The dumpling king, a tale in 2 parts (Part 2)

We left off our tale "last week" with Dave having just arrived, me wondering how I was going to last the week without squeaking to a halt like an unoiled tin-man and you unsure as to what "the dumpling king" refers to. Now that the lads have finished their whirlwind trip (Dave having bid farewell and left for Tokyo this morning), I'm sitting in what now seems to be a very empty, lonely apartment; it seems like a good time to conclude the tale. Theirs weren't the only goodbyes this week, as you will see.

As I realised quite early on in the piece, my view of Dave's ideal trip didn't mesh entirely with Dave's view of Dave's ideal trip, but we managed to find a good compromise. Tradition and ancient culture are all well and good as far as I'm concerned, except they didn't have air conditioning back then and in the middle of summer, that isn't a good thing at all. "Mountains," Dave had said upon being asked what he wanted to do, "and hot springs." We decided to knock both off in one day - Lis headed off to work, Dean headed off to Tokyo and Dave and I headed up one side of Mt Rokko with a view to coming down the other. On the way to the cable car station, we picked up a bunch of stuff for a picnic lunch and got to the top of the mountain without incident. Unfortunately we weren't so lucky on the bus - when we got off I discovered that our lunch was continuing its journey independent of us. After some running around in circles and trying to work out ludicrous ways to catch the same bus again, I called the station office who said they had it. 20 minutes later we were back as we should have been - sitting down, eating lunch and Dave laughing at me for being a moron.

Having eaten, we finally had a go on the paddleboats, mimicking sea captains as we thrashed away on the pedals. Dave got some fish food to throw in for the koi and the water started churning white with scores of catfishy maws - I'm fairly sure a cow would have been stripped clean in seconds. One was even physically pushed out of the water in the melee and had to crowdsurf the the other fish back to safety.

Continuing the wholesomeness, we walked down to the rear of the park and stumbled upon the "Rokko Snow Festival", which was basically a small field of snow surrounded by stalls selling snow gloves and shovels. The fact that it was about 36 degrees with 80% humidity didn't seem to bother the people nor the snow itself, so we pelted a few snowballs and probably got very burned from what was now two directions. Dave spotted a go-carting track as we were about to leave, which we both knew we would have to go on. The cars were two seaters and Dave insisted on driving, which made me team photographer. It was an "off-road" course and we were essentially on a plastic wheeled lawnmower, which made for some very loosened teeth and blurry photos. That's not to say it wasn't fun; I giggled the entire way around the track and couldn't stop singing Mario Kart songs for the rest of the afternoon. We trekked back, hopped on the bus, checked out the view of Kobe briefly and then went across to the Arima Ropeway which would take us down to Arima Hot Springs. At this point I realised I was quite sunburned, which turns out to be not a very good thing when you're about to take a hot bath, but we pressed on anyway. After the scalding, we took the train I always used to take the long way around the mountain and headed back home to flop into bed (carefully and with lots of wincing).

The next day it was Dave and I flying solo again, so we went out to Kyoto to grant Dave's next wish of temples. Considering how atrocious my navigation is, I did remarkably well in getting us around - we managed to make it to 4 different spots - Kiyomizu Temple, Yasaka Shrine (the shrine that the Gion Festival is based on), Heian Shrine and Ginkakuji (the Silver Pavillion). It wasn't as hot as the first time around, which meant that we only needed to stop for one drink break - a green tea float with banana icecream. Dave spent most of the day looking around for Hello Kitty stuff, lighting incense everywhere and making lots of new friends who wanted to sell him things. We managed to get to Ginkakuji with 15 minutes before closing time, so after a very brief zen experience of looking at the sand garden, the loudest gong ever went off and we were chased along the path by one of the curators, daring to stop occasionally for a nice photo along the way. We walked down the "Philosopher's Path" and then decided we had achieved sufficient enlightenment for one day and headed back to Kobe. By this point Dean had arrived back from Tokyo looking completely stunned and we spent dinner time trying to squeeze information out of him like a squashed bagpipe. "I walked over the rainbow bridge," he said, looking distant, "twice." Judging by Lisa's reaction, this was a big deal. He went to some car museums, used a change machine and got back twice as much money as he had put in and from what I could piece together, had a good time. I could hardly imagine that he was as tired as I was, but we would have to have gone to the cameras to work out who fell asleep first.

Thursday we had the much anticipated trip to Universal Studios, where we would all get in for free in return for accompanying a group of school kids who wanted to practice their English. We had a group photo, were given our name badges and walked into the park, at which point every single student evaporated and wasn't seen again for the rest of the day. I felt extremely guilty about this until we caught up with the others - none of them had laid eyes on any of the kids once they got through the gate. We optimistically kept our name badges on all day which resulted in a lot of strangers mysteriously knowing my name. We went on the rides several times, bought Spider Man undies, a Terminator skull and a Cookie Monster headband and ate caramel popcorn - just the essentials. We seemed to end up with armfuls of bought photos as well, my favourite of which came from our second go on the Jurassic Park ride. They take a photo of you as you lurch over the crest on to the splashdown, ducking under the T-rex's head. The first time around was a standard "oh god help me" sort of pose, but then we decided to go on again and try out some silly ones. As we got up the hill, I wedged my legs as tight as they would go under the guard rail and put on the boredest expression I could muster, which meant a photo of 10 screaming Japanese people and me looking like I was about to fall asleep. Dean bought the photo on the spot; I'm very much hoping for a scan of it. I didn't take my camera to USJ but Lisa's photos are sensational.

