$60 each and were sold out FIVE HOURS before the concert started! They’re literally a strange little torch with LED light/s that have a colour changing function. And (this was the weird bit to me), every single one of the fans who had these Glowsticks knew exactly what colour to change their Glowsticks to for each song *and* they all knew a routine of movements for waving their Glowsticks that went with each different song! 😮

There were some who didn’t have Glowsticks that literally filmed the entire show from beginning to end, and I don’t think looked up at the stage directly hardly at all…

And there was this lovely lady right beside me who didn’t smile once during the concert, but appeared to be in an almost trance-like state of concentration waving her stick. She was in the zone!

This couple in front of us had bought the VIP Premium ticket that came with a Hatsune Miku souvenir pack containing a Glowstick and a short, lightweight Miku kimono. There was one guy a couple of rows in front of us and a bit to the right, who was wearing a full length Hatsune Miku kimono that obviously was something he owned from a previous event or shopping expedition, who had SIX of the Glowsticks and was holding three in each hand and was almost conducting the audience behind him in keeping everyone’s the actions in synch! It was fascinating to watch how excited these kids were; I’d like to say it was a diverse crowd, but it really wasn’t… it was super saturated with cosplayers and gamer types (and some of their parents playing chaperone!).

There was even some duet acts… I have no idea how they kept the holographic display in synch with the live music, but it all went without a hitch and the holograms looked like they were singing without any lag or hiccoughs.

One thing that was very different from a traditional concert was the speed with which Hatsune Miku and friends could do a costume change! Holey moley there was some quick changes going on! Complete with huge change in hairstyles. 😆

At the end of the show, and two encore songs, there was a huge explosion of streamers from the roof which spooled out like a massive bukkake of white from the ceiling, and had the kids scrambling to try and collect some up to take home!

All up, it was fascinating to attend. There was probably less than 3000 people here, I can’t imagine what seeing this would be like in Japan or Korea with a crowd of tens of thousand. Amazing! Quite the unique cultural experience, and rounding out the end of our trip to Japan really … weirdly, I guess. 😛

So, now I guess I have to try harder to get to some sumo wrestling next time we are in Japan!

J5 Transit back home

Time to say farewell to our gorgeous onsen suite and start the trek home. Japan is only a 9 hour flight so it doesn’t feel as never ending as a Europe or US transit, thank fuck! The end of a trip is always kinda sad, but I’m always so grateful to have been able to come and see these gorgeous towns and the beautiful scenery and enjoy the lovely food and the break from the usual routine.

As we are packing, Mr K says to me: ‘You could stay a little longer if you want to…’ Fuck! Now he tells me! Maybe next time I totally should, I could see myself tootling around another couple of ryokans or tootling about with the Messrs Stokes who are in Kyoto. Oh well, too late to change plans now.

We had a few errands lined up to deal with on the way from Hakone to Haneda, but it should be a pretty chill day hopefully – only about a 90 min drive and one we’ve done before. So fingers crossed everything goes smoothly. First to Odawara to the nearest Donki to try and find some weirdnesses to add to this year’s Christmas gifting. 🙂

Sorry, SirLee – I don’t have you in the Christmas draw this year or I would have bought a couple of bottles of ridiculously cheap whiskey. I do have one of my nieces though…. 😀 Vanilla caramel spermatozoons! What’s not to love? They even promise to make you look great on social media! 🙂

I just… what? I’ve forgotten what shopping in Japan is like.

Total retail regret: should have bought this strange strawberry heart shaped pillow home with me; even though it would have been a struggle to fit it in the luggage somewhere. 😉 It was super cute and very Japan.

I’ve been out of the cities for too long… everything feels like an assault on the senses. From the traffic lights talking to me, to the escalators and their musical singing/warnings, to just walking past some random Hello Kitty machine that is nattering in an overly kawaii voice trying to get us to buy popcorn! Argh! Take me back to the peace and quiet of the onsen towns.

