Eric's Wacky Japan Tales

Summary

Just a summary of events for the general public:

Trip started on Sept 2nd, 2003 from SFO into Narita and ended Nov 4th from Narita to SFO.

On the whole I stuck to a pretty strict budget, sticking to cheaper salaryman type restaurants mostly and at times eating a convenience store meal. Then again, 8% of my budget was beer (see graph below). Exchange rate was close to 110Y/USD while i was there.

I had a 3 week rail pass with which I went through Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. Then I settled in Kyoto for 3 weeks and then Tokyo for 2weeks.

I used the 7th Edition (2000) of the Lonely Planet Japan Guide (The 2003 edition came out while I was there).


Overall recommendations:
Kyoto and the Kansai region around it has a bit more diversity than Tokyo.
In Kyoto, Jhoppers is an excellent place to stay.

Internet cafes are all over the place, but usually there is a cost (100Yen for 30min is on the cheap side). Some offer free service provided you buy something (tea or snack for around 500Y). In Kyoto, the British Council offers free internet service. They are located around Karasuma and Shijo on the 8F.
In Tokyo, the best place for free internet is the Yahoo cafe located in Harajuku. It's tucked on a side street back a little bit along Mejijingu-mae, SE of the subway station but before the pedestrian bridge. Another place for free internet is the Marunouchi cafe in Central Tokyo. There is a British Council location in Tokyo, however they don't allow you to check e-mail (although you are free to browse the internet..)

Expenditure Chart

Final Numbers

Phew! After a day working in an excel spreadsheet, the numbers are in:

Overall: $76.23/day (incl Flight, Rail Pass, and Travel Insurance)

Operating Avg: $55.89/day (doesnt include flight, RP, insurance)

Non-essential Avg:
$47.66/day (doesnt include beer and gifts)

Expenses by category:

Lodging: 131732 yen (37%)
Food: 66598 yen (18%)
Transportation: 54890 yen (15%, doesnt include RP)
Sightseeing: 31785 yen (9%)
Beer: 27608 yen (8%)
Gifts: 29459 yen (8%)

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here's a funny little article from the bbc: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3250659.stm

Day out with the Hippo Family club!

I met Hitoshi-san and Julia in Kyoto while staying at the Uno House and gave him a little jingle this weekend. I think ive mentioned before that theyre part of this language club, the "Hippo family club" which promotes the speaking of foreign languages. They currently "support" 18 different languages.

Anywho, Hitoshi-san or Nyu-yu as he likes to be called (its a russian nickname apparently?) met me at my hotel at 10AM and we were off to Asakusa to check out the temple. I didnt know it, but this weekend was a holiday weekend (with monday off), so people were out in droves. The main gate of the temple leads through a huge shopping arcade selling the typical sweets and also shoes, kimono, and a wad of other stuff. Finally after fighting our way through the crowds, we ended up at the temple which was altogether the same as any other temple. We wandered around a bit more, taking in the sites of Asakusa which was the former Edo downtown/entertainment area. Its a little run down now, but it still sports an amusement park, some theaters, many shops, and the famous kappabashi-dori which was where myong and i went previously. We took a pit stop for some food at an Udon place where lines started to form out the door. I had an interesting Miso udon which had a whole scoop of miso plopped in. Unfortunately, there was a long ass hair in my food (luckily Hitoshi saw it) and i got another. First time for everything i suppose. Still, the stuff was pretty darn good!

Afterwards, we headed for Ikebukuro to meet up with Julia (who was wit Hitoshi in Kyoto, though theyre not a couple) and her friend Simone. Of course, these are both nicknames they go by...i never caught their real names. After waiting about 30 min for Julia (apparently the trains running into Ikebukuro from the suburbs are a little infrequent) we caught the yamanote to Harajuku.

So, one thing i learned on the subway trip to Ikebukuro was that Julia and Hitoshi are 43 (!!!!) years old. I dunno how old Simone is, but i would guess shes not too far off.

So wandering around Harajuku with the Hippo group was a little interesting, mostly cuz they seemed like a tight group of friends and at times seemed to forget i was even there! So this left me emptily blinking at times, trying to figure out what the heck they were saying (although at times, Julia who spent 9 months in the US, would sometimes stop to explain stuff), but at the same time it was cool cuz it was almost like really being Japanese as opposed to a foreigner being led on a tour.

So around Harajuku, we didnt really do much. Just wandered around mostly...We entered a cafe cuz the ladies were hungry and ordered a Crab pasta and a ham pizza with a soft cooked egg on it (my choice though i didnt know about the egg part). The crab pasta was stinky as hell, but they all seemed to enjoy it. The pizza had some hidden anchovie (or something else really fishy) which changed the expected taste a bit...Oh yeah, and we had some weird icecream (i tink there were raisins in it!) and flan for dessert.

We wandered around some more, stumbling across a couple weddings where i first caught the hint that Simone's clock is ticking as she got a little too into watching other peoples weddings...We got to one wedding, right as the bride was tossing the boquet. We walso wandered through this male j-pop center where a buncha teeny boppers were buying pictures of their favorite aspiring hunks.

So we eventually stopped for coffee where we ended up staying for quite a while. Simone pulls out all these sheets of paper and a broshure labeled "www.kekkon.com" which translates to marriage.com! Of course, the sheets were all prospectives with all sortsa stats, from income, to eye sight, bloodtype, etc, etc. She also even checked for matches on here phone (160 of them!) and then proceeded to reject a few....
So we spent a LONG time at the cafe, before searching out for a place to eat dinner. Julia even painted Simone's nails for her (she had gotten her nail polish as a gift when they met earlier)...and even painted Hitoshi's pinky nail (yea, slightly weird...).

We ambled a little thorugh the streets of Harajuku, looking for something, thinking of taking off to Ikebukuro for an izakaya when we were approched by a restaurant "promoter" at the Meiji-dori/Omotesando crossing. The talked and talked and talked, walking away a few times, and finally we got a 15% off deal.

The restaurant ended up being a pretty upscale one located a couple floors down below a karaoke place. This was the first time i had to take off my shoes! We got a regular booth, but there were other tables atop mini gardens with transparent floors.
We ran a whole gamut interesting food: caesar salad, edamame, avacado w/tuna ceviche thingy, seafood paella, bitter melon w/pasta. and liquor: A mini-cooler of beer, sake from Sendai, Sochu, and red wine. and dessert: green tea ice cream and one of those many layered sponge cakes. Overall cost of the meal: 2403 yen each.
Hitoshi also admitted he often forgot i was american which is why he would always speak japanese to me...and at times would even speak korean to me!
Ah yes, that brings me to some of their quirks...Of course, they belong to this language club, so they love speaking all these other languages. Half the time though, they dunno what theyre saying as i FINALLY figured out what Hitoshi was trying to say in Taiwanese (he was combining a question with a response, esentially talking to himself!). Hitoshi's specialty is Korean and Simone's is French.

That reminds me...while walking through Harajuku, we came across a german lady getting her hair dyed. They proceeded to chat it up with the german lady (or attempt to) and even took pictures with her! We then entered a european-esque building which is apparently used for weddings, and simone dragged us into a shop selling traditional french dresses (with all the frilly thingys). She loves all things French.

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One little side note is that we pretty much always split the bill evenly....seems weird cuz the guide says that this is rare, even though the couple times i went out with the japanese peeps, weve always split the bill fairly evenly.
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So after dinner, we went up for none else than karaoke! On the whole, not all too different than the American establishments except that you can order drinks.
So we all spouted off some Japanese, American, Korean, and even Taiwanese songs for the night and ended up only paying about 5 bucks each for an hour or so. It seems like Julia wears the pants in this group as she was constantly calculating and correcting our bill; the cashier would conveniently forget about our discount and the like...

So we parted ways at the train station in time for me to catch the 3rd to the last train. I gave them my e-mail and invoted to the states upon which Julia and Hitoshi cautioned me that Simone would probably actually come! Ohwell...

On the whole, it was a pretty darn expensive day but entertaining to say the least. This was probably the 2nd coolest day/night in japan below Aki-san's dinner, but above the night out to the Izakaya with Yoshi.

Welp, thats that. Tomorrow i should be on my way home! I got a dinner with Wendy tonight and possibly a lunch with Hammad (the Pakistani dude i met in Kyoto) tomorrow. Ill be glad to be back home, but overall, its been a pretty damn amazing trip with such an amazing variety of sites, people, and events.

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Another interesting note. I read in the newspaper the other day that 32.4% of japanese surveyed are against promoting more tourism, citing an increase in crime as the number one reason. Also, over 50% were against relaxing visa restrictions.

Running around Tokyo again!

Ok, welp, Myong made it safe and sound into the hotel Wednesday night. Aside from grabbing a quick, cheap snack and maybe a few beers not much else.

Thursday we were out the door at 5:30 to visit the Tsukiji fish market (again, having a little sushi, this time slightly cheaper version, but still excellent). From then, we went to Hibiya park, the Edo-Tokyo musem (which looks somewhat like a space invader but was otherwise a great museum on the history of Tokyo), Shinjuku where we got a nice, free tour of the Tokyo Government building, Shibuya for some ramen and to oggle at the hordes at the Hachiko intersection, Harajuku to check out the odder side of tokyo, then back to the hotel for a short rest. After a 2 hr break, we went back out to Roppongi to see the hills and club area...I think i might have overdone it as by the end of the day, myong was complaining of stomach aches, being sleepy as hell (i woke him up at 9PM from his nap...), and having bloodshot eyes.

