Tony - Japan 2024 Planning - Take 2

[kuro68000]

13 hours ago, Kingmeow said:

I've tried mochi doughnuts in the US before as there's a high influx of Japanese folks about 30 mins away.  I am totally sure they are no where as good as the ones in Japan!

 

I think this is generally true of most food. I'm no expert but my guess is that it's the ingredients available locally. I did find one Japanese restaurant that actually tasted like Japanese food, but literally every other one I've tried, including all the chains like Yo Sushi and Wagamama are weird British versions of Japanese dishes.

 

Drinks too. Tea tastes different, Japanese water seems to be different somehow. Probably cleaner than what is available here, and with different minerals. But even canned stuff like Pocari Sweat seems different.

[kuro68000]

58 minutes ago, chadbag said:

 

Mister Donut was started in the Boston area by the BIL of the Dunkin Donuts founder (or something like that).  The story is interesting:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Donut

 

Besides Japan and went to one in Taiwan.  Always worth it.

 

 

From that link:

 

"Keiji Chiba, who was Duskin Company's general manager and director of food industries, adjusted the recipes and gave a higher class image so the company would be successful in the Japanese market. Prior to the introduction of Mister Donut, Japanese perceived doughnuts as being snacks for children."

 

You really can't get them outside of Japan!

[chadbag]

49 minutes ago, mojo said:

 

From that link:

 

"Keiji Chiba, who was Duskin Company's general manager and director of food industries, adjusted the recipes and gave a higher class image so the company would be successful in the Japanese market. Prior to the introduction of Mister Donut, Japanese perceived doughnuts as being snacks for children."

 

You really can't get them outside of Japan!

 

Well the one in Taiwan was Japanese quality and recipes and was the same.  The Mister Donut we love today is a Japanese company, even though its roots are in Boston with the BIL of the Dunkin Donuts founder.

 

One of these days I'll try the mochi donuts at the local place nearby.

 

We also have a Beard Papa in the SLC area.

[Tony Galiani]

Arrived in Germany (after a trip featuring some First World Problems) - no donuts yet but I have sampled the Himbeer Kuchen.  As my wife and I worked traveled out of the US and to her aunt's hotel in northern Germany, we commiserated on how much traveling to Japan has spoiled us.  At one point - between various travel challenges and all the bad news stories - she tells me that on one of our trips to Japan, she thinks she might forget to go home.

 

Fortunately I do not suffer too much from jet lag so my plan on this trip is to start sorting out where to go when we get to Japan.  We will do some site seeing but most of our trip will be spent hanging out with her family.  Since my German is most limited to food or train related items, I can safely busy my self on my iPad to do travel research while she chats with family.

 

Tschuess,

Tony

 

Oops - forgot something - we stopped to get one of those parking clocks one uses for parking in Germany and the shop had some Lego sets - including a Bonsai tree and Himeji castle.  For a brief second I was tempted to get the castle set but didn't.  Looked like it would be fun to build though.

Edited August 6 by Tony Galiani

[cteno4]

Perhaps you will find one of her relatives with a similar taste for donuts and they will take you on a Homer’s odyssey of donuts and you may come home with a third category of German words under your belt (I put donuts in their own category above food).

 

Enjoy Deutschland!

 

jeff

[Kingmeow]

14 hours ago, Tony Galiani said:

...we commiserated on how much traveling to Japan has spoiled us.  At one point - between various travel challenges and all the bad news stories - she tells me that on one of our trips to Japan, she thinks she might forget to go home.

 

It only took me ONE trip, in September, to have that effect on me.  😎  This second trip in October will be a doozy in that I will really not want to leave!  So what things can one do where Japan Passport Control won't let you leave the country???  🤣🤣🤣

[cteno4]

I have to agree I’ve found Japan trips to be the easiest and probably the most comfortable (and I usually did not travel high end only middle to lower end) I’ve had all over the world over many decades.

 

jeff

[chadbag]

I've not been to Europe since 2016 when we flew to Sweden, and before that 2000 when we flew to Germany.  (In the 90s I went many times).  I've been to Japan about a dozen times since the turn of the century.

 

However, I've not had issues traveling to Europe.  Passport control was always easy and getting around not a problem.  

