Japan: Shinimamiya & Hotel Raizan South

Part of Shinsekai

Dobutsuenmae mall, a little early in the day though

Leading on from my last post I thought I’d talk about my favourite place to stay in Japan. My first trip to Japan was in 2011 with my mate Alex (who had been to Japan before). We flew into Osaka and went to stay at a hostel/businessman hotel called Hotel Raizan South in Shinimamiya.

Local coffee shop at the start of the Dobutsuenmae mall

Shinimamiya (which is just south of the well known Shinsekai area) is an older suburb and is rather dilapidated and run down. The area has been referred to as the most dangerous place in Japan, but I find this title absolutely hilarious. There is very little crime in Japan and while the Yakuza may have some dealings in the area they are fairly legitimate organisations these days and aren’t involved in petty crime. I understand they even do lots of positive work in the local communities to improve the general perception of them. I’ve had a fun night drinking with a local boss and even shared a Japanese bath with some heavily tattooed gentleman. (I might even write about these events in another blog post). 

Despite the dilapidated nature of the area I find it beautiful and fascinating. If you want to see how the other half live in Japan this is the place to do it. There are amazing photo opportunities everywhere, especially if you like urban photography.

Shinimamiya is perfectly located with many transport options. It’s on two different rail lines (JR & Nankai railway), two Osaka subway lines and a tram line (which I’ve never actually taken). On the other side of the main road is the old world area of Shinsekai. It’s a great area populated with plenty of Izakaya’s (tiny Japanese bar/eateries), Pachinko parlours (Japanese poker machines), Kushikatsu restaurants (deep fried meat/vegetables on sticks) and the Tsutenkaku tower.  

Abeno Harukas in Tennoji

Ten minutes walk up the road is the quickly thriving area of Tennoji. It’s quite a contrast between Shinimamiya and Tennoji. Tennoji has some very flashy new shopping centres including the newly opened tallest building in Japan, Abeno Harukas. Sadly I think the magical nature of Shinimamiya will be very quickly taken over by the sterile nature of Tennoji. The flashy new buildings seem to be slowly migrating their way closer and closer to Shinimamiya. In 2011 we’d hardly notice another white face in Shinimamiya, on each trip since we are seeing more and more whiteys. (and yes i get the irony about a whitey telling other whiteys to go there, whilst complaining about seeing too many whiteys there).

Another great spot in the area is the long thin covered mall called Dobutsuenmae. It’s kind of dirty and neglected with the odd homeless person wandering about but this is how people live and it’s a very unique spot with many quirky stores selling all sorts of odds and ends (including 20 year old electronics). My favourite restaurant in the world 'Chitose Okonomiyaki' is a few metres down a side street from this mall. I'll write about Hideki and his amazing food in another post (i promise).

Chitose Okonomiyaki

somewhere down the far end of the Dobutsuenmae mall

Now to Hotel Raizan South. This is one of those hotels that appear to be a mix between a businessman’s hotel and a hostel. There are plenty of regular Japanese guests mixed with tourists. I’d had some great times hanging out in the lounge meeting awesome people from all over the world. It's just one of those places that attract a weird mix from your typical backpacker to an associate professor in nanotechnology. If you stay here the best thing I can recommend is grabbing some beers and snacks from the local Family Mart and sit in the small lounge and see who you meet.

Sadly one of the great aspects at Hotel Raizan South has now moved on, I'm referring to their former manager Shinozaki. An older Japanese man who is the life of the party. He was so generous to us, often taking us out for a flashy meal or supplying us with beer or pizza. We had a great time with him and I have always looked forward to catching up with him on each trip.

View north from Hotel Raizan South

View South West from Hotel Raizan South

Shortly before our most recent visit the corporation that owns the hotel decided in their infinite wisdom to move Shinozaki across to manage a nearby apartment building. Shinozaki was a great asset to Hotel Raizan South and it will never be the same without him. Sadly Shinozaki wanted to stay at HRS until his retirement in 2 years. Shinozaki was one of the many Japanese people that made me wish I knew much more Japanese so we could converse better.

I'm unsure what will happen to Hotel Raizan South now it has a new manager but I have had some fun times there in the past and hope to have more in the future.

PS. I apologise for the absolute clusterf$ck that is the layout of this post. Blogger has a complete mind of it's own when laying out photos in a post. What you see in the draft layout is nothing like how the actual blog post turns out. If anyone from google is reading this, you need to fix your crappy system. It's incredibly frustrating to use.

The rather large triple room in Hotel Raizan South

Japan: Accommodation

Ok finally I'm going to start on the series of posts I'd promised about Japan. First up accommodation.

There are a number of different types of accommodation styles in Japan. Depending on your price range I’d suggest a mix of all. First a little disclaimer for anyone who hasn’t been to Japan before. Space is at a premium in Japan so typically everything is very small and packed together. This is particularly evident with hotel rooms. Don’t expect the room to be much bigger than your double bed. You’ll have enough space to shove your suitcase in a corner and that’s about it. Often I’ve participated in a new sport I call 'creative furniture stacking' just to recover one square metre of floor space.