Ok, today after a nice long slumber, we headed out to Kappabashi dori which is the plastic food/restaurant supply district. That stuff is super expensive! The quality of the sutff was good enough to make us hungry enough to skip Akihabara (electronic district) and head straight fo rGinza to find some nice cheap tempura soba...

From there, we took a gander at the sony building, the international forum, and now im here typign this message. Still have to go through the imperial gardens and Akihabara..

tonight we'll check out the Tokyo Halloween scene....

E!

Yokohama

Spent my first day in a week out of Tokyo by going out to Yokohama which is less than 30 mins from the west end of Tokyo.

I dunno why, but my first impressions of Yokohama are pretty good. Maybe because its not Tokyo, and probably because i spent most of my time visiting the sites around the harbor which are away from the city centre. Maybe its cuz its a weekday. For whatever reason, the yokohama harbor was a pretty pleasant place with hardly any crowds. Great for a stroll around some modern buildings, amusement parks, historic buildings, and gardens. Amazing considering that Yokohama is supposed to be Japans 2nd largest city nad also one of its busiest ports. Headed through Chinatown which was rather bland though, and also extremely expensive! I think they were chargin like 4 bucks for 1 (albeit large) pork bun. Passed by the Yokohama stadium, then hopped on the rather expensive subway to Shin-yokohama station which is where the instant ramen museum is.

My feelings on the Instant ramen museum are rather mixed cuz half of it is stores and restaurants, but they charge you 300 yen to get in! But i guess people go for it because they have little line number holders when the museum gets full! People apparently go to the museum JUST to eat in the ramen restaurant there which were picked out by the museum staff as the best reprsentatives from the various "ramen regions". I guess these regullars get the 1000 yen monthly pass..

So i chose the ramen from the Kumamoto region, which i missed (well, i had store bought instant curry ramen when i way there...). They describe it as "another white soup ramen with a mild salty flavor, the stock is made from pork and chiken bones. The relish is a delicious combination of char-shu jelly like kikurage mushrooms, bean sprouts, menma, and garlic chips."
I dont know what menma is. Overall it was OK. Still not better than my benchmark 500 yen ramen place in Shibuya. I think that place is the best cuz theyre the only ones which allow you to add unlimited condiments (amazingly ive acquired a taste for pickled ginger...go figure).
The museum was OK. It has plenty of good displays, but hardly any English so all i could do was look and try to guess what the things meant. One nice picture i got that i hope turns out was of an old cup-o-noodle container with none other than our new governor on the cover.
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Myong should juuuuust about be landing about now...hope he make it through the rush hour OK.

Tour of Tokyo

So i found out that i was spending almost 700+ yen on subway trips per day, i figured what they hell and got a 710 yen all day pass. There's actually a variety of passes you can buy here in tokyo, but the simple ones are 710 for a subway pass: but not for all the lines! If you want all the subway lines, it costs something like 1000 yen, and if you want to include JR (they have 1 useful line that runs in a loop, and there are a few spots that only have JR stations near them), it costs 1580 Yen.

Anyway, I got the 710 pass yesterday, and used it to do a tour of Harajuku (again), Shibuya (again), Ginza (again), Akihabara (the electronics district), and Roppongi (the gaijin entertainment district).

Harajuku had its famous tenny bopper goth turnout on Sunday which was a bit smaller than i expected. Yoyogi park was apparently the former olympic village, so overall its pretty nice. I was originally going to go to the a particular sword museum, but after re-verifying its locationk as being in BFE, i aborted and just toured the yoyogi gymnasium area (former olympic gymnasium) where there were a wad of people doing Tai-chi and wu-Shu. There was also the stage area where there was a market and various food stands throughout selling takoyaki (octopus balls), yakisoba, and okonomiyaki. I held out on getting opn any food till Shibuya...

Shibuya was just a short stop mainly to get food at my favorite ramen shop. I also made a visit to Tower records to pickup a copy of Metropolis, a weekly english event guide. I happend to run into a signing session for an apparently famous piano player (classical). I didnt recognize the name, but ive been out of the classical loop for a while....

Ginza was mainly to visit the Rice Gallery which turned out to be more of one big Rice Store selling various products (lotions, cremes, snacks, powders, and even crepes!) made out of rice. The had a few free recipe cards i snagged (in japanese though...). Next door was the Yamaha Hall where they had a pianist playing. Not bad and a nice 15 minute of chill time. Along the street, their "Ginza Accuille" (something like that) was still going on; they closed the street and were performing tea ceremonies. I dont think i mentioned yesterday how they also had a parade which was quite nice. The first part was boring as hell as was a ppretty standard parade with high school marching bands, cars and hte like. The last part was pretty interesting, having people walking and dancing in traditional garb from various regions around japan.

Akihabara was relatively dispappointing as i didnt catch anything really cool (i have no idea what the aussies were talking about). It all seemed like pretty normal stuff at normal to expensive prices! I think electronic-wise, the coolest thing ive seen in japan has actually been the little hot water pots which keep track of temperature electronically and automatically pump for you with the touch of a button. Of course, with electronics its difficult to dicern the finer features, so they could have had the latest and gretest things that i just couldnt appreciate. Ill have to do some research...

Roppongi...The roppongi hills is a pretty nice area. Reminded me a little of Canal City in Fukuoka, but was large and a little bit nicer. Roppongi Hills is quite the shi-shi area of Tokyo (I formerly thought this was supposed to be Ginza....) as many people here are dressed one notch up from all the rest (they already dress pretty nice most of the time) and the cars are also pretty nice (i saw at least 2 ferraris, plenty of high end mercedes). It all reminded me a little of LA westwood area (i dont recall the venue i visited) with the posh restaurants, valet parking, and nice cars zooming all around.

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A group of 3 guys i coulda sworn were maffia just left my hotel, thank god. Theywere staying right across from me, VERY loud speaking an odd dialect of italian (it was germanic sounding at times...) and always packing boxes and speaking very loudly, and always with a "do not disturb" sign on their door when they werent there. I heard them on the phone speaking english once the conversation went..."Well be there tomorrow to pickup the merchandise....25 boxes".

Also a little twist to the murder story is that now the guy who was killed was supposedly a Yakusa guy who thought he could cut in line because of his status...

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One of the internet places i frequent for some reason refuses to work with the blog software correctly. Thus every now an then 2-3 new entries will appear because the entries get saved, however the blog doesnt get updated until i visit one of the other cafes that works correctly.

Missing the train

Decided to go out Sat night to check out the night life scene. I think it will be the last night of partying for a while..(till Myong gets here!)

Went to a place out in Shinjuku called the Dubliners. Not a bad place, exspensive though at (hmm, theres a chick in front of me kissing the webcam and talking on the internet phone....) 800 yen a pint. I wasnt planning on staying too long but ran into a Chinese-American from Hawaii (who thought i was from hawaii too!). So we chatted away and i left at 11:40 to catch the last subway home...welp...i caught the last subway, but forgot that i needed to transfer.. By the time i got to the transfer station, the other lines had closed! That sucked. Lucky thing is that they have the Yamanoted, a train line that runs around the city. So i run to the train station (i wasnt the only one) and caught the last train. Unfortunately, the train doesnt go all the way up to my hotel which is 3 subways stops from the main station. 45 minutes later, i managed to walk home. All in all, it took me about 2 hours to get back!

Had an interesting group from america come in yesterday. The girl was talking on the phone, calling up a whole slew of people saying "Im in Japan now"...What got everyones heads turned around was a little part in the conversation that went like "Its so expensive, but ive alread found a job" (Wow, i thought, thats pretty damn good for just arriving) "I tried out this strip club..." (ah....i see) "and this hostess club...and i can get 7000 yen per lap dance".

A Night Out in Ginza

Quick little entry. Went out in Ginza last night to a place that was literally called "300 yen bar". As cheap as it sounds, it really isnt too cheap as i spent 1260 yen there (they charge tax!).
Went out with a huge group from from New Koyo... Its such a different crowd here then im used to.
Of the interesting people, the Aussie Taiwanese dude was funny as hell at times but then also annoying as hell at others. Hes one of those types that simply cant stop talking.
There was an american chick who was originally from Boston who is planning on staying in Japan till the money runs out; this is the first time ive met a girl doing this. There was also an american guy from San Diego who was born in Cambodia and speaks Cambodian.
Anyhow, a pretty uneventful night although i won some karma points i think: i was talking to the american cambodian dude..typical deal about being an Engineer, and too shy and whatever. So i gave him a little advice, and go to the bathroom, ready to leave the place (i didnt want to stay out all night...it had already cost too much with the sushi earlier in the day...). So when i get out, i see him talking with this pretty good looking chick that JUST walked into the bar.
Back at New Koyo, i ran into a guy who was there and also left early, albeit after me. He said "Yeah, it was all pretty dull, the only guy who probably got 'lucky' was that asian guy".

Wow, im good. Either that or he was faking.

Tsukiji Fish Market

Yay! Im back in business and got the blog publishing again!