 

The rail system in Sweden is not as advanced as Japan (we took a train from Stockholm to Göteborg [Gothenburg] and again from Göteborg to Copenhagen and neither was as nice as a good Japan rail trip.  In fact the Göteborg to Copenhagen one was laughable.  The train stopped due to snow and we got herded onto busses -- no thought about trying to help poor foreigners understand what was going on -- and bussed about 40km to a station on the other side of the blockage where we got back on a new train -- seat reservations be damned -- and finally made it to Copenhagen many hours late.  It was only November and this is Sweden -- you'd think they'd heard of snow before...  Never had much of an issue in Germany on the trains and I've also extensively driven there without issue on visits.  (When I lived there it was a different matter being in the middle of a 64 car pileup on the Autobahn in the fog -- not my fault).

 

Again I've not been since 2016 so things may have gotten worse in the meantime.  I find both of them easier to what I imagine a non US resident has to endure when they get to the US.  Being a US citizen and resident, it's not that bad but when I see it from the perspective of someone from outside the culture I cringe inside.  (Think the rude TSA or whatever people herding you into lines to go through the customs or whatever, usually not very polite in telling you where to stand, etc.  My kids and I discussed this one time when we arrived back from Japan and the difference in experience and how that must come across to non US citizens who "grow up in the culture" [even if we don't agree with some of it]).

 

[Tony Galiani]

I am sitting in the breakfast room in our hotel in Germany and am embracing the thread drift!  I do have some questions about my upcoming trip to Japan but thought a mini-trip report on our current visit to Germany might be fun.  Each trip seems to have a different experience - some are just great, such as our recent trip to Japan this past February - and some have varied levels of difficulty or challenges.  The theme for this trip seems to be weirdness.  We have been traveling for quite a while now and have experienced a lot:  missed landings, aborted take-offs, broken limbs, umleitungs (detours) taking us in circles and so on - but these past two days have brought us to a new level of experience.

 

But first - for @cteno4 - after checking with MIra's aunt I can let you know that donuts in Germany are called Berliners.  That's what the German baker in Fredericton calls them and Chiara and Klaus confirmed that is what they are called here.  Though I find it hard to imagine they are called that in Berlin - need more research.

 

Anyway, after making it to the Harz on Monday with, I think, only one speeding ticket - I am pretty sure I got flashed on one of the secondary roads but won't know for sure for the few months it takes the ticket to show up in the US - we decided to go to Magdeburg as Mira wanted to see the ship bridge on the canal over the Elbe.  Some of you may be aware of my mixed feelings about tech and this trip was going to find me even more irritated with it.

 

We generally know our way around the Harz but used the car's navigation to make it a bit easier.  We head out and we are not too far along when we reach the dam bridge which is closed.  Okay, no problem, we will take one of the minor roads as a detour though the cars nav system keeps indicating it is recalculating and can never find a route, Google maps shows the roads.  Of course, the first road is paved, the second road is gravel and we find ourselves on one of the logging roads with no room to pass should some one come along from the other direction.  But after 15 minutes or so of snaking along narrow twisty gravel roads we emerge back on the main road and are back on track.

 

After an hour or so we are approaching Magdeburg on the Autobahn at a nice 140/150 kph (85/90 mph) when a car in front of us kicks up a stone which hits our windshield with a surprisingly loud noise and it gets a nice chip and cracks - fortunately on my side of the car.  Nothing we can do so we head on and get to the ship canal to see one cruise boat being lowered and then to go and see the actual canal bridge over the Elbe.  By this time the crack has grown and is now more than 30cm (12 inches) across and we are worrying if it is going to get worse.  Oh well - feed a cold, feed a fever, feed a crisis so into the inner town to get some Cafe and Kuchen.  Turns out that parking is somewhat challenging but we find end up on level -3 in a garage in a shopping center that was so convoluted that we twice had to ask directions to get out to the street.

 

We wander around for a while and find a cafe and I decide to see if the car rental agency has a location in the city as we need to report this.  Turns out there is a location only a short walk away.  We go over there and discover that is it across the street from the exit ramp to where we parked our car!  In we go - thankfully, and what I usually do when traveling overseas - I had purchased the full monty on the car insurance and they determine we cannot drive the car any more and swap us out for another one - though with a different tech set up.  We head back to "home" and again, while I know the route, we wanted to use the nav system to help with speed and traffic info.  Of course, this car's tech is so different that we cannot get it to do what we want though we were able to at least get it switched to English.  Actually, British English but fortunately I can translate that into American English.