Our drive to Haneda Gardens was marked by one traffic jam after another. Like seriously, our 90 min drive turned into more like 3 hours plus, in total. Once we got onto the interchanges is when the fun started… the fuel light came on in the car, and both of us really needing a Happy Room! With 27kms to drive, and the car saying we had about 36kms worth of fuel, we were desperately looking for a petrol station. Lord knows the Happy Room was likely going to be out of the question, we had passed numerous konbini before we hit the interchanges but then there was nothing but noise barriers fencing us in. If we left the highway, we could have been driving around for ages looking for fuel, and this close to the city, konbinis with car parks gets to be few and far between.

We managed to limp all the way to Haneda and turn off where we needed to on the sniff of an oily rag… range anxiety was relieved when we found a fuel station (fortuitously the one closest to our car hire return place later!), and very unexpectedly – they had a Happy Room for customers (most petrol stations here do not). Feeling much happier in spite of our 90min turned 180min drive, we made our way to Haneda Gardens to meet Yale for some late lunch before we could return the car and go check in.

When we got there – we were surprised by a show of super cars in the car park! Wow! There’s some serious money here!

Inside was an even more choice selection of fancy cars inside.

But no time to dilly dally, it’s now 3pm and sushi lunch was waiting. Favourite Haneda Gardens sushi restaurant inserted here so I can find it for next time we are in need of a sushi fix before heading to the airport!. Tsukiji Sushiko Takumi… I won’t ever remember that!

Yale chose the Uber plate of all the things.

I tried the All Tuna All the Ways nigiri platter…

Mr K had his favourite tempura donburi, and a savoury steam custard with roe and smelt and all good things.

Several beers and a good catch up later and we were soon ready to repack some final things and make our way to the airport for the overnight flight home. Mr K dropped us to the airport and then took the car back, and met us back on the concourse.

We front up to the Business check in, and I ask the lady if Yale’s business upgrade request had been successful – and sadly it had not been. So we checked our bags (three of them: 2 x 25kgs and 1 x 10kg bag), in what must be our lightest ever return from Japan. Mr K then asked the lovely staff member if he could take home a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne that we never got around to drinking because there is so much affordable quality saké everywhere… unsurprising that! Sadly, and very predictably, she said it would be taken off us at security, so he handed it to her with a flourish and said, “Happy Birthday, we hope you enjoy this!” And off we went towards security and the JAL lounges.

Security turned into a trial… I’m rolling my eyes here, but here is a actual copy of a text I sent to a friend while waiting for the guys to sort their shit:

Oh my god… I can’t transit with these two ADHD squirrel-brained fuckers at the same time! 😵
One had a 500ml can of 196 in his carry-on so they pulled him out of the line… while he simultaneously misplaced his smart watch and had to hunt through hand luggage that looked like it was packed by a bipolar raccoon to find where he’d stashed the damned thing barely two minutes earlier! The other had six very teeny (but very stabby!) steel souvenir forks in his backpack 🙄 and we had to wait another five minutes while he rifled though that backpack which also looked like it was packed by some sort of escaped rabid lab monkey! And I’m sitting there thinking, “Seriously MFers?!” 😐 I’m the one with the titanium knee and the only one not causing dramas at security!”

Preserved for posterity!

The JAL First Class Lounge was busy, and not as calm or as nice as the one at Narita… but we no complain: saké on tap and sushi delivered to your table (though I was no longer hungry after the tuna on tuna platter earlier. It had been an unexpectedly warm day, so showers and cool drinks were much appreciated no matter what. The lounge is very stylish in a Japan meets Scandinavian minimalism kinda way.

I loved this wall near the shower corridors… it’s covered in nails and each nail has a round token hanging from it creating a design that is obviously Fuji in JAL colours.

Damn, forgot to photograph the hair dryer. 😉

Yale managed to try most of the menu… I was just keen to rehydrate and get ready to take some drugs and hopefully sleep the night away.

So, being in the lounge getting ready to fly home, of course my mind was wandering to the next trip… and I don’t mean the cruise to NZ in January (or the weekend popover to Auckland next weekend), I mean, we are back in Japan next May for the Transport and Mobility expo at Osaka 2025. I’m hoping to tack on a few days in Hokkaido, as Mr K is keen to sus out the integrated transport options for the Shinkansen between Hakodate and Aomori. Anyway… got me wondering what the mascot for Hokkaido was… and it’s this strange ‘round moss head dude’ who is always depicted with a huge package! Marimakkori is his name. I feel like photographing him with small children is almost as bad as getting a pic of your kid with Pedo-Bear… oh wait, who would do that? Right, we would.