Last night was another wacky night where a whole bunch of the New Koyo folks hung out. The Singaporeans are an awful friendly bunch and were dishing out the free liquor like madmen. Oh, in fact i did verify, someone was killed right by the hotel. Apparently there was some sort of queue for something and an argument erupted over some line jumping. It was between 2 homeless guys and apparently one stabbed the other in the neck. Yes, must remember not to mess with the homeless guys (aside from being awful dirty, and drunk theyre actually pretty harmless and even friendly at times).
Singaporean brought up a story of how he was once in South Africa (i guess his family moved around a lot) and got mugged twice in one night...the second was more of a nuissance than anything because he had no money to steal, but the 3 black guys had pulled him into a car and when they dropped him off (laughing as they did so at his already being mugged), he had no idea where he was and was in a completely drunken stupor to boot.

Ok, back to Tokyo. Umm...woke up at 4:30 this morning to attempt the fish market AGAIN. Timed it pretty well this time and managed to get on the very first subway train out. Arrived in time to see the rows upon rows of flash frozen tuna. Its almost unfathomable that they bring this much tuna into Japan every day! Its sort of interesting that as far as the large fish go, i couldnt find anything else other than tuna! Just warehouse after warehouse of tuna.

Things are organized into processing sorts of rows where ya got the dock, Tuna warehouses where they hold the wholesale auctions, and then the retail markets with some pre-processing facilities (band saws) in between.

Its pretty interesting to observe the wholesale guys inspect the tuna; they look at the flesh at the tail which has been cut off. Within the retail space is a frenzy of hand cart pullers, motorized pullers, shoppers, and workmen. Its amazing to see them filet a giant tuna. Other than tuna, theres also the whole slew of assorted fish ranging from halibut to lobsters to blowfish and prawns. Most of it was already dead, with some freshly so...others were perhaps packaged already. The heaps of styrofoam standing at the side of the market were also quite impressive.

So i followed an article written in the tourist paper about a place called Sushibun located just next to the market. There were fewer sushi places than i had expected..i suspect they cater to the market workers more so than to tourists. The places hours are 5:30AM to 2:30PM but when i walked in at 6:30 it looked like i was the first customer of the day as they were still setting up (a couple other guys trickled in after me).
The article said htis place had "the best sushi, at the price, or even any price" so i picked this as my opportunity to sample Japans best sushi. It cost 3675 yen for an omakase, top of the line tasting platter. It came with mostly tuna, maguro and a and a couple different types of toro. There was also uni, ika, tamago, what i think was hamachi, ebi, and mackerel. There was also maguro maki and some miso soup. Overall pretty damn good, except that i still cant stomach raw squid.
Afterwares, i returned to the market where the retail section had picked up a bit as many shoppers (from restuarants perhaps) where rushing through the aisles with their giant baskets doing their daily seafood shopping. Lots of the tuna had also been processed and there were now huge slabs of tuna for sale. There were even some unattended tuna (frozen and thawed) lying around. Hard to imagine these things going, at times, for over a million bucks. Back at the wholesale area, most of the tuna not destined for the retail area was being boxed up for shipment to other parts of japan.
Just next to the fish market is the wholesale produce market which is relatively dull.

Im now at yet another internet cafe in central tokyo waiting for things to open up.

The local tourist mag has a listing for the "Ninja cafe" where waiters dressed in Ninja costumes serve you coffee.....

Oh yeah, and i met my first Aussie-Taiwanese guy last night. From Melbourne. Actually, there were lots of Aussies last night.

Tokyo Revisited!

Actually, i arrived in Tokyo 2 days ago, but didnt get internet access till now. Its really amazing being all over the rest of japan then coming back because it's allowed me to realize that Tokyo really IS expensive. First of all, internet access which ive found for free in many places, runs for about 10 yen per minute. Thats twice the price Jhoppers was charging! Thus the 2 day delay whilst i searched out free internet.

The other expense is the subway, which at first glance, is rather cheap at an average of 190 yen per trip (Kyoto was about 230). The big difference is that in Tokyo, you need to take the subway to go just about anywhere vs being able to walk. Thus im now spending about 600 yen per day just to get around!

The hotel/guest house is also a lot dirtier/noisier than all the rest with the exception of the Uno house. I really miss JHoppers now...Though i DO get my own room, the walls are paper thin and i can hear people constantly walking around, openning and closing doors, and dragging their stuff around.

So, the bus trip was pretty uneventful other than being rather uncomfortable. For 8000 yen i expected a little more (The 1st class busses through SE asia were all way better). But it got me to Tokyo in 1 piece at 6:30 in the morning, so i cant complain.

1st day back in tokyo, i decided to try out the epitome of modern tokyo, Shinjuku. An estimated 2 million people go through Shinjuku station every day which is a lotta friggin people! The Tokyo Municipal building is pretty cool with a FREE observation lounge to peer over tokyo. The Pentax Forum is also in one of the nearby buildings which showcases many of PEntaxes products (even the huge telephoto lenses, and medium format cameras). Their OptiaS digital camera is pretty darn cool (3.2 MPixel, TINY, 3x optical zoom}). Canon has a showroom of its digital products in a nearby room, but, lacking the traditional film products, its not nearly as impressive. On the East side of Shiunjuku station is the entertainment district with a slew of Shopping malls, bars, and strip clubs.

From shinjuku, i went to central tokyo to go to the Tourist office and pick up some info. central tokyo contains an amazing labrynth of halls connecting various subway stations.

1st night in Hotel New Koyo, i met 2 other americans and 2 singaporeans, and 1 IRish guy. Also bumped into a German guy i had met at Uno house in Kyoto. The 2 singaporeans were dishing out free JD, as well as smirnoff and absolut. 1 american is from Nashville, TN, the other from Minneapolis, MN. We went out later that night to a bar i had gone to before. The American chick from MN was annoying as hell and had to stop a couple times to eat on top whining half the time and trying to trip me another. Needless to say, many of the hotel guests are now avoiding her..

Next day, i visited Harajuku to check out the free internet cafe where i am now. Unforutnately, they require ID which i normally dont carry around with me. Soooo, i took a stroll through yoyogi park, famous for its weekend visitors, and also through the Meijijingu shrine. Afterwards, I took the JR to the british Council which had free internet in Kyoto, so i figured id give it a try.

Welp, they DO have free internet in Tokyo, BUT they dont allow you to do email. Nevertheless, i did some browsing and at least was able to get some useful information before leaving to go to the nearby Tokyodome. It looked like horse racing day at the Tokyodome which i whizzed past on into tokyodome city which is an amusement park with shopping and restaurants. They have one pretty good looking roller coaster along with a few other regular rides. The roller coaster cost 1000 yen, or you could get a pass valid for all the rides for 4000 yen.

Back at the hotel, i ran into a few of the same folks, going out for another night (I declined) and the American chick going out to the White Stripes concert. At 6000 yen and being out in Shibuya (clear across Tokyo from Ueno), i declined.
Actually, i went to bed REALLY early to make it to the famous Tsukiji Fish market....

I woke up several times in the night from all the normal ruckus that goes on (and some really loud spanish guys). One interesting incicent (aside from someone mistaking my room for theirs...good thing i locked the door) was when this guys was talking to a girl in the hall. I was half asleep but i coulda sworn i heard: "Hey, did you see all the people hanging out down there?" "Yeah, whats going on?" "Somebody was killed, murdered out in front there!" "What, really?" "Yeah, it just happend, right in front there"..

Hmm...i have yet to verify, but it sounded pretty freaky. One thing about the area the hotel's in is that there are lots of homeless people who are drunk half the time. Though they arent violent, they do make for a grubby type of atmosphere. The other difference i notice about tokyo is that people spit here...a lot and in the street! bleh.

So today i woke up at 4AM to go out to the fish market. The wholesale auction suppsoedly ends at 5:30 however, the subway doesnt open till just after 5. And it takes about 30 mins for the subway plus walking. doh. On top of that, today was a frickin holiday so there were about a total of 10 people in the market, 5 of which were tourists! On top of THAT, it was windy and rainy! Tomorrow...

So, here i am in the internet cafe (at least its free...) watching the rain....getting sleeeepy..

Last Day in Kyoto

Laid pretty low today and just did a little shopping and more browsing. Its amazing to revist some places and find out there are whole sections that i missed from before! On the whole, a pretty slow day.

Im pretty excited about going to Tokyo, even though ive been there before and even though others bag on Tokyo...ya really gotta be there to see how huge the place is. It's like 10 major cities slapped together...and then just next to it is Yokohama which is the 2nd largest city in japan!

Oh ya, also, visit Mr Aki's web site. Hes an avid motorcycle fan and has motorbiked through Europe, across Asia, and back to Japan:
Mr Aki's site

Coincidentally, there was a german couple in here a couple days ago who were also motorbiking...theyve already gone across europe and russian and are going to go through SE asia to Australia.

Night out

Went out last night with Yoshi to his favorite izakaya. These places are cool because theres nothing really like them in the states. They have basically all counter seats with the people taking orders and serving food from the center. We had to wait for about 5-10 minutes before we could sit down...with so many people, it was amazing to see all the different sorts of food ranging from tempura to sashimi, to both cooked and raw lobster. We had sashimi (not really, i forgot what its called but its very lightly cooked on the outside), vegetable tempura, and oysters. With a couple beers thrown in it cost 3200 yen total. not too bad, but a little high to do every night.

