Ditto - couldn't have said it better myselfThat is Gold, pure Gold . You owe me a new keyboard @Captain Halliday, I just laughed at a most inopportune time and spewed tea all over my old favourite - it's now out drying in the sun...hoping it will still work. I'm surprised you still have a wife and daughter on the trip with you by this stage
Always cross check Google, who would have thought.
I loved my 2 trips to Japan and can't wait to take my family back...skiing will be high on the priority list.
More please...awaiting the next installment. Just give me time to get another cuppa though
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And I hope that's not Mrs H's backside in the port photo
Well that had me scrambling to check. I hadn’t even noticed.
Thankfully it’s not Mrs H.
Just someone who obviously doesn’t appreciate my photography skills.
When a ropeway is actually a cable car
From the top of Rokko Cable Car (tram) we took a short bus ride to Rokko village and looked in a few shops. The usual tourist stuff.
From Rokko village you can take a return trip down on the cable car which is actually a tram, or you can go down the other side of the mountain on the Rokko-Arima Ropeway which is actually a cable car.
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Confused yet?
This was another google navigation fail. However, the nice man selling tickets at the bottom of the Rokko Cable car (tram) had just enough English to explain it to us and so we’d opted for one way tickets.
So we boarded the ropeway (cable car) and discovered nice views over forested areas.
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From above I couldn’t tell if some of the trees had been damaged by typhoon Jebi, or had died for other reasons.
In heavy forest there was no hint of the typhoon:
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Yet on ridge lines or exposed areas there were trees that looked like this:
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After around ten minutes of gradual descent, things suddenly became steep and we were headed down to a village called Arima Onsen.
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It had pretty paved streets and in winter is basically a ski village.
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While the snow was long gone, plenty of water was still flowing in the stream that runs right through town.
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By now it was early afternoon, but there was still time to travel on one more confusingly named form of hillside transportation.
What I mean is they had a very big range with common fragrances like lavender, right through to things I’d never hear of like Juniper Berry.
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I wonder if it’s good for a busted knee?
It probably needed a sarcasm emoji. But the reference to healing the knee should have given it away.You've never heard of juniper berries? They're one of the main flavourings of gin so some of that along with some other botanicals in some vodka with tonic would probably do wonders for a knee (or at least it would for my wife).
The next day we were off to Osaka and another hotel located nowhere near a train station.
So after a 14 minute ride on the Shinkansen from Kobe I was seriously questioning the need to change hotels at all.
We then switched to not one, but two different JR trains which added an hour to our trip.
And that was followed by the now infamous Halliday family suitcase hustle.
You’re lucky you aren’t kneecapped already by Mrs H, that would have taken you much longer...she’d have beaten you easily even with her sore knee. Did you ever take her to see a doctor- the swelling should be going down by nowFortunately it was only a 10 minute walk.
Which took us 15 minutes because of the knee business and the suitcases.
Okay, that’s stunning - should have made up for the 2 JR trains and the walkThe view from the room.
The hotel was nice. It has a gym, 25m indoor lap pool, spa and health club. But only for clean skins:
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Perhaps I’ve inadvertantly given the impression that I don’t care about Mrs H’s knee.The infamous Google search strikes again
You’re lucky you aren’t kneecapped already by Mrs H, that would have taken you much longer...she’d have beaten you easily even with her sore knee. Did you ever take her to see a doctor- the swelling should be going down by now
Okay, that’s stunning - should have made up for the 2 JR trains and the walk
Lucky you’re not Yakuza then