Jeju Island to Tokyo

We spent our last morning in Korea touring Jeju Island.  Unfortunately, it was a miserable day; cloudy and rain with virtually no visibility. The island is dotted with small to medium sized volcanic mountains, but we couldn't see them very clearly.

Due to the significant tourism to the island, it is full of "museums" of various sorts. They range from the Chocolate Museum to the Museum of Health and Sex. You can speculate on which one we visited! None of them reaches the standards of the world's great, but they get a lot of traffic.

The island also has a number of Buddhist Temples which are very pretty.

Look carefully at Buddha's faces; they're all the same!

There are a number of different Buddha statues in the temple. They are dressed differently which is to differentiate what issue they deal with. One is for health, one for finding a wife/husband, etc. Although each statue looks very different, the Buddha's all have the same face!

After visiting the temple, Art and I said our goodbye's to John. It has been a great trip, but I think we're all ready to head home.

While there was much, wide-ranging conversation during the trip, you'll be surprised to learn that the subject that drew the most attention wasn't golf. The subject that my colleagues were most fascinated by was........

A TOILET!!!

This baby, which was in EVERY hotel we stayed at, not only has a heated seat. It fires water at you from the front and the rear (no pun intended) and one of them even had a fan to dry you!!! This is real proof that the human species is evolving.

Thus ends our 2014 World 100 Asia Golf Trip.

It was fantastic fun with great companions.  98 pegs are in my Top 100 Board with only Ballyneal and Sand Hills to go!

Sayonara from Tokyo!

From Osaka to Jeju Island, S. Korea and Nine Bridges Golf Resort

Today was the end of the Japan portion of our Asia Golf Trip and time to say "Goodbye" to Shuhei, our boon companion and helper for the past week.

Shuhei was great fun to be with and we appreciate all that he did to make this a great trip.

On the way to Kansai Airport in Osaka, we passed this well known Japanese landmark

If you look carefully you'll see the Amazon.jp on the building!!

Our flight to Jeju Island was uneventful. It's a bigger island than we had expected. There are numerous small mountains throughout the island and one big one that still had some snow at the top. While driving to the resort, our guide told us that the weather forecast for tomorrow was an 80% chance of rain. Seizing the initiative, be managed to change our tee time to this afternoon and got in the round with only a bit of rain on the 18th hole.

On the 1st tee at Nine Bridges

Nine Bridges was built in 2001 with the upfront objective of making the Top 100 list. They made it in 2005 and now the Golf Magazine Top 100 logo is displayed on all of its merchandise.  Unfortunately, we found that the course really doesn't live up to its lofty ranking. We thought it was a very nice course; nice but not spectacular.  In its defense, we played on a very drab, overcast afternoon so we didn't get the benefit of any scenic views that might have made the day more memorable. Having played such great courses with fantastic ambiance and scenery in Japan, this was a bit of a let down.

Nevertheless, our intrepid threesome (Richard had earlier planned on heading back to the States after Hirono) didn't let it get our spirits down. We enjoyed our final outing together (final for this trip, I mean!) and headed back after the round for a shower and then off to dinner. To fill up the free time tomorrow resulting from moving golf to this afternoon, we have all scheduled spa treatments! After that, we'll head to the airport and our flights to Seoul (for John) and Tokyo (for Art and me).

As a sad footnote, most of you will have heard of the capsizing of the Korean ferry this morning with over 300 high school students aboard. The ferry was heading to the island that we are now visiting and obviously is the subject of tons of press coverage.

Hirono

BEST OF THE BEST!

Today we played at Hirono Golf Club. Billed as the "Augusta of Japan" it did not disappoint us

In front of the 9th green with the Clubhouse in the background

Hirono can best be described as a "classic" golf course. No tricks; what you see is what you get, but everything is done just right.  The Scottish interior of the clubhouse seems somehow to fit, even in Japan. The facilities are nice, but more like San Francisco Golf than newer, glitzier clubs. Each hole has its own challenges and each is different.