We hit a few bars afterwards....the Pig and Whistle, an Irish style pub. Hamad, the Pakistani guy is pretty funny cuz hes very aggresive when it comes to women. Yoshi explained that in muslim countries, you cant act that way around the local women so theyre a little suppressed. So in the end he ended up meeting one korean and oen taiwanese lady in the Pig and Whistle, both of whom have been in Japan for a while...apparently the Taiwanese lady married a Japanese guy, has a daughter, and is on the whole quite unhappy. This seems to be a common theme....

Oh yeah, we were also hanging out with yet another brit who works for BAE (apparently the 2nd largest defense contractor in the world after lockheed???) who was able to take a year off from work to go around the world. Lucky folks. Its amazing how few people from the states are here and how many Brits there are!

On the whole, a pretty decent abeit expensive night. In general, going out costs waaay too much! But i guess its that way in the states too....

Nabe

Last night was probably one of my better nights in Japan! The owner of the guest house invited me and a couple of other guests for a nabe style dinner. Its basically like Hot Pot, but they use a really big clay pot and a dashi based broth. There were all sorts of vegetables, chicken chunks as well as chicken meatballs, fish, and mushrooms. mmm mm. We started at 8 and ended eating at around 11.

Before that, Akisan also invited me to the sake store where we did a little sake tasting. He bought a pretty nice 1.8L bottle (standard size for sake!) and we finished it off pretty easily during dinner. Another guest brought some plum wine and we finished that off too! Overall it was a very nice dinner/social gathering with lotsa great food and sake.

Heres a picture of Mr Aki and me that his wife took on his phone:

Kibune

So, last i wrote i was supposed to go to sumo that evening.

I was in the process of asking Mr. Aki (the Jhoppers owner) which bus to take. "Isnt it at 6?" he asked. No, its at nine, as i showed him my ticket...."This is nine in the morning!"...."Crap!"

Talk about flashbacks. For those of you who havent heard of the story, a few eyars ago i got tickets for No Doubt/Black Eyed Peas...4. I got some other tickets to for another concert too (i cant recall) that were before that concert. In the end, i ended up remembering the days all wrong and missed the concert by a day. Blah.

Luckily, I bought the cheapest tickets. So ended up out 2500 yen for nothing.

On a brighter note, Mr Aki invited me to a nabe style dinner. I guess its basically dinner cooked in a big iron pot. Normally, its pretty expensive to eat this in the restaurants, but pretty cheap when you make it yourself (or have a friend make it for you!).

Also that night, Yoshi (i always thing of the Mario Carts character) came back from Nagasaki and we went to an Izakaya in Gion. He knew the waitress, so we got some free frozen sake (sorta of a new special sake which is kept very cold, and it sort of gelatinizes once it is poured into a decanter). It tasted more or less like regular sake...but i must confess, this is the first sake ive had in japan. We also had edamame, Sashimi, and a fish head. The Sashimi was pretty good. It included Uni which ive tried once in the States and was completely repulsed at the time. However this time, it tasted really good! I think the stuff they get in the states aint so fresh....
The fish head was OK...mostly tasting like Soy.

Afterwards, we headed to our favorite bar (Ing) which was uneventful except that the Owner was wearing a Joy Division (one of my old favorites) shirt. Apparently his wife made it for him (i didnt ask further) and he proceeded to put their Substance (not to be confused with the New Order albumn of the same name) album in. Unfortunately, Yoshi had to take off early to head to Nagoya so we werent there long enough for it to play. However, the owner promised a "Joy Division Party" the next time i go back. Cool.

So in the end, it turned out to be a pretty good night despite losing out entirely on the Sumo.

Today i went out to Kibune and id a litle hike through the mountains to Kurama. Its a pleasant hike through a shirne and Temple area. Its amazing how many of these types of trails there are so close to Kyoto. I finished it off with a jaunt to the Kurama Onsen which was a little expensive at 1100 yen for the outdoor bath which has a pretty good view of more mountains while so soak in the tub. Came back to central Kyoto and got on the wrong bus! Actually, it went to the right destination, but was a different company (how confusing..they have Kyoto City Bus, and the plain Kyoto Bus) so i couldnt use by pre-paid card (I spent a minute trying to get the machine to take my card...i think the driver got a little impatient). Ohwell, it was the same price so no big deal.

Kinkakuji Temple

Ok, sorta running outta stuff to see in Kyoto so i finally broke down and went to the Kinkakuji temple. This is one of the most popular temples in kyoto because of its famous golden temple which is 3 stories high, the top 2 of which are layered with gold foil. I took the opportunity to bike there rather than take the bus, and also visited the neighboring ryonji and ninaji temples but both cost yen so i decided not to go in.
Despite the hordes of crowds, kinkakuji temple turned out to be better than i thought and as added bonus, there was a geisha strolling through the temple path too.
Theyre sorta cool cuz they actually pose for the pictures and they also have their own unique way of posing. It really is rather doll like. Sorta like the japanese dolls you see in the glass cases.

Also visited the Kyoto Botanical gardens which are pretty huge consisting of the usual japanese garden stuff, but also including a european garden, a little vegetable/practical plants garden, and a couple forested areas. A pretty good deal for 200 yen.

I can say for sure that i dont like riding a bike in japan. at least in the cities. Back in Okayama, it wasnt too bad cuz it was in the country side sorta, but out here in kyoto its pretty darn nerve racking weaving through pedestrian traffic and oncoming bikers. I think i will exchange my free 1 day bike ticket for some laundry detergent.

Had a couple Singaporean girls check in to jhoppers last night. 1 actually works for HP. Pretty interesting cuz one of them got a a huge argument with a Brit who just checked in (teaching english, been here for like 3 years, 25 yrs old) about various japanese topics. People need to chill.

Takao

Only 1 hr away (by bus) is the Takao area of Kyoto through which the Kyotaki river runs. It consists of several temples, a small little town (Kyotaki) and a nice gorge. Overall, despite that there was a constant downpour, this was a great getaway from the hub-bub of Central Kyoto. I think i maybe saw about 6 tourists during my 2.5 hr hike. Dunno if its cuz the place was far out from Kyoto or because it was raining but whatever the case, it was another good shift in pace. It reminded me a little of the Iya valley with deep river gorges with mists rising and some spindly looking bridges crossing the river at various points.
I also visited the Jingo temple which has a nice view of the valley beneath. Youre supposed to be able to buy these disks that you can throw down into the valley to help rid yourself of bad karma but the vendors were apparently on vacation...

Went out last night with a Pakistani, Malaysian, a Brit and a Japanese native who apparently used to work in San Jose for KLA/Tencor. Had a pretty nice night out on the town and the Japanese dude gave me a bottle of Sochu! Score! Only prob is that its a glass bottle...gonna have to drink it before i leave Kyoto methinks..

Gimmee back my dollars!

Slow day today as i just did a small walk around a bunch of free temples and gardens and the food market area.

Looking to change more money soon..however im holding out cuz the dollar is at 3 yr lows vs the Yen! ARRGG! why couldnt it wait!! Just one month! Weird, cuz the Japanese on the whole dont want a stronger yen in order to help facilitate exports. Traditionally, the government usually intervenes to prevent the yen from getting too high. However, they have a horrendous track record of actually accomplishing anything. The US, at least as stated by the George W a few months back has a strong dollar policy...however who knows whats going on there.

Ohwell..more ramen and instant noodles for me i guess....

On a related note, I hear that Argentina is the place to go these days. Nice, modern, latin american coutry whos economy went to hell..makes for a cheap getaway.

Argentina Travel Guide

Arashiyama

Today, i moved back to my original guest house, jhoppers which is located 10 min south of the station. Hopefully,ill get a little more sleep...

Arashiyama is an area in west Kyoto that is a little north of the Katsura Imperial Villa. You have to make prior reservations for the villa, so i had to make mine at 3 today cuz everything else was full. So i took the time to explore Arashiyama a little, checking out the Tenryuji temple which is known for its nice zen garden. Ran into a whole lotta Taiwanese tourists there (cuz i could partly understand what they were saying). The garden was fairly nice, although i didnt quite understand the zen aspect of it (i always thing of sand gardens for somereason), but it was a nice and big garden. 1 pictures worth.

Slightly more interesting (and free) was the area surrounding the temple. There were trails winding throughout the area through bamboo forests, past traditional buildings, and then finally along the Hozu river. They actually have a train line that runs along the river called the "romatic train sagano line". So i hiked along the river for some time and then realized a little late that the villa was a train ride +20 min walk away! So i booked it to the train station, and arrove at the station, 10 min before the tour started (ie still needing the 20 min walk...) So i took a cab for 640 yen who got me there in time. Taking a cab was sorta interesting; it being my first time. They control the passenger side door by remote control so you neither need to open nor close the door (i still tried to out of habit). The cab driver also spoke and read no english, so even when i pointed to the destination on my map given to me by the imperial villa people, he still had no clue where i wanted to go! Luckily, the taxi stand operator dude knew what i was saying.

Katsura Villa was contructed by the son of the emperor of the time and unlike the imperial palace which had burned down 8 times(!), the villa is nearly in its original form.
The villa consists of a garden (naturally), many tea pavillions, and the main residence. Overall pretty nice, especially considering the admission price: free!

