Day 195 - Narita to Nara - 17th February

Thanks to the time difference we all woke up around 3:30 am today. It's not just that you wake up and can't get back to sleep but we were all feeling ravenous and with all the will in the world you just can't seem to get over it. Room service was not available until 7:00 am so we ransacked all our bags and came up with some small individual packs of Frosties and Honey Smacks and a Twix bar.

We still had to pass the time with the boys becoming more agitated and vocal as time passed. I felt sure that there would be a complaint at any time as we knew the walls of the hotel were not all that sound absorbent. 7:00 am finally arrived and we were all dressed and ready to go down to the restaurant.

Once down there we were met by the manager, passed to a "table runner" and taken to our table. We were once again struck by the number of staff who were available to do anything that was required. Julie particularly likes the fact that once they are commissioned to do a task they run to complete it. Last night the lady who helped unload our bags from the bus, ran out of the hotel as the bus pulled up. You get the impression that they are desperate to help and do a good job. And they are.

The breakfast was buffet style with a mixture of Japanese dishes and western foods. I am afraid it was bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade and coffee for me. The boys did have bowls of rice which they ate with their chopsticks but that was our only concession to Japanese dishes.

Now I have to tell you about the toothpicks. One cannot help notice the attention to detail that the people of this country have in their work. The toothpicks on our table were held in a little egg cup type pot. They were all wrapped in little paper wrappers. In the pot were approximately 75 toothpicks. (I know this is the correct figure because they were subsequently counted.) In every other country in the world they would have simply put the toothpicks in the pot. This is not good enough in Japan. These 75 toothpicks were intricately arranged so that when viewed from above, the pattern created by the paper packets surrounding the toothpick, was that of a flower.

I counted the tables (there were 25 or more) and worked out that it was not possible that this could be done by hand and that they therefore must have a trick piece of kit that does it for you. I was so troubled by the prospect that I may be wrong about this that we checked with the restaurant manager on the way out. I commented to him that I was very impressed by the pattern created in the toothpick pots. "Thank you" he said "let me show you how we do it".

He tips all the picks out of a pot he has on his desk. He then lays them all on the counter and picks them up one at a time and puts them in his hand like he was holding a deck of cards. Each stick is turned upside down or around until the writing on them is all facing the same direction. He meticulously picks up 50 and has them all fanned out in his hand the right way round and then he draws the fan together and holds them encircled inside the ring created by his thumb and forefinger. Keeping the circle intact, he lowers them into the cup. Somehow the paper wrapper on the stick, when put into a cup like this, will keep the picks in a circle around the outside edge. Then one by one he picks up the other 25 in groups of 5 and puts them inside this circle with each group of 5 facing a different direction. When complete this gives us the effect of the petals of a budding flower.

This has taken the manager 5 minutes to complete and it looks wonderful. Now that is attention to detail. But it doesn't stop there. Each and every bag of sugar on the tables is put into it's dish facing the right way and perfectly lined up. You know those little bowls you get on restaurant (cafe) tables that have all the different sugars and salts and peppers in them? They are usually all mixed up and jammed in any old way. Not here. Perfectly sorted, precisely lined up. It is astounding. We just can't imagine this level of service and attention to detail. I keep asking myself how you can economically afford to keep it up but it is everywhere and applied to everything.

Another thing I noticed here was how beautifully the water falls out of all the taps. Water comes out of all the taps here completely silently. No hissing or splashing. The nozzle on the tap is so designed that there is no frothing or disturbing of the water as it flows. This gives you a broad column of water that comes out gently with none of the urgency that happens anywhere else. The underlying pressure in the water system has been so regulated that you get the perfect flow. And for the first time in ages we have rediscovered nice taps and washbasin accessories. In the US there is basically one design which is one tap which moves in all directions up, down, left, right and in and out which attempts to control the temperature and the flow all at once. It invariably doesn't and you end up getting sprayed by boiling hot (or freezing cold if they have decided to plumb it in differently) water coming out of the tap at 100 psi. In Japan you turn on the hot tap one turn, mix in a little cold water and you rejoice that the temperature will not alter and the pressure will not change during your washing operation.