As seems to be the case at each course in Japan, the Par 3's standout.

I birdied this one!!

Only managed a par here

As you've probably noticed from the pictures, even though it's the middle of April, the rough and fairways still show winter-like conditions. They had a lot of snow this winter and they say that's why the grass is late growing in.

As usual, the caddies today were great.

Each lady caddie pushes a cart with two bags. They seem to run most of the time and we have to hustle to keep up with them! Despite stories of five hour rounds in Japan, we never were much over 4 1/4 hours. One delightful custom here is that after 9 holes, everyone stops for a nice lunch! Today's special was consomme and curried beef. Add a nice bottle of Japanese beer and life is looking pretty good!!

While it's not Hogan's Bridge at Augusta, this one is pretty special!

I would have had more pictures of Richard, but each time I showed him one, he took 30 minutes analyzing his swing!!! :-)

Not bad!!!

Tonight was our farewell dinner for Richard. He heads back to the States while the three of us fly tomorrow to Jeju Island in S. Korea. 97 Pegs are on the Board and Nine Bridges on Jeju will be 98. Friday will mark the departure of the rest of us back home.  While it's been a fantastic trip, a couple of hot dogs and a diet coke is starting to sound pretty good!!

Kawana

And we thought Naruo was hilly!!

As you can see from the above, Kawana sits on a fantastic piece of property. What is harder to see from the picture is that there is a tremendous amount of walking up and down hills. Many holes have elevated tee boxes where you hit down into the valley and they play your second shot back up the other side. In addition to the hills, there was a 2-3 club wind blowing most of the morning, just to make it a bit more challenging.

Here are a few examples:

Still smiling before hitting a terrible tee shot!

Big downhill Par 5

Art hitting his approach to 18; into the bunker!!

Standing on the first tee, you see this beautiful, downhill hole stretching to the Pacific but all you can think about is the 17th hole next to it, knowing you'll have to climb back up the hill before you're done!!

Despite the hills and the wind, the course was just one beautiful hole after another; definitely the most scenic of the trip.

Town of Ito viewed from the course

We missed the peak of the Cherry Blossoms but some were still in force

After we staggered back up from the Clubhouse to the Hotel we hopped in our bus for the one hour ride to the train. Not having time to eat lunch at the hotel, against my strongly voiced objections as not in keeping with our immersion in the Japanese culture, we had the bus turn into McDonalds for an "emergency" Big Mac stop!!  Needless to say, I was the first one off the bus to place my order. We then headed to the train station and the Bullet Train back to Osaka.

Tomorrow we're off to Hirono Golf Club.

Osaka to Kawana Resort

Today is a rest day from golf. We spent the morning visiting Osaka Castle (above) which was originally built at the end of the 16^th century. 

Very impressive engineering built the outer walls, all of which were made without concrete. Huge stones that were quarried many miles from Osaka show up in many places.

Some huge stones, like the one below, are actually only 3-4 inches thick although they look tremendous!

After a tour of the Dojo,

where we ran into a couple of fierce, ageing Samuri

we had a quick (and bad) lunch and headed to the train station to catch the Bullet Train to Kawana. 

The Kawana resort is quite famous, and while that little area of Japan has seen better days, the resort is still quite beautiful sitting right on the Pacific Ocean. We were glad to pull into the driveway after the almost four hour trip from Osaka. This trip is starting to feel like the movie, “Trains, planes and automobiles.”  All we’re missing is John Candy!

Tomorrow it's back on the golf course. So far the weather has been fantastic but there is a chance of rain in the forecast for tomorrow.

Naruo Golf Club

Well, if you've ever wondered what kind of course you would get if you crossed a golf course architect with a mountain goat, wonder no more! It is Naruo. Billed as one of the most difficult courses in Japan, this very hilly layout lived up to its advance billing.

It starts out with a beautiful, benign look as you walk to the first tee.