On my way back via bus, i met a Danish lady in her 60s who was also trying to get back. Amazingly (cuz shes danish!) she was sort of lost and almost waited at the wrong bus stop (the one coming from the station....). So, from her i learned that she is a Danish teacher to foreign immigrants into Denmark, mostly from Pakistan. Apparently Denmark has had quite a few immigration problems with refugees and is now tightening the borders a bit.

...
So last night i got the brunt of the "hey, you got a new governor" blab. There were 2 newly arrived Germans, a Scotsman and a new Canadian that arrived the night before. So this was my first experience with the whole America bashing by the Canadians. The guy was relatively young at 21 yrs old but surprisingly, he was from Vancouver. Anywho, he was actually quite level headed and did concede that the canadians were basically totally reliant on the US...then he want onto bashing the Quebec province (French elitests apparently). Overall, pretty entertaining. I learned that ontop of the US being the target of so many jokes/critisicms (cuz theyre such a huge target in general, not cuz of Bush or now, Gropinator), Californians are thought of as being rather 'special'. I helped clarify, at least, the difference between Los Angeles and the rest of Calfiornia...
...

Data point in the log:

So the 2 germans, the scotsman, the canadian and i were drinking beer. I had 1.5L (500ml cans), the Canadian had about the same, the Germans had 2.5-3L and the Scotsman had 3L....though the Scotsman started a lot later (he bought 2.5 to start!).

...

I still cant get over how soo many people in the Uno house are either 1) going to work in Japan or 2) transiting to other countries for severl months more of travel.

I found out the American girl from Boston U, whose traveling by herself btw, is only 19. And people were worried about me...

...
Nother tidbit about Denmark. They give graduating high school student cheap travel loans (just like student loans) which is why you find so many young danes traveling around...
In the end, i think they maybe travel TOO much...either that or they get high TOO much. Christiana (sp?) is the name of an island in the middle of Copenhagen where its implicitly allowed to buy and smoke. Reclaimed from the Navy, apparently the older folk want to make it into a golf course, but the younger folk are holding out.

Geishas and Sumo

Sooo, hows that election going? I hope Californians show the world that they are a little more sensible than the rest of the country in electing their leaders....(lots of talk about this in the hostels...internationally, arnie as governor is quite a joke) They had an article out here about last minute mudslinging and in big headlines, they called him the "Gropinator" and had this enlarged picture with the text wrapped around it of him sticking his hand out reaching (actually just to shake someones hand it looks like, but who knows?)

Did another little walk today from the Heian Shrine (one HUGE shrine) through a small little mall along the canal (kyoto has lots of canals and 1 river) where i ate some cheap octopus balls (not those kind) and okonomiyaki, then all the way down to the train station to get some info, then down on to Gion where i saw some Geishas/Maiko skittering across the streets. They looked amazingly busy. I also was lucky enough to see a little advertisement in the tourist magazine for a sumo match that is coming up on the 15th. Cheapest tickets are 2500 yen for unreserved 2nd floor seats but all in all not too bad.

Oh yeah, almost forgot that i toured the former Imperial palace yesterady! It was the first tour ive had and it was pretty good, describing the 3 different forms of architecture used (The oldest form had no tatami and the doors opened vertically and were held by hooks, the latest form uses tatami and sliding doors). There were also some nice gardens and they had the special chairs in which the emperor sits for his coronation. Turns out that the last emperor coronated in the Imperal palace was Showa (?) (his name now that hes dead) or Hirohito. The current one was coronated in Tokyo and had the special chairs airlifted there.

Interesting fellow popped into the Uno House yesterday from Denmark. Hes like 60+ years old and is a writer. Apparently he writes travel books and has been almost everywhere! Hes doing Japan, China, and Korea for 3 months. Has some pretty funky stories about Pot in Copenhagen (its everywhere), pot in columbia (police bribery), getting held up in Uruguay and taking a run for it, being a bartender in Israel, and multitudes of other things i forgot. Hearing about all these places makes the list of places I want to go to longer and longer and longer (except for uruguay)...aigh..

On my way to yet another walking trail and stumbled across Kyoto University which is where i am now. Looks pretty nice so far albeit a little tiny.

philosophers trail

The philosophers trail is supposed to be one of the better mainstream walks in kyoto. A famed philosopher (sorry, cant remember the name!) used to walk this path all the time while he was 'philosphizing'. On the whole, i wasnt too impressed by the cars/bikes/mopeds zooming by. It did however, run by a series of temples and shrines. I went into the first big temple (ive restricted myself to paying for at most 1 temple a day to help both reduce costs and prevent temple overload) Ginkaku-ji which had a nice zen garden. Visited a few other free temples and shrines but on the whole there isnt very much else along this trail. There was an interesting portion which was part of an extended hike which followed an aqueduct from nearby lake Biwa. The path the goes up to a little shrine which miraculously had only 2 other tourists. The shrine itself was ok, but the surrounding area, being pretty far up into the mountain, was very nice.
I then took this little trail along the mountain to what i thought would take me back down to the bottom of the shrine trail.

Well...i was mistaken about that, ending up in the back of a cemetary (with a locked gate)...i then went back up the mountain, and kept proceeding along it and miraculously ended up at a pretty neat subtemplate with a monk chanting sutras and a thin waterfall flowing by the alter. From there, the trail ended up above the aqueduct where i was earlier in the day. Phew! Had me a little nervous, but this was the first time ive been in japan with neither
buildigs nor people around me (didnt run into a single person till the monk).

Today was a little less exciting, rainig for the first half then remaining gloomy the rest. I visited higshi hongan-ji temple which i belive is reputed to have the largest wooden structures in the world...and it looks like it. They mustuve torn down an entire forest to build it! They also have a sample of a rope they used to hoist the beams up which was made of human hair. Oh, one other nice thing was that this temple was FREE. There were also some nice galleries further in and even a very nice auditorium where a monk was giving lectures...on what, i had no clue, but he had a fair sized audience.

Thats about all for today, ive also finallized my schedule deciding to return to Tokyo on the 20th, leavining me with 13 more days here in kyoto and 2 weeks in Tokyo before i come back home.
.........
More interesting tidbits. So i was reading some japanese news. In osaka, apparently theyve been having problems with people jumping off bridges into the river! This has become a ritual that fans of the Hanshin Tigershave been doing more frequently on their road to the championships (i think theyre still going through the playoffs now). Police are having problems preventing people from doing it cuz its not really a crime...but 1 dude apparently died so theyve setup cameras to try and discourage people from continuing.

Another interesting tidbit...Japan is trying to get Mt Fuji registered as a UN World Heritage site, however its been rejected so far because of the environment problems its caused. Apparently lots of people climb Mt fuji every year..enough to make it a stinky trip up due to the fecal matter these avid climbers release on the way up! The volume is so great that theyve devised a new contraption to deal witht he problem..toilets with built in incinerators!
......

The place im staying at keeps getting more and more backpackers coming through. It was fun to start (backpackers love to party), but i think ill be returning back to my old place for the remainder of my stay in Kyoto.

Kyoto madness

Phew, I finally found an Internet cafe and am now munching on my 500 yen cheescake as i type this.

So, last i left things, i was in Oosaka. I still had 2 days left on my rail pass, so i went off to Hikone on a whim cuz the guide didnt say to much about it. There isnt too much out in Hikone, however the guide lady was pretty friendly and the castle here wasnt too bad either. It was another "original" and also included some nice garden within the castle walls. There was also a spiffy Okinawan dance even some school kids were putting on that made for some nice afternoon entertainment. Otherwise, not too much else except another one of those Traditional quarters, however now that ive been through Kyotos Gion district im not sure why people would go to all these other place to see "traditional" neighborhoods. After Hikone, i stoped in Otsu which is about 10 min. outside of Kyoto. Again, not too much here although i may return as theyre supposed to have a festival on the 7th and 8th. Otsu bascially offers some pretty good views of Lake Biwa which is Japans largest freshwater body of water. There also sport the worlds longest fountain which is built out in the lake and turns on in the evening. Its computer controlled, changing everyso often together with different lighting effects. I also tried a Japanese omlet (I dont know what these things are called in Japanese) which ive seen everywhere. Its basically just an omlet with mostly rice and a little meat inside, and them a dollop of souce on the outside. Not bad, but not worth the 900 yen it cost!

Oh yeah, dont think i mentioned this yet, but for the first 4 days in Kyoto ive been staying in this place called Jhoppers which is pretty cheap at 2500/yen per night. I met a few other travlers there, a couple of them being from Utah. It turned out the guy (they were husband and wife) was from Walnut Creek...weird how i keep running into these folks.