Big dong Marimakkori! Then I saw this cartoon of him and was wondering… are those? No, surely not!

Thankfully the translation proved it to be not as obscene as it could have been! But, Japan – you never know what to expect. Point in case*:

* I can neither confirm nor deny whether I may or may not have been the one who set his Messenger nick to that at some point on this trip. LOL.

Before too long, it was time to board, and Mr K and I went straight in with our Group 1 boarding fanciness. Sadly, Yale was in cattle having missed out on his upgrade. I felt so bad, all 5’ nothing of me in the front, and 6’9” of him in the back… but as I was walking down the gangway, I saw he was held up. The ladies at the boarding switched out his boarding pass and he was given the very last seat in the business cabin after all! I wonder if it was that bottle of Moët & Chandon that won the day! 🙂

Yale looking very happy with his unexpected and very last minute wash!

We were offered a late supper, which given I hadn’t eaten in the lounge was welcome – though I have to say, the quality of the Qantas Japanese set meal seems to have gone down from last year. I can’t honestly say if it’s just my impression because we have been eating fabulous and delicious kaiseki meals on this trip, or whether it really has slipped a bit. I know Qantas domestic meals have definitely been a bit on the ordinary since Vanessa took over, (and as a shareholder I heartily approve of cost cutting measures, but as a consumer of the product, I’m all like: “Fuck you!”), so it’s possible that it’s not as good as I recall.

Flight was uneventful, no stinky feet, no crying children, not even any snoring businessmen!

Early storms in Sydney caused delays for our flight, but we made it back to Brisbane by about midday… and were met with gloriously blue skies and 29°C at home.

Hopefully, I’ll find time for a nap, and then Hatsune Miku tonight! 🙂

Hakone – Odakyu Hotel Hatsuhana II

Woke up early to keep our appointment in the private onsen, Kawato, that we had booked for before breakfast. It was all the way back down the slope car to the ground floor again and this time back towards the main building. I wasn’t expecting steps, but up we went.

Only to find that we were then going back down again… I have a feeling we should have been told about this. :/ My knee is pretty good but certainly it’s a little stiff in the mornings still.

We eventually found the right place – found a comfortable and well equipped change room and shower like all the other onsens.

And then stepped outside to see this! WOW!!! What a simply glorious and decadent space. I was blown away.

Surrounded by the forest, and the sounds of running water and bird song, it was just magic. I must have been standing there (nekkid!) admiring the space for about two or three minutes before I realised there were steps going down into the water and it was 1.1m deep!

This was just beautiful.. the water was soft and silky, the steam rising off the water looks inviting, the green forest beside the infinity pool was just so relaxing. I’m totally seeing how this would be just the most sublime break from the big city if you lived in Tokyo’s bright neon sing-songy streets.

I didn’t want to leave!

After our amazing onsen bath, we went back to the room for a while and cooled down before heading up to breakfast in the restaurant… another private dining room with a beautifully presented breakfast.

In the box: vegetable castealla; Boiled duck; Auricularia; Bayberry, pickles; Marinated egg with soy sauce; Hadano vegetable with home made dressing.

Breakfast sashimi is definitely something I could get used to: mackerel and Hokkaido scallops.

Dried horse mackerel.

Steamed vegetables and grated radish ponzu sauce.

Hot pot dish: Chicken ball and grilled green onions with fried tofu.

Yoghurt with fruit and agave syrup.

Breakfast everywhere we have gone has been amazing, I haven’t managed to finish a single one of them, but it’s always beautifully presented and often filling enough that we skip lunch.

Some more photos around the reception while we get ready to head to town for the day.

When we returned to the ryokan, we had been moved to a different room – the Internet in our room kept dropping out. It was attached to the back of the television and was overheating and turning itself off and back on again once it had cool… not a problem when you’re on holiday, quite a big problem when you’re on a work trip mixed with a bit of holidaying. We didn’t really want to move rooms – we were super happy with our enormous day bed and lovely balcony onsen, but they upgraded us and moved us from the first floor to the fifth floor… to an even bigger room!