Your first tee shot over the water yields a nice view back to the tee box.

Then the fun starts. The fairways are generally tight, and all the holes have significant changes in altitude. You are also frequently faced with the need to move the ball significantly either right or left. If you don't, you run the danger of running out of fairway, or at best leaving yourself a long second shot to the green.

This little devil has almost a 90 degree dog leg. The long second shot must have a draw if you want to bounce it onto the green and not into the formidable bunkers standing guard.

This beast is a fairly short par 5, but the approach shot seen above leaves absolutely no margin for error!

This guy is a good example of the toughness of the course. A 454 yard par 4 (from the Member's Tees!!), the fairway runs out at about 235 yards. This means you can't hit driver off the tee because if you hit it well you are down in a huge depression about the size of a football field and about 30-40 feet deep. This leaves you in the best case with a very long, uphill second shot to a well guarded green. Lots of fun!!

The next picture is from the highlight of the day.

This 158 yard Par 3 plays first over a road, up a very steep incline, into the wind and (if you look carefully) a bunker so deep you almost need a ladder to get out of it. I hit a great 5 iron to about 7 feet and proceeded to sink the downhill, left to right breaker for the birdie!

We all had a great day despite the steep terrain. You don't see Art's picture because he won the last two holes of the day causing me my first lost match of the week!

The matches today ended up as follows:

• Durham 2/1/0
• Rathbone 0/3/0
• Cecil 2/1/0
• Slater 2/1/0

Cumulative score through three rounds:

• Durham: 6/1/2
• Rathbone: 1/6/2
• Cecil: 4/3/2
• Slater: 3/4/2

An accident in front of us on the freeway back to Osaka caused a huge backup and as a result it took us almost an hour and a half to get back to the hotel. However, a shower/bath and a great Korean BBQ dinner provided a great finish to the day. No golf tomorrow. We go sightseeing to the Osaka Castle in the morning and then catch the train up to the resort of Kawana where we will play on Monday.

Kasumigaseki Golf Club

Last night went out to a great Japanese Steak House. Modeled after Bennihana, but much better we all had a great dinner.

Friday saw us out at Kasumigaseki GC which is right next to Tokyo GC.  Kasumigaseki is no longer on the Top 100 list, but it should be. The four of us thought that it was a great course with very interesting fairway bunkers, like Tokyo GC, and elevated and well protected greens. The greens today were VERY fast as there was a member tournament being played while we were on the course.

One of the interesting features of both the Tokyo courses is the caddies.

Most of the caddies are women and they drive these electric handcarts that hold all four bags. They speak very little English, but are very hard working and very friendly. Despite having to take care of all four bags, they kept us moving right along. Both of the two rounds took only slightly longer than 4 hours, plus the stop for lunch. Custom in Japan is to stop for about 45 minutes after nine holes for a nice lunch. Very civilized!

Weather was much cooler today and we all started out with either sweaters or a vest.

Once again, the matches were hard fought with the following results:

• Durham: 2/0/1
• Cecil: 1/1/1
• Rathbone: 1/1/1
• Slater: 0/2/1

Cumulative results after two rounds:

• Durham:  4/0/2
• Cecil: 2/2/2
• Rathbone: 1/3/2
• Slater: 1/3/2

The par three's were again very interesting.

This one had a large tree in the center that was almost falling into the pond, and would have were it not for the extensive framework that kept it upright (sort of)!

We had a long trip after golf to Osaka; 2 hours in the van to Tokyo train station followed by a 2.5 hour bullet train ride to Osaka. Apparently the Bullet Trains are not designed for passengers with luggage and golf clubs. We had quite a time getting everything on and off the train. Finally made it to the hotel and a light, late dinner. Tomorrow morning we're off to Nauro GC reputed to be one of the toughest courses not just in Japan, but in the world! Not only is it tight and long, it is very hilly so we should all be exhausted when we're done. Fortunately no travel tomorrow as we have another night in Osaka.

All for tonight!