More interesting, I move to this other place called "Uno House" part because jhoppers was booked out for a couple days and part because this place is dirt cheap at 1650 yen/night. Well....the place definitely looks what its worth. Even compred to the drty place in Hiroshima (that place however was a pricey 3500 yen), this place is TINY and dirty. Its a HUGE backpacker place too. None of the other places ive stayed at even compares. I guess its a combination of being the first entry in the guide, the cheapest place, and also being located in Kyoto. So the first night i was there, I met a Canadian whose been in Seoul for a year and now wants to teach in Japan, a girl from SF who is doing a 6 month jaunt through asia (but seemed a little clueless about asian culture...claiming to have had the best Gyoza in Japan because the guide said it was, and that the chinese got potstickers from the japanese), a Swiss guy who likes to drink, a Japanese couple who are part of a japanese language club (and who ever knew a few words of Taiwanese), and 3 kiwis (New Zealanders) two of which are teaching english in yamaguchi and the 3rd of which plays bass and drums (who unfortunately drank a bit one night and ended up losing his passport and everything else important....somewhere IN the hostel. yikes!)
So on top of the interesting people, the place itself is a little interesting having signs like "No roasting cockroaches, 5000 yen fine", and "No peeking in shower, 5000 yen fine" scattered around.

Ok, so back to events. The next day was the last day my rail pass was valid, i so decided to give my feet a little rest and took a little day trip to Shinagawa shich is the first new Shinkansen station Japan has opened in many years. I didnt quite realize how close it was to Tokyo. In fact, its basically a district of Tokyo. So 2.5 hours out there, i looked around Shinagawa station (yup, its pretty brand spanking new!) and the city area (some canals..lots of office buildings, some shopping), and then went to Shibuya to have some Ramen (My first and favorite ramen place). After that, I took hopped on the non-reserved Shinkansen line thinking "how full could it be, being only 1 station away from the starting point". Well, it was PACKED. Luckily, i only ended up standing for 30 min, before i deftly dove for a seat before a high schooler could reach it.

That night i went out to dinner with the kiwis. We spun around in circles a few times, but ended up making it to this Lebanese place. It was more or less Meditteranean food, not bad, but a bit pricey. 800 yen, the cheapest on the menu , got me this small pita thing stuffed with chicken, a drink, and some potato chips.

That night, a huge gang went out to go drinking (amamzingly, i declined) and i hung out with the Japanese couple and 2 new French dudes. The Japanese crew were itneresting as they told me more about their language club..basically, they get native speakers to read a story and the club members listen to it all the time and even memorize it. Its a fixed story so they know basically whats going on, but they dont stuffy the grammar and dont stufy individual words, the threory being that just by listening to it and having some sort of context, you'll learn it through osmosis or something. So i sat there listening as the Japanese guy went off in reciting the passages in Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Korean, Russian and arabic! Its made a little funny cuz the name of heir club is called hippo. and the passage dos something like "Im a hippo. Youre a hippo. Were ALL hippos!".

Didnt speak much much to the french people but they seemed nice enough. One of them was actually Haitian, but was adopted at an early age and grew up in Lyon and now wants to become a Japanese teacher (to other French).

Ok, gotta run and see if i can squeeze a shower in. The showers at this place are setup really weird (not so much privacy...i was half expecting one of the new french guys to walk in on the chick taking a shower). And people also all seem to want to take a shower at the same time. I pre-paid for a week (I thought it was suspicious when the receptionist asked "are you sure you want to do that? If you leave early we no refund...", but i think after that ill return to Jhoppers. 850 more yen, but way cleaner and cosier and overall still cheap!

Oh yeah, forgot todays events. Went to Nijo castles which was unique because it's keep is gone, however it stil has its palace (none of the other castles still had theirs) which was the palace of the former shogun so it makes it a litle extra special. Afterwards, i wanderd through the downtown area to Gion which is the traditional ward and where Geishas are reputed to be walking around. I think i saw 2 Maikos(?), geishas in training. There was also 1 big shrine, multiple temples which i didnt bother going in (maybe later....), and many gardens. Very nice. Lots and lots of shrines, some right smack in the middle of the shopping districts.

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Oh, response to liz:
okokok, not all the guys are UGLY. I think they just stick out more...ever see an asian guy with a 6 inch afro?? The things they go through...the school guys are going through the baggy pants phase. Actually, now that i think about it, there were some rickshaw pullers who seemed to be doing pretty good with the female clientele....

Oosaka!

Did Osaka for the whole day today. Nice city except that their signs for the tourist information center in the train station are WRONG! The guide didnt heelp much either saying that "people seem to have a hard time finding the information center" and "its in the SE corner of the station". Oh course, when ya get off the train and your underground in the station, its a little difficult to figure your bearings...

So i eventually found the office and got a nice English map of the city. First visited the Umeda Sky building which is one of the newest architecturally interesting buildings in Osaka. Basically its two buildings connected with a funky donut at the top with some misplaced escalators that are glass so you can look down as you ascend to the rooftop.
It DID offer some pretty spectacular views of Osaka. The weather was very clear with just a little bit of smog on the horizon. Oh yeah, i also saw a guy peeing in he park on my way up (Surprisingly, this is only the 3rd time ive seen this)!
I also got perhaps the best deal so fars of the trip, a nice Tonkatsu bento for only 400 yen. It had a small chunk of fish, 2 types of pickles, a small bit of string beans, spaghetti, half a hard boiled egg, and some onions in some sweet sauce, and a hunk of rice. mmm...mmmm..

Afterwards, I paid a visit to the castle, Osaka-jo. Its a reconstruction, so i didnt bother to go in. The surrounding area however were quite nice, being a park with some benches and with a few of the other castle structures (like the gates and walls) open for free viewing.

Next stop was the Aquarium. Im a sucker for aquariums and despite the steep cost of 2000 yen, I couldnt pass the Osaka aquarium which boasts having the former largest tank in the world (I think the new tank in Monterey is now the largest...). I dont know if it was quite worht 2000 yen, but it wasnt bad. It basically had a funky spiral layout so you end up seeing the SAME tanks 3-4 times, each at a different depth. But the tanks were pretty large and the humungous tank they have is at the center containing a spiffy manta ray (which loved feeding on the divers bubbles...more on this later), and a whale shark, along with a few other open water fish (tuna and some other large fish). They also had tanks with penguins, dolphins, sea lions/harbor seals, coral, etc...
As an added bonus....there were divers in the tanks apparently scrubbing the rocks and i swear it looked like one of them was manually vacuuming the rocks with a suction tube and a shovel! The japanese sense of cleanliness is apparently quite pervasive. Following the Monterey Bay aquariums lead (or maybe the other way around?), there was a jellyfish exhibit at the end. Overall, not bad and again, a good change of pace from the typical temples/castles.

To end it off, i went through the entertainment/night time district which. There was the Ebisu-bashi bridge where all the young-uns hang out to look cool, and the numerous blinking lights of pachinko parlors as well as restaurants, eateries, etc, etc. mostly reminding me of Shibuya in Tokyo.

Kyoto!

In Kyoto now! Actually, I got here 2 days earlier as I decided that the other couple places in Shikoku werent worth staying in and just jumped to Kyoto early.

So backing up a bit, I was last in Matsuyama, and met this dude named Tomoki in the hostel. Nice guy, really into Hip-Hop and American movies and in the end it seems like end really like to live in LA. He was touring Shikoku on his motorcycle (Harley i think) and was from Fukuoka. Anywho, take a gander at his web page here. Yes, its in Japanese, but if you click on just the right spot(s), you might get to the section with his lion rabbit (very fluffy!) and his friend praire dog.

Leaving Mastuyama, I went off to the Iya valley which is famous for its deep gorges and vine bridges. Unfortunately, the guide is VERY fuzzy about the details in the area and the youth hostel was also all booked out! So...i took a the train out to Oboke which is a very minor train station with one poor sap working both the ticket window and the gate. Upon getting there i stuck my main pack in a locker and started walking....amazingly, i made the right turns cuz i ended up stumbling across the rock museum and finally, the boat cruise place the guide mentions. The boat makes its leisurely way down, and then back up the river, through the gorge which was a pleasant diversion from the city, temples, buses, and whatnot. On the way back to the train station, i noticed the usual vending machines with an unusual twist: one of them actually sold JUGS of beer. 3L cost 2000 yen if i remember right (sounds a tad expensive).

Ok, so after the Iya valley, i took the train back up to Okayama, then Shinkansen'd it into Kyoto where i am now!

Since my rail pass is still valid, Im using Kyoto as a base to visit all the surrounding stuff. With the Shinkansen, the radius is actually quite huge...

First stop was Himeji which is the mother of all castles in japan (still standing at least..). Its very impressive and also considered an "original". I think everyone has a definition of "original" which is how so many castles are labeled as the only "original" this or that. Himeji was actually restored a couple times, but the interior is still all done in the traditional wooden style (opposed to ferro-concrete) which is how it still retains the "original" label. Many of the supporting buildings have also been restored/mainted making Himeji one of the most complete castles around. This is also where ive perhaps seen the greatest density of non-asian tourists.

After Himeji, which took about 3 hours, I stopped in Kobe. Theres not too much here besides a few scant earthquake reminders, a nice harbor area, and really expensive kobe steak. I saw a restaurant that had something like a steak salad for 7000 yen. I passed. Kobe beef is actually pretty interesting looking though and looks fairly different that regular meat. The meat is...sort of speckeled with fat! It actually LOOKs really good...maybe if i get a chance, ill splurge in Tokyo...
Oh yeah, funny thing. I stopped in bar before heading back to Kyoto (called Ryans!) and there were some brits in there. The news came on about Schwartzeneger leading the polls and the only comment was "thats fucked up". I think we will seriously lose any once of international respect if the Terminator makes it into office with Bush still President...blah.