By the time Friday rolled around I think most of us were about at our limit; we struggled out to Osaka to get to the castle, which disappointingly turned out to just be a museum. The outside looked nice, the view of Osaka from the top was great and Dean had the opportunity to dress up like a samurai in a very strange hat (there was a suit of armour made of bear fur on display), but apart from that I had trouble maintaining my interest. What we really needed was beer, our weight in food and karaoke. Coincidentally, that very night was Kym and Goran's farewell with all those things plus a whole chicken. We headed back into Kobe and had another crack at Ajiajia (the place we went for my birthday) - previously I didn't think it was possible to eat for 90 minutes but we seemed to be running out of time very quickly. This may have had something to do with the extensive "dumpling challenge" in the middle, where Andy and Dean challenged me to fit 6 dumplings in my mouth at once for a chance at my dinner for free. I got 3 in and really wondered if any more would fit; by 4 I felt like I didn't have enough skin spare to close my eyes. The 5th one got poked in somehow and I tried to shove in the last one, which just got pushed further up my chopsticks. It turns out that laughing is not a good idea when you have a fist-sized ball of food in your mouth, but I kept it together long enough to ram in the last one with my finger and very very slowly close my lips around the end of it. With use of a face towel I managed to spare everyone the sight of what actually eating them was like, and I was officially sworn in as the dumpling king. Amusingly, the position came with some power - I told Kym's boyfriend to eat the extra food he had ordered and Dean and Andy made sure it was so - "the dumpling king commands you".

With ten minutes to spare, the guy came around and warned us that the distressing amount of food still on the table would have to be paid for if not eaten, so we forced down a few more spring rolls and Kym unceremoniously tipped the desserts into her handbag (not the ice cream, thankfully). Having escaped unpenalised, the dumpling king decreed karaoke and it was so. An hour stretched into two and a half, featuring a raucous rendition of "Row Row Row Your Boat", Goran drowning everyone out without even using a microphone and Len creating a giant pyramid of glasses before eventually it was time to move on. Len couldn't even speak by this point - he rasped something about how orchestra was going to be brutal in the morning (leaving me wondering why Goran still seemed to be okay) and then we all dispersed to our last trains. It was a fitting send-off for Kym and Goran - they may be leaving Japan, I hope their respective futures are filled with karaoke and benevolent dim sum royalty nonetheless.

We headed to Nara bright and early the next day, with me going on throughout the train trip about the deer and how they much prefer the breadsticks you can buy for the fish to the deer crackers sold in the park. "The deer are wild and may bite or kick," warned an ominous sign, before my prediction turned out to be a bit too on the money. I bought a breadstick and a very excitable buck run over to to stare at it; he obviously decided I was taking too long to break a bit off and give it to him, because he gave me a solid bite right to the stomach to hurry me along. Dean and Dave continued to laugh throughout the entirety of Toudaiji Temple and out the other side, before making the mistake of buying breadsticks of their own and being chased down the road by hordes of ravenous deer. They kept throwing out pieces of bread as decoys, which reminded me of fighter jets releasing flares to shake off heat-seeking missiles, usually with more success than the lads were having.

Our last big day was Sunday, where we broke off into separate groups - Dean and Lisa to a sake brewery or two and Dave and I to "Spa World" in Osaka. There's no part of the phrase "hot spring theme park" that I don't like - floor after floor of pools, restaurants and themed baths. We had the European baths - great expanses of different tubs complete with Roman pillars, faux starry night decor and fish tanks. We had a good go at Finland to begin with, which if spa world is to believed consists entirely of ice cold outdoor baths and scalding hot log cabin saunas. "Atlantia" featured minty detox baths, Greece had tubs with massage booths, Rome had a huge jacuzzi fashioned like the Trevi Fountain, Spain had huge outdoor waterfalls and Germania had a foot bath complete with a bar. Perhaps the most interesting one was the "Azure Cove", which was a pool of milk, honey and royal jelly within a little cave thing. We came out of that one extremely squeaky and possibly years younger. After leaving, we headed out into Den-den Town to have a bit of a look at some electronics and strange people, then headed back to Kobe to meet up with Dean and Lisa for dinner. That night we went over to Suma Beach to set off some fireworks, unfortunately only managing to fire off a few rockets and sparklers before getting profoundly in trouble by a security guard on a bike. Then, a rocket would fire off from the opposite end of the beach and he would ride off down there to tell someone else off. It was a pity really, especially because we now have a bag of megaton-sized fireworks that we didn't get to fire off, but at least we had a chance to do a few. Having exhausted our snacks, beer and stamina, we headed home again.

Mercifully, the pace slowed somewhat and our last couple of days have been nice and lazy, wandering around the shops, drinking coffee and finding nice places to eat. Dean left on Tuesday and Dave left today, so I spent most of the day washing towels and putting away futons on my lonesome. It felt like vegetables after a week of McDonalds - boring but ultimately preventing death. You can look forward to a few weeks of profoundly boring blog posts now, during which I will tell you all about oatmeal and sudoku.

Farewell to all the visitors, I hope your visit gave you what you wanted whether you were here for a week or 3 years. I've very much enjoyed having you around and I'll be sad that you're not a part of things any more (as soon as I lose 2 kilos and have some money again).

As for the dumpling king, may his reign last forever... or at least until mid-December.