Tag Archives: travel

Kamisuwa through Nagano to Toyama

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Today we needed to transit from Kamisuwa to Toyama through the Nagano countryside. It started out looking like midsummer in Kamisuwa… but was not to last. I had a feeling this gorgeous weather wasn’t going to last and it turned out I was absolutely right.

Ah, first point of business for the day was finding a Japan Post Office so Mr K could diligently march in and pay his traffic infringement from the weekend. We thought this might have been tricker than we thought – but the JPO is everywhere… only d difficulty proved not having a Japanese address! 😛 Fine paid… cheapest crazy travel story ever. Me in the car: “There’s some snow on those mountains; I bet it’s chilly up there.” #famouslastwordsWe have noticed that Sondora shows us the topographical /literal map of things and sometimes it looks like spaghetti junction, and no sooner does that happen than you get on a highway and it turns into a graphic representation of the destinations rather than a literal visual description (*think of a London Tube map compared to the A-Z).

We passed some beautiful vistas which featured steep cliffs, glacial waters and autumnal foliages. And then suddenly, it was fucking snowing! Mr K says he saw a monkey run across the road in front of us – but I think he was pulling my leg and just wanted to have one up on me. Beautiful!We noted that Sondara was showing some pretty spaghetti/worm like road maps coming up – just what you need when it is unseasonably and unexpectably snowing on what you thought might be a fairly uneventful drive. Then we came out of a tunnel and we were up in the mountains and it was a winter wonderland! OMG – so beautiful. I haven’t seen such gorgeous scenes since we did Christmas in Canada in 2017.It was just so beautiful… We stopped at a Okuhida Onsengo Kamitakara restop which had these weasels everywhere as a mascot – and we expected to find it full of weird Japanese weasel mascots and of course, fried chicken… instead we found :

An amazing display of sake from local breweries! Oh what a shame – I so totally wanted a weasel keychain, and instead walked our with four bottles of saké. Best fails ever. As quickly as we entered into the snowy altitudes we were returned to the autumnal glacial alluvial valleys again. We eventually made our way to the Dormy Inn in Toyama City – which I guess is like an American Holiday Inn or an Australian Rydges… there wasn’t much happening here by the time we arrived quite late in the day, but we did find an nice izakaya open and managed to have a nice fishy dinner. Below: miso crap, sashimi plate (salmon, snapper and yellowtail) and some sea cucumber).

If it’s not on… it’s not on.

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I ended up having a surreal conversation with my Mum today…. it was ‘the safe sex’ talk.  Only I was the one giving the advice.  I’m a bit tired and don’t think I can relate the incident with any particular accuracy so I think I’ll try and write it in the morning instead.

"It it’s not on,,, it’s not on" continued…

My Mum is going on a holiday – to be specific a seven week ocean going voyage that will take her to lots of cool places starting with "M"… Malaysia, Mauritus, Maldives, Madagascar and Mumbai as well as a whole lot of other cool places that don’t start with "M" too – like Seychelles, Thailand, South Africa and the Reunion Islands amongst others… 

Anyway I’ve been helping her get her stuff together and we’ve been out to the shops finding things she needs to take with her and we were in the pharmacy buying shampoo and I jokingly said to her ‘Have you packed some condoms?" 🙂  She looked at me in shock, gave me a resounding "No!" and a half arsed school girlish slap to the upper arm… but about six hours later she’s sewing the hem on some pants she’s just taken up and she says to me in an unsuccessful attempt at nonchalance, "Do you think I should take condoms?" and from there we ended up having The Sex Talk and in particular The Safe Sex Talk.

My Mum is a product of the 60s but she’s one of that other half of the 60s generation… the half that remembers the whole decade because they grew up sheltered and didn’t know anything about the sex and drugs and all things British.  She met my Dad when she was 16, married when she was 19 or 20 and had three kids, a house, a mortgage and a dog by the time she was 25.  She’s never been intimate with anyone but my Dad and the idea of her wanting to be with someone else wasn’t really something she seriously entertained.

She is quite an attractive and petite woman with a wonderful sense of adventure and a matching sense of humour…  and she’s about to go off on cruise holiday with a boat load of people she doesn’t know – which is the retired equivalent of backpacking and hostelling your way around Europe in your 20s.  In both of these situations it’s not exactly unheard of for people to drop their inhibitions somewhat given the "I’m never going to see you again" factor. 

So I end up having this talk with Mum where I’m basically telling her that moonlight strolls with devillishly handsome, silver haired, silver tongued gents and a canoodle on the Lido deck does not necessarily have to lead to sex.  And that I think she’s best served by at least having thought about what she might want or what she might do in that situation rather than being all at sea (pun intended) should it occur. 

Her side of the conversation waivered radically between "Oh God no! I couldn’t!!!" whereupon I replied "Forewarned is forearmed etc" to "I’m sharing my cabin with Shirely" and "What would you do?" at which point I demurred saying that my attitudes to sexual intimacy aren’t exactly conventonal and given that fact I might not be the best person to ask… ( which strangely she didn’t ask me to explain).

Finally yesterday afternoon I went to say my goodbyes and as a parting gift gave her a little six pack box of condoms (knowing full well she could NEVER bring herself to go buy some) which she immediately put into her luggage.  I gave her a big hug and sent her off with this final piece of advice

"Whatever you do… don’t fall arse over tit in love just because you find someone sexually attractive and if you are going to shag somebody and he turns out to have done half the boat…. don’t come home with an STD!"
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