Same tasteful decor.

I swear the first time we stayed in Japan we stayed in an Airbnb with four of us in a room a fraction this size… and the second time we came to Japan we stayed in an APA hotel with a double bed in it and not enough space on the floor to open a single suitcase! 🤣 Things have changed.

This room had an enormous walk in close that could be used as a dressing room, with paper screen doors that closed together for privacy.

It also had a traditional Japanese living/sleeping room with a handful of futons in the closet in here.

Talk about lux… they could have just popped to a BIC Camera and picked up a ¥7000 modem and we would have been quite happy where we were.

The staff even moved all my saké stash to the fridge in the new room too. Score!

Good to know we weren’t suffering with a ‘lesser’ hairdryer down in the other room. 🙂

Okay, then for the star of the show for this room: a fabulous outdoor lounge and a much larger onsen bath… sweet.

It was lovely… and so was the saké.

We had spent the day showing the Messrs Stokes around Hakone and they had come back to our ryokan to have dinner with us tonight. With a bit of pre-planning, the staff at Hatsuhanna were only too happy to help us have a fancy kaiseki dinner party. So we had booked a private onsen for the guys to go have a bath and relax, while Mr K and I had a soak on the deck. Then it was time to go to dinner all relaxed and chill.

We had an excellent photographer capture us a happy group pic.

It’s difficult to see in this image, but this peanut sized dish it double stacked high, and has a lid on it. The top level comes off, and gets laid across the bottom level leaving a “+” shaped dish.

Such a creative serving concept. In the centre above: Ayu sweet fish and rose with herbal medicine stew; and char-grilled Pacific saury with tomato.
Below: Pinchos sushi with Kinatarou trout, avocado, and chopped wasabi.

Sweet shrimp with maple leaf; Boiled crab and chrysanthemum daisy leaf salad; Glutinous barley tofu.

This may have been before the attempted mass monetisation of an effort to save Australia’s honey bees..? Hard to say.

Chrysanthemum soup with shrimp Shinjo (or cake), leafs and bud.

Sashimi course was awesome: tuna, yellowtail, mackerel, konjac under there and sweet boiled shrimp.

Grilled marbled rock fish with rock salt, Kabous (citrus) fruit), Japanese ginger, ginko nuts, Ginko biloba rice crackers.

Above: Japanese pickles. Eggplant pickled in sweet vinegar and watercress from Hakone, and red miso soup.

Charcoal Joshu beef loin with porcini sauce served with small turnip, King trumpet mushrooms, shimeji mushrooms, Maitake mushrooms.

Seasonal Odawara Harumi rice.

Deep-fried sesame tofu with grated names mushroom, green beans, cart shape like momiji.

If someone had told me twelve months ago, that these three people would be dining together in Japan in 2024, I would have been damn near been ready to bet our house against it… it’s so weird how things work out. We had a lovely evening, I hope it was a memorable experience for the Messrs Stokes also.

Woke up to a simply gorgeous morning! Wish it had been this clear yesterday while we were out hunting for views of the mountain… but from the warm and comfort of our large onsen bath – I won’t complain

At breakfast this morning we were lead to a dining room with a view!

Boiiled seasonal vegetables; Ganmodoki (deep-fried tofu mixed with thinly sliced vegetables); Grated yam with Yukari, Minced raw tuna; Kamaboko mad in Odawara; Pickled Japanese horseradish; Simmered prawn in seasoned broth; Boiled whitebait; Grilled spicy fish eggs; rolled tamago; Pickles; Salad made in Hadano and fruit… holy shit that is a lot.

Homemade tofu with soy and ponzu sauce. Plus there was broiled miso soup and miso-marinated black cod.

Thus endeth our stay at Hakone’s Hatsuhana. Loved every minute of it… gorgeous place, amazing staff and excellent food and accommodations. I have to say though… I kinda prefer the more traditional ryokans, this one is definitely designed to impress people who are kinda over the traditional Japanese way of doing things. We are checking out this morning and starting the transit home. Again.