 

However, Google Maps on my wife's phone - which had provided speed information on the out - decided it would not work anymore and the car's nav was not helpful.  My wife is getting more and more annoyed and she does not understand the words "suffer in silence".  But we continue on our way and about a half hour from the hotel, the nav system decides to start showing speed info - which is of course different from the speed info that my wife is seeing on Google as she managed to get it to work.  Apparently, yelling at a phone can get the tech to work ....

 

Well, we finally make it back  - but wait - there's more!

 

Playing with her phone, Mira gets a German news report - a World War II bomb has been discovered in the inner city of Magdeburg and 15,000 people have to be evacuated out of the possible blast zone until it can be defused and removed.  Looking at the map, we were sitting in the cafe at the edge of the possible blast zone!  I could only imagine my call to the travel insurance company, something like:  "We need to be evacuated because we were injured in a WW2 bomb blast.  Yes, I know that was 80 years ago but the bomb was found today .... ".  And then going to the car rental company and handing them the keys:  "We are returning the car keys.  The car is under that pile of rubble over there ..."

 

Today, we a planning a low key quiet day to a nearby town.  Hope, hope, hope it not exciting!

 

Tschuess,

Tony

[cteno4]

No booms please!

 

jeff

[Tony Galiani]

Quick update in case anyone is interested.  The bomb in Magdeburg was successfully defused at 4:00 AM this morning and it turned out that only 3,000 people had to be evacuated.

Tony

[Junech]

It's good to hear that it was successfully defused. We get that here occasionally and with an estimate from 2022 between 100,000 and 300,000 bombs are still undiscovered. Around 5,000 of them get defused yearly. So we have a long way to go.

 

For the nicer food names topic:
Food can have names changed just between towns so you should consider the names you were given to work in your closer area. For my coastal area we got the following (Links lead to Wikipedia article) a donut is simply a Donut and a Berliner is a special form of it (Link). For the Berliner there is actually a map of how it is called around Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. You can find it here. The site has maps for many other regional differences as well.

[chadbag]

9 hours ago, Junech said:

It's good to hear that it was successfully defused. We get that here occasionally and with an estimate from 2022 between 100,000 and 300,000 bombs are still undiscovered. Around 5,000 of them get defused yearly. So we have a long way to go.

 

For the nicer food names topic:
Food can have names changed just between towns so you should consider the names you were given to work in your closer area. For my coastal area we got the following (Links lead to Wikipedia article) a donut is simply a Donut and a Berliner is a special form of it (Link). For the Berliner there is actually a map of how it is called around Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. You can find it here. The site has maps for many other regional differences as well.

 

Yes a Berliner is similar to a "Jelly Donut".  Not a generic name for donut.    This is why JFK got "in trouble" too when he was in Berlin and gave a famous speech.

 

He said "Ich bin ein Berliner", wanting to say "I'm a Berliner".  However, in German that is said "Ich bin Berliner" (when you state a nationality or regional affiliation you leave off the indefinite article).  So technically, he said "I am a jelly donut", though everyone knew what he said and didn't care about the slight language faux pas.

 

I've heard the Berliner and the Krapfen (from the link above).  And variations on Krapfen (like Kräpfel or similar diminutives).

 

ETA: some people think the JFK thing is an urban legend.  No, it is factually true.  He did say it, and some people caught the language faux pas.  But no one really thought he as saying "I'm a jelly donut".  Thats the urban legend -- that people seriously thought that.  People who heard it knew what he meant but some realized the humor in it.  That's all.

Edited August 7 by chadbag

[cteno4]

4 hours ago, chadbag said:

"I'm a jelly donut"

May be true for a few of us…

 

jeff

[chadbag]

23 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

May be true for a few of us…

 

jeff

 

I resemble that remark

 

[MeTheSwede]

20 hours ago, chadbag said:

It was only November and this is Sweden -- you'd think they'd heard of snow before...  

 

Actually we've heard of snow in Sweden, but have decided it's someone else's problem.

 

In the 90:ies the state railway monopoly was broken up into a public aurthority owning the track and multiple different companies for owning buildings and depots, doing track maintenance, and owning and running trains. All operating with the goal of maximising profits for share holders. An analysis of the snow problem I read can roughly be summarised as follows:

 

Snow falls on a piece of track on which multiple companies operate trains. Removing the snow is someone elses problem.