Ok, today I made it out to Nara which is famous because it was the Capitol of Japan for a short stint. Its famous for its Daibutsu (big Buddha)which had tonnes of screaming elementary school kids swarming the grounds....Lots and lots of temples in Nara, some nice gardens and parks, and, like Miyajima, some very tame deer (Theyre apparently considered messagers of the gods!).

Not much to else. Met a friendly French dude who is a CS phd guy giving a presentation at a virtual reality conference in Osaka. We had a freindly chat about 3D stuff and i tried to convince him to go into the games market!

Something i noticed in Kobe was that the Japanese love their Crepes (crepes agogo style) and their Gelato. Funny cuz right before i left, i went to Mondo Gelato in Bezerkley which was my first experience with a "real" gelatoria(?). Here, they're everywhere!

Oh yeah, i also broke down here in Kyoto and had my first McDonalds (the smell of grease in the air was just too much). Out here in Kyoto, i had a Soft Serve for 100 yen (This is actually cheaper than anywhere else in Japan ive seen), and a Filet-o-fish for 220 (special deal). Not bad. Big mac was only around 250 yen.

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Side note...the guys out here might be more fashionable...but some are darn UUUGGLY!

I saw a business man dude with a LV briefcase too..that was weird.

Shikoku

Wheee! In Mastuyama, not to be confused with Mastumoto (place with the castle) and Mastushima (place with the little islands) which is on the island of Shikoku. Weather was perfect today without a cloud in the sky.

So...Matsuyama is famous for....you guessed it: having one of the oldest Onsens in Japan! The spring is supposedly 3000 years old and the story goes that it was found by a bird that hurt its leg, stuck its leg in the water and then was miraculously healed! Sooo, this one was a little weird in that the bath is on the main floor, but you go upstairs to get this yukata which is like a robe. But then the guys change upstairs in the shared room (not naked, but down to underwear), but then the girls just do things normally and pickup their robe upstairs and then go downstairs to change. Weird double standard, no? But then again, i guess the guys here in japan really dont care too much since they even had a lady (very old) working in the bath area where all the nekkid guys are. So apparently this water in the onsen is alkaline and is good for "rheumatism, neuralgia, and recovery from exhaustion. After soaking in the water, the skin becomes smooth and soft and so it is good for the complexing as well." Outside of the spa area they also had a hot spring foot soak for free which you could use while watching their wacky clock do its thing (sorta like a cuckoo clock).

Mastuyama also has a....you can probably guess this one too, a castle! Its perched on top of a fairly high hill (high enough that they made a chairlift for it) and is more or less an original castle. The definition of "original" is used somewhat loosely as the castle apparently burned down in the 1600's, and then again in 1784 due to lightning. It got rebuilt sometime in the 1800's, and then restored in the 1900's...Soo...its not quite original, but it does maintain the traditional wood construction as opposed to "rebuilt" castles which are ferro-concrete.

Also saw Ishite-Ji which is one of 88 temples that form a loop of temples on Shikoku related to the Shingon sect of Buddhism. Pilgrims basically visit all 88...Used to be quite a feat to do in the old days, but the pigrims i saw today (distinguished by their traditional white garb) had a bus.

Thats about it for mastuyama. I visited the usual shopping arcades and malls which were not really any different than any others. Those basement floors with all the food are pretty damn amazing (probably because i'm feaking hungry!)

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Another note about bike riding. Dunno if i mentioned this before, but one huge difference about bike riding in Japan is that unlike bike in the US that share the street with cars, bikes in Japan share (loosely speaking) the sidewalk with the pedestrians! This took some getting used to when i was riding a bike. Of course, I kept riding in the street which was a lot easier anyways ( I saw a bike whose rider must not have been paying attention cuz the bike was still in the Canal!). This actually worked quite well at first cuz the cars, being relatively polite, didnt mind. But i kept having to check and re-check the map and in the end i had no idea where the heck i was! Then i realized....all the freakin signs were on the sidewalks (often on only 1 side of the street for the path i was riding). So bikes also dont have a "proper" side of the street to ride on either.....

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Arrgg! I dunno whats triggered it, but im getting bitten more and more by the squitos out here! Everything was fine for the first couple of week and now im all friggin itchy! The guide book didnt mention anything about bringin repellant!

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Hmm, saw some fake samurai at the castle today. No ninjas yet though. I will ask around and try to get a picture of one before i return.

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Oh yeah, was wandering around looking for a convenience store for some cheap food and came across some sort of "neon" (the only words i could read) quarter. It was totally dead, but i think this old lady was trying to pimp out some ladies. I told her i didnt understand Japanese, then she started making these hand gestures...

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I got one mean Teva tan.

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Youth hostel im staying at is a little expensive at 3340 Yen. But its amazingly nice with a restaurant (that sells instant noodle that i might need to take advantage of), a room with a sink and writing table, free internet, free corn snacks, and tea! Oooo, and a motorized foot masager. Ah, this is the life...

Biking in Japan

Today the weather was pretty nice, so i did the Kibi bike route as recommended in the guide. The route entails taking the train to an outlying area of okayama, then renting a bike at the station where you then follow a recommended bike path to Soja where you can then drop the bike off. Pretty nice change of pace to tour the area on the bike. It was sort of a weird area cuz it was almost rural in the sense that there were rice paddies everywhere. Half the bike ride is pretty much in the middle of rice paddies. Theres a few temples and shrines along the way, as long as some people burial mounds, however I visited a major one that supposedly looks like a keyhole from high up, but it was more or less just a hill with lots of spiders and mosquitoes! (Im starting to get eaten alive out here! )

So about midway through the trip i discovered "hey, they gave me a girls bike!" Then, after observation for the last 4 or so hours, i discovered all the bikes out here are girls bikes (with the bar angled down from the steering column as opposed to straight across). Other thing i noticed is that many bikes are in fact locked in a way. Basically theres this little bar that can be slid in between the spoke preventing someone from just riding away with your bike. Its pretty subtle though...

So the bike ride was about 15km and took about 3 hours to finish. I then took the train to Kurasaki which is famous for it historical quarter in which it preserves a number of old building styles (which have all basically been converted to souvenir shops or restaurants). Some parts were pretty nice, but on the whole, there was a lot of construction work going on, and on top of the cars sometimes parked next to the buildings, the spider web of electrical lines running about all the buildings detracted from the effect of an "old historical town".

Returned back to Okayama by about 2 and, with some time to kill, ventured out to the Sega "Joypolis" and a budget mall next to it. Nothing all too thrill, so im just chilling now at an internet cafe.

Ah, thats right. I didnt go over yesterdays event....lessee. Visited Okayama castle which is called "Crow" Castle because of its black exterior. Didnt go in considering the number of castles ive already been to. Right next to it are the Koraku-en gardens which are 1 of the big 3 gardens in Japan (one other being in Mito and the other in Kanagawa). It was a pretty nice garden with just about everything...lawn, forest type settings, fruit trees, ponds, even had an aviary where they kept some birds (egrets?) for display in the pond.

After that, i just wandered through the entertainment districs (amazingly similar to all the others..gaudy flashing lights, multi storied, etc) and the outdoors shopping arcades.

Met a swiss guy in the Hostel named Stephan who was pretty interesting. Hes an avid traveler and did a 2 yr round the world trip about 3 yrs ago (he was going through the ME during 9/11) and it was his first time in Japan. So he was a pretty hardend traveler with all sorts of stories about getting his pack stolen in South America(he fell asleep on a bus) and such, but stuck to the guide a surprising amount..it sounded like he probably read it 3-4 times as he knew about all the places id been to even though he didnt visit them himself. He had an interesting story about a hostel manager out in Kagoshima chewing him out for not calling ahead, and then proceeding proceeding to follow Stephan in his car pulling over twice to continue to chew him out! Guess im pretty lucky i havent run into any of those types!
(Although there was a guy in the train station today screaming and yelling at apparently nobody, taking a few steps, and then beinging to scream and yell again...)

OK, random thoughts and Q&A time since ive got another hour of internet time....

Fruit in Japan. Holy cow its expensive! An apple or peach costs about 2 bucks. And I saw some really, really expensive melons.....Theyre called Musk Melons. I dunno why, but they were about 12,000 yen in a nice gift box. They had some as cheap as 6,000. Only fruit that seems reasonably priced out here are bananas.

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Baths

Well, what can i say? It seems to be a very japanese thing to do with everyone from the young to the old doing it. It really aint so bad, although its also not really any different than just soaking in a hot tub (WITH a swimsuit) back in the states. The hot springs, with there added minerals, are supposed to have added thereapeutic value but who knows? The beppu guide actually has a list of ailments with a list of hot springs that are best for treating them! Ive actually run into many foreign tourists in the hostels who have, surprisingly, gotten into the onsen thing as well. The guy i just met, Stephan, was the only one so far who was like "Onsen? Hmmm..i still have to try...are you like, naked?"

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Changing Money

Oddly, the ATMs or the CCs havent been giving extraordinarily good rates. Theyre actually quite comparable to the rates ive been getting changing TCs (except for the last time). Weird thing is that cash gets a worse rate than TCs; most other countries ive been to have been opposite. Unfortunately, lots of the ATMs here do NOT work with foreigh issued cards, so ATMs end up being a little less convenient than TCs. And many places dont take CCs...

