April 9th, 2017!
Tomorrow we would head back to Tokyo and the
Disneyland Resort there but we had one last day to make the most of our time here. It started with.. drumroll..
LAUNDRY! YAY!!!!
OK not yay... we had been lucky in Tokyo since there was a washer so we made sure to do laundry before we left also, but were running low on socks and undies again and weren't 100% on the laundry situation at Disneyland so we decided to take some time and do it here. We didn't bring detergent thinking we could buy it there so I used the machine on the wall and... got dryer sheets. What?? I went back and fought with google translate until finally I figured out that the detergent is added automatically - no need to buy it separate. ooooh. The dryer sheets smelled VERY strongly so we left them on top of the machine... hopefully they found a home. It was nice having an actual dryer to use as the apartment did not. There was a dryer button on the machine, but we never could figure out how to make it work. Everything we tried didn't seem to make a difference and there was nothing in the booklet left for us about it either so we had been hang drying prior.
While it washed we went and had breakfast at a cafe a block down but failed to notice the ashtrays inside... the other patrons were lighting up here and there so we ate quickly and high tailed it out of there and back to move our laundry over. We decided on the way back the food stalls looked so good we really should have had it instead... oh well. I told Kyle we could go to Disneyland later if he wanted to have breakfast from them tomorrow as I certainly didn't want to cut Osaka short and regret it.
When we arrived in Osaka and noticed Yoshino wasn't looking like it was going to pan out we mostly dropped it from the itinerary but despite going to Kyoto one day and Nara the other we had already banged out the two main things for Osaka already. The report had been updated so that "peak" was going to be in another day or two. I had secretly hoped they would be moving along and we could justify going today and we decided that was close enough. We don't know if we'll be close enough on a future trip to try later - and thats even if we come right at cherry blossom season again. Even if we DID who knows if the weather would cooperate more than this trip? So we decided to just go for it and see what we could see!
It seemed we were not far off the mark... for a Monday there was still a nice size crowd on the train with us and in Yoshino. Seems like everyone was impatient and just going for it! As we got closer people were getting more and more excited about the sakura we could still see out the window all the way up to the station. From here I have so, so, so many pictures of lovely trees. No, they were not fully bloomed and yes, the hills still looked pretty bare from afar. There were more than enough out and it was a lovely day... I was so glad we went!
Since we had done laundry we didn't get to Yoshino until about 1pm and immediately got in line for the ropeway up.
You can also hike up a street if you wish - we wanted to get a look from up above the trees though so we bought a one way and planned to walk back down. While we were at Osaka station I had noticed a special train called 'Blue Symphony' that looked neat. As long as we were waiting in line for the ropeway I checked into what it was and found it was sold out. Uhoh. That prompted me to check the other lines and I noticed there was limited seats left for them too. Shoot..! I started fretting about being "stuck" in Yoshino and asked Kyle if he minded if I went ahead and bought our return ahead of time. We weren't sure what time we'd want to leave, but the earliest we could have seats together was after 5pm at this point. I noticed they had another special train called the 'Sakura Liner' that left a little later and we settled on taking the 'cute' train back after dinner.
The town of Yoshino is pretty..! When we got off the ropeway we were handed a map which was nice. The main street is lined with shops and restaurants selling sakura themed and flavored everything.
We took our time wandering further and further up the mountain, stopping at shrines, looking at their wares and taking lots and lots of pictures of the cherry blossoms that were out. Many shops had windows where you could see them making sweets, and another shop was doing a pretty extensive sake sampling for thirsty shoppers.
When we stopped at a shrine to rest our feet one of the monks (I think - he was dressed in the garb and shaved his head but wearing Nikes so maybe he was just a volunteer? Do shoes matter?) stopped us as Kei did and chatted for even longer. He asked all kinds of questions about my husbands work too when he realized we weren't students (that was a sweet mistake, I'm pretty far removed from college now!). Eventually we pried ourselves away from the conversation and moved on.
We did not get the grand views of huge copses of trees in full bloom that you see in the guidebooks but we were very impressed by the number of trees that were already blooming since we hadn't been expecting much.
Originally I had grand plans of staying at Chikurin-in Gumpoen for two nights but those were swiftly dashed with numerous booking problems. When the dates came out they were already sold out from what I could tell, and availability seemed to change based on whether or not I was looking from the Japanese site. Hmm. It was also going to be almost $1000 a night so I'm a little glad we weren't able to make it work. Staying in Osaka was easier than it sounded on paper - getting there was no trouble at all. We did pay the fee to wander the garden though and I am glad we did. It was very pretty!
We spent a long time at a little lookout built on a hill listening to bird song with no one else around... I found myself regretting not staying here a tiny bit since time was flying by even in a place without much to do besides looking at landscapes and shopping. It was time to go find some food though as many places had signs saying they closed at 5.
Nothing was striking our fancy as we headed down - Kyle said he wanted tonkatsu and since I had chosen the day before I was really hoping we could find some. Just about the time we were all the way down at the top ropeway station we found a place that had it on the menu. We bought tickets at the counter out front and then were able to go in and choose a table. A lot of the places here had big windows overlooking the hills and this place was no exception! It was completely empty so we took off our shoes and walked over the tatami to a window, sitting at a very low table in short chairs. I ended up having my first and only oyakodon of the trip here and it was fabulous. We even got to split another "special" Asahi to round out the sakura filled day.
From here we continued our leisurely stroll back to the train station since we had only bought one way tickets on the ropeway. There were yet more trees in bloom, and I'm glad we walked it. Lights started turning on as we went and the sun went down.
We verified with a train attendant that all I needed was the ticket confirmation on my phone for our seats and he went ahead and used our suica card to pay the base fare so we were all set. We hung around for another 15 minutes or so before our cute pink train came to whisk us away back to Osaka. When we got back it was only around 8 or so.... from my pictures it looks like we went into a BIC and ran around and I am sure we got another Pablo... I miss them so. ;__; We packed a little and went to bed without any further ado! Tomorrow was Disney Day!