Snow and ice builds up on the underside of trains. This will become someone elses problem.

Ice build-up ought to be removed at depo facilities, but ensuring that there's enough ice removal capacity in the right place and that it's being used often enough, is someone elses problem.

When a train enters a point, due to the shaking of the train, ice falls off onto the point. Then the ice becomes someone else's problem.

When The Swedish Transport Authority doesn't clear points of ice fast enough and points jam, many trains get delayed. However that's someone else's problem.

 

 

Maybe the ice problem has improved somewhat in recent years, I don't know. But the overall situation causing a chronic shortage of planning, maintenance and investment in the rail system long term remains despite lots of efforts to resolve it by rewriting rules and regulations.

 

Systemic problems have also evolved in several other sectors that where opened to private cooperations in the 90:ies, where goals in organisations shifted from providing a public service to diverting as much tax money as possible to share holders, maybe most notably in education and healthcare.

 

 

[Tony Galiani]

A photo for @cteno4 and @chadbag from the nearby bakerei in Kunzelsau.  I have shown amazing restraint but one of these is waiting for me at our afternoon coffee in my wife's cousin's place.

Tschuess,

Tony

[cteno4]

Temptation, it’s makin ya wait! What ad was that from? Looks like a nice taste bud experience coming up! Report at 11.

 

jeff

[Tony Galiani]

I took that picture this morning when we all met at the bakerei in Kunzelsau for a family breakfast.  We were over there to join Sigrid for her 80th birthday party.  Plenty of cake and other goodies yesterday then breakfast this AM.  I had a light breakfast and really couldn't manage donuts as well so Sigrid said she would get something for afternoon coffee before we headed to Frankfurt for our flight Monday morning.  The picture below shows what I found at my table place when we arrived for our afternoon snack.

DISCLAIMER - I did not eat all of these!

I just had one and have some in my bag to sustain me for my flight back to the USA.

Tschuess,

Tony

[cteno4]

That will get you across the pond!

 

jeff

[Tony Galiani]

Back in the USA.  Currently at O'Hare awaiting our connecting flight home.  Still two donuts in my bag!  Saving them for home.

 

So .... back to planning my trip for October.  My current thinking is:

- arrive in Osaka then spend three more days there;

- travel day to Shikoku;

- two full days in Takamatsu;

- travel day to Tokyo;

- three full days in Tokyo.

We will not need a full day for our travel but still need to sort out travel specifics for the times.  Thinking train to Shikoku and flying up to Tokyo.

 

Of course, suggestions and ideas welcome.

Ciao,

Tony

[Yugamu Tsuki]

Oh hey! I can see you from my office window!

 

I know we are a trains group and all, but when I visited Shikoku I took a several hour ferry and enjoyed the much slower scenic view. I'm unsure if you're keen on boat travel but it's something to possibly look into.

[Tony Galiani]

@Yugamu Tsuki - If I had know, I would have waved hello!

 

I like the idea of a ferry trip and have been watching Solo Travel Japan's videos for some time.  Not sure I would be comfortable navigating the process - I am continuing to research it.

One thought I had was to take the ferry to Naoshima island as that might be fun.  Still need to see how much time that would allow and how easy it would be to get around Naoshima once there.

 

Tony

[chadbag]

20 hours ago, Tony Galiani said:

Thinking train to Shikoku and flying up to Tokyo.

 

Flying from Shikoku to Tokyo?

 

That probably makes sense as the train  back to Isaka area for a Shinkansen would take time.  I've only been on Shikoku once, in Kochi, but the trip down was a few hours as was the trip back (obviously),

[Tony Galiani]

@chadbag - the trip from Takamatsu airport to Haneda is scheduled for one and a half hours while the trip to Tokyo is in the range of four and half hours.  Not that I wouldn't prefer the train but trying to maximize time and maybe see Mount Fuji from the air.  (Yes, I admit it, I have watched too many episodes of NHK's On The Wings.)

 

Of course there is the time to get through to the airport and so on but I think it might be worthwhile as well as the opportunity to see another side of Japan travel.  And are the planes really as clean as they look in the videos?  And is food at the airport as inexpensive it STJ shows in his travel videos?

 

Ciao,

Tony