Hostel/Businessman hotel: There are a bunch of generic western style hostels in Japan. They are super clean so don’t be worried about walking into a flea infested, blood stained septic tank like you would expect in other countries. I've previously used Khaosan in Tokyo & Kyoto. There is also a style of accommodation best described as a Businessman Hotel. Japanese people work very hard, often long hours, 6 days a week. To avoid wasting lots of time travelling, some Businessmen stay in the city during the week only returning home on weekends. These Businessman hotels are somewhere between a hostel and cheap hotel. Rooms are private but often you’ll have shared bathroom facilities. Most of these hotels will have a western shower facilities but some may only have a shared Japanese bath. These hotels are fairly cheap and are my choice for the majority of my time in Japan. I particularly love hanging out in the lounges and meeting random people from all over the world. Depending on the hotel you can choose between a western bed or traditional Japanese style (futon bed on tatami mats). I'll write another post soon on my favourite hotel 'Hotel Raizan South'. Rough Cost: Single $20-30 per night, Double $40-50 

Cheap Hotel Chain: There are about a billion normal hotels in Japan. The familiar western brands will be rather expensive though. I’d suggest looking at the cheaper Japanese chains like Super Hotel and Toyoko Inn. These chains have locations everywhere. The rooms tend to be identical in each location, sometimes leaving you to wonder just exactly which town you’ve woken up in. They are very clean with private bathrooms but are very small. The price is pretty good as well. I’ve used these before when travelling around. The drawbacks are the 4pm check in time and they also like you to be out of your room between 10am and 4pm for ‘cleaning’. These hotels are good choices but you no doubt will miss out on meeting some awesome people that you’d typically meet in a hostel or businessman hotel. TIP: If you plan on staying more than a few nights at Toyoko Inn's book via their website and join their club. Rough Cost: Double $75 per night

Guesthouse/Ryokan: The other style I’d recommend trying for at least a few nights is a traditional Japanese guesthouse or Ryokan. These will be beautiful old traditional style buildings with typically Japanese style rooms (futons on tatami mats). The better ones may even have an outdoor onsen or beautiful indoor Japanese bath. Often the price will include a massive cooked Japanese breakfast or dinner. In places like Koyasan you can even stay in a Buddhist monastery Ryokan (definitely an experience I’d recommend). If you go to Japan you have to stay in a Ryokan for a few nights. Rough Cost: $50 – 150 each per night

The mystery of the disappearing sports channels

Twice in recent months I’ve come across one of my favourite sports on TV only to have the channel disappear soon after. 

A few months ago the ‘special event’ TV channel (which is normally locked down and only screens pay per view UFC) started showing Winter Olympic highlights. They were rather crappy highlights with more time being dedicated to single shots of the Olympic flame than actual sport highlights.

Anyway… the weekend the Olympics finished the Super Rugby competition started. I just happened to flick to said channel around mid afte

rnoon to find a one shot of a rugby field. I quickly realised I was about to get the first game of the season out of New Zealand. Later that evening I got to watch my ‘hometown’ team the Queensland Reds play. I was pretty excited at actually getting to watch some Rugby and especially that it was a Reds game.

The weird thing about coverage is that we appeared to be getting the raw non-edited feed. Prior to the game we would see 30 minutes of the TV coverage team testing their cameras and microphones, there was no advertising and I often busted the commentators saying funny things while they thought they were ‘off-air’. 

Sadly after the Olympics finished the next day the Rugby disappeared as well. What I suspect is that the local TV company was pinching the Winter Olympic highlight feed off a random satellite which just happened to be showing raw Super Rugby footage. Once the Olympics finished they shut down the connection so no more Rugby for Nathan :(

While I love watching Rugby I can deal with missing out on this while living in Palau. What I’m struggling with missing is watching (Ice) Hockey. When we first arrived here in June last year the NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals were about to start. Much to my dismay the only sports channel (ESPN) decided to play early season baseball and not the hockey finals. And just in case you haven’t been following this blog, the internet here is so bad (and expensive) that you can hardly bring up static webpages let alone internet radio or streamed video. So it’s been much like 1996 all over again, having to catch up with the results and news from static webpages every evening or so. 

Proof there was once a hockey game on TV in Palau

Cut to a few weeks ago. I was out diving and happened to start talking hockey with one of my customers, he mentioned he’d watched a little of the Montreal v Tampa Bay game in his hotel the previous evening. Over the next couple of days with the help of our favourite bartender we quickly worked out that his hotel (Palasia) had a different satellite feed (out of Taiwan) and the old CRT TV behind the bar was connected to this. 

The next night a few of us had a bunch of drinks and pizza and got to watch Montreal dispatch Tampa from the playoffs. It was a great night and it was incredible to watch some hockey again. Palau suddenly became a whole lot more liveable for me. 

But sadly last week while a mate of mine was watching another game the channel suddenly went off air. Not the whole satellite, just that channel. Guess what... yep the channel is completely gone and apparently there is nothing they can do about it. So back to the dark ages again…

Japan Photos

Somehow we've been back from Japan for almost a month already. Where has the time gone? I've been very busy diving solidly since getting back. The dive shop has been very busy with lots of tourists over the Easter period. I think I've clocked up another 40 or so dives. I've recently had a very fun group in from the US but with some very long days up to 13.5 hours in length I was pretty exhausted by the end of the week. I'm glad to have a few days off but it does sound like the shop is going to be a little quiet going forward... feast or famine it seems! Some highlights of the past week were finding a leopard shark and octopus.

In my little spare time I have been able to edit and (very slowly) upload my SLR photos from our Japan trip. You can check them out here. There are quite a few there but It's a mix of the standard tourist shots and some more artistic ones.

Matsumoto castle. It took me about 45 mins to add this picture..

The trip was great for us as we got to recharge our batteries. (yes I get the irony about going from an island paradise to a big bustling city to 'recharge'). I think we also got a be
tter perspective on the great things about Palau. Hopefully we will be able to keep this mindset for quite a while as we aren't sure if we'll be able to afford another overseas trip while we are here.

If I have more time off coming up I'll get stuck into the series of blog posts I've planned about 'what to do in Japan'.