Page 27 - Koi Net - On-Line Koi Magazine - Issue 78

kilometres to the bottom of the hill and the main road,
Above:
The maple ravine at the
Kiyomizudera Temple
was floodlit at night.
Right:
The maples looked
incredible in their
contrasting autumn
colours.
after we had been standing for some minutes that we
would prefer to look at some of the shops along the
street rather than stand in the cold (it was becoming
decidedly chilly as evening approached). We arranged
to meet the rest of the group at the bottom of the street
and duly set off, finding some really interesting (and
very expensive) stores on our way down, fighting the
crowds all the way – exhausting! When we finally met
up with everyone again, another problem became very
obvious – not a taxi in sight and the road was solid with
traffic. In the end, we walked probably a couple of
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where, thankfully, we were able to hail taxis. We were
very happy to return to the hotel and dinner. It had been
a long, although amazingly interesting day. All credit to
Piak for suggesting the sites we visited.
On Friday we were due at the Show site at 2 pm for an
organised tour of Lake Biwa Museum. Our hotel was in
Kusatsu, a small city about twenty minutes inland from
Lake Biwa. Before we all set off that morning Alan,
Rene, John, Ian and I went to the station to book our
seats on the Shinkansen trains for the Niigata trip. Alan
told us it was very important to book seats early
IT WAS VERY because the trains all filled up so quickly. It was quite a
job to organise all our travel, I didn’t envy the rail
IMPORTANT employee who did the work for us, the computer system
TO BOOK looked to be unbelievably complicated. John had asked
if he could join the Niigata tour with us and changed his
SEATS EARLY flight home accordingly. Having successfully completed
all our travel arrangements for Sunday afternoon after
BECAUSE THE the Show, we returned to the hotel, finished packing and
TRAINS ALL checked out. It was a simple job to catch a local train to
Kusatsu, although Kyoto station is a vast place to
FILLED UP navigate! Luckily, we had Alan and Rene with us, who
QUICKLY knew the station well. Ian and I have only been there
once before, some years ago.
Arriving in Kusatsu we walked to our hotel, adjacent to
the station and dropped our luggage. As usual, we had
no access to our rooms until mid-afternoon. We decided
to set off in search of lunch and headed for a shopping
complex sign. This turned out to be a good idea, there
were many food outlets inside and everyone found their
lunch. A lovely surprise was the arrival of Teddy & Kandi
Li from Hong Kong, plus Yang Goh-Kang & wife, Chen,
from Malaysia, also headed for the tour that afternoon.
Wonderful to catch up with these very good friends
again. After lunch, we all found our way via a local bus
to Lake Biwa and the museum. We had about an hour to
have a look around, there were some very interesting
insights into life on and around the lake through the
ages. The museum was also home to a tank of
enormous Sturgeon, two to three metres long –
presumably past and perhaps present inhabitants of the
lake. After we toured the museum, we had a pre-show
meeting for all judges at 3 pm, at which we received
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