Ok, tomorrow off to Matsuyama on Shikoku! Oh yeah, and ps, saw some info on the earthquake today in Hokkaido, but im waay far from Hokkaido right now so everything's ok. Hard to believe i was just there 11 days ago though!

Okayama!

Ok..Umm...hmm, how many cities have i been in? Lots. Doing about 1 a day right now. Trying to make the rail pass worthwile. Funny how i remember doing South East asia i was feeling like we were blazing through it to fast (cuz James was doing everything and i was just hitching a ride pretty much). But now that im in the drivers seat, i feel like im pretty much doing the same thing. On top of the 3 wk limit of the rail pass, i guess its a matter of momentum. Its rather amazing covering so much ground in a given time cuz that evening ill try to remember what i did in the morning and it will seem like days ago!

Okkk, so in Okayama right now and managed to hit the free Internet facilities in the Prefectural Office before they closed. So far so good. Okayama is the town where Momotaru, who was apparently born from a peach, originated. The storys goes on that he befriended a monkey, a rooster, and something else and slew some deamon. I cant remember all the details, but momotarus picture is everywhere here.

So before Okayama, I was in Beppu which is one major tourist town. Understandably so though cuz everwhere you turn you see steam rising from some vent! Beppu is sort of like the Onsen capital of Japan. They have Jigoku which are steam vents for viewing only (called Hell pools), and then they have regular Onsen, some which you pay for, others, since hot spring water is so plentiful, that are free (there were 4 around my place that i stumbled across). They even have vents at restaurants which they use for cooking!

Before Beppu was Kumamoto which has a huge castle, and a pretty nice garden where i ran into a couple of friendly American girls whove apparently been traveling for 6 wks. One was from Colorado, the other from Montana. I think these are the first American girls i met that are traveling and doing the teaching thing as well. Its nice to hear other foreigners struggle with Japanese too!

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Small side note: Wassup with that US dollar?!?! I just changed money and the exchange rate was 110! Last time i changed it was 116! And another bank i visited (just to verify the rate) was 108! Ick. Did Arnold get elected? Whats going on in the states???
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Ok, off to see that castle, the gardens, and a all that other touristy stuff!

Nagasaki

Phew!Made　it to Nagasaki! Apparently my grandfathers old boss, back in the Taiwan Sugar Company days was from Nagasaki and he helped my grandfather out a bit, so this city has some family significance...
Unfortunately, my first couple hours in this city were quite daunting as the 2 hostels mentioned in the guide were closed and the one i got from the tourist information folks had a HORRIBLE map. Actually, all the maps of Nagasaki ive gotten so far (including the one in the LP guide) have been not-so-good. The problem is that these maps dont bother drawing in all the small streets, even though some of the small streets are significant! And of course, they dont name the streets either. Ohwell, after 2 hours of spinning around in circles and asking 3 or 4 people (who had to scratch their heads looking at the map given to me), i finally found the place!

First stop was the Abomb park and museum. Being the site of the 2nd bombing, the park and museum were somewhat less impressive than those at hiroshima, and covered most of the same stuff. The had some remnants of a catholic church which was destroyed as well as an old stone Tori which had one leg destroyed, but remained standing.

Afterwards, i took the tram down to the Harbor area where the foreign communities resided. There were apparently many foreigners who got pretty wealthy dealing in arms and then tea. There is also the old Foreigner ward (Dejima??) where they actually qarentined foreigners in their own man made island to prevent the spread of Christianity! Nowadays, its no longer an island, having had much land reclaimed from the bay, however theyre is some work going on to restore more portions of it and at least make it back into an island.

OK, 15 time limit (at least its free!) on the computer at the hostel. Tomorrow im off to Kumamoto! Will write more then!

Kyushu!

Aigh. Seems like the farther out from Tokyo I get, the harder it is to find internet access, and the more expensive it gets! Im currently at Kinkos shelling out 200 yen for 10mins. Ok, so thisll be fast and typo ridden!

When from Nagano to Nagoya to Hiroshima, to my present location in Fukuoka/Hakata. Nice little town they got here. Im staying in a capsule hotel for the first time because they dont have any youth hostels in the city. Its a pretty good deal actually considering i get a free sauna/bath (multiple i think....), lounge chairs, etc along with the capsule which sort of reminds me of one of those pet carriers....

I happend to stumple across the Asian Pacific Festival theyre having right now. Looks like they were doing Korea, Thailand, New Caledonia, and one other spot i cant remember. Anyone know where New Caledonia is? Only thing i could think of is BG3 from DAOC (if any of u r reading!).

So Fukuoka doesnt have too much in the way of cultural sites..the usual temples and stuff. So i just wandered around and ate. The malls hear have one interesting characteristic and that most seem to have cooking schools in them! They also got art galleries. The mall right by where im staying is especially nice with a couple hotels, a movie theatre, and a faux river...and an enterntainer dude that comes out every now and then doing tight rope tricks and the like. Oh ya, and it has the first Wendys ive seen so far!
Louis Vutton seems to be everywhere in the malls.

Hiroshima was pretty cool, seeing the abomb dome and the like. Really amazing museum. Curiously though, Hiroshima is the first place in Japan ive seen gokoburi, or cockroaches! The place i was staying at WAS rather dingy (as described in the guide), however can u believe they actually served me MOLDY tea? GROOSS. And the tatami mats had mildew growing in them, and the room itself smelled like pee. Ohwell, it was cheap and close by to the station. The people also seemed nice.
So in Hiroshima i had Okinomiyaki which is sort of a japanese pancake. Not enough time to describe in detail, but it has an egg, noodles, pork, some extra filling of your choice, some sauce (sorta like oyster sauce) and a batter thing at the bottom. I tried it twice thinking the first one i got was no good. The second one tasted about the same and my conclusion is that it tastes sorta like a bland spring roll.
Oh ya, had Ramen again tonight in Fukuoka and this place (apparently in business for 40 years) has these tiny little stalls to wat ramen in and a curtain so you cant directly see the servers. Funny. It felt like being in a porn booth or something! Anyway, it was cool cuz you get to specify how you want your noodles cooked. How much "special" sauce to use. How much fat to use, etc. It was taaaassty. wish they gave more though. Ok, running out of yen. More next time!

Eating

Eating in Japan is sort of interesting experience in itself for me, mainly cuz 1) theres lots places to eat, 2) Im trying not to spend a lot and 3) Most of the time im out, im busy romping around somewhere and by the time im back to the hostel, im pretty tired. From both #2 and #3, i end up really not eating a whole lot!

Which is not to say i havent eaten. As far as variety goes, there some stuff ive stayed away from because its exorbitantly expensive (maybe towards the end of the trip..). So far ive had Ramen, Sushi (the cheap kind!), Zaru-Soba (cold noodles), tsukune (i think thats what its called...basically meatballs), yakitori, and a Japanese breakfast. Additionally, ive had all sorts of funky concoctions from the convenience stores (there are an abundance over here) which range from the normal sushi/nigiri stuff, to weird things like noodles with fried fish cake in a hot dog bun, and whipped cream with fruit in a sandwhich (this was pretty tasty!). I also went to this burger joint called Lotteria (funny name for a burger joint, i thought) where i had a burger with an egg in it. Not bad!

My favorite so far has got to be Kaiten sushi which esentially like the Sushi boat thing back home except that its super cheap! The quality is about par with sushi back home, but its probably about half the price of what youd pay in the States which makes it an even better deal. Its pretty cool cuz it's fairly automated and 95% of the stuff you just serve yourself (including tea and extra plates/cups).

Stuff still on the list to try: Curry rice, Tenpura, Pricey sushi, Udon,Donburi, Tonkatsu,and a whole bunch of other stuff!

Ok, now i'm hungry! Off to seek food...mm..

Mastumoto

Not to be confused with Matsushima which is the place with a bunch of islands in the bay, Mastumoto has the only (?) Japanese Castle that is still in its original form; There are a number that exist, but have been rebuilt. Anyway, very cool, as you get to walk through the main keep which is actually pretty darn small, and they have a few display cases setup showing off the armor and weapons (guns) used during the period (The castle was made in 1592-3). The moat looked a little low on water though, as the multitudes of Koi were scraping the bottom and making little silt trails wherever they went.

On the way back, I stopped by the "Olympic Stadium" as its called, however, i think they just slapped that name on it because aside from a little Sculpture with a little of medalists for the 98 Winter Olyumpics, the structures in places were all for Summer activities: basketball, swimming, baseball, soccer, they even had wrestling (at least thats what the picture looked like). Youd think theyd at least have an ice skating/hockey rink!　Overall a pretty nice facility though with all sorts of park areas surrounding and oddly enough, right across the street, some rice paddies, some peach trees, and what looked like grape vines.

Going to Nagoya tomorrow! Looks like someones on to me cuz i tried to do another overnight trip, this time from Nagoya to Hiroshima and the only types of trains they have are sleeper cars which,even with my rail pass, i need to pay extra for. Darn it!

Nagano

Another thing this trip is teaching me is patience! After waiting nearly 8 hours in the station, i left Hakodate at 3AM on my way to Nagano. Funny thing about doing these night trips is that sometimes I forget to eat! I went nearly the whole day in Hakodate without eating and finally had a bowl of Ramen around 9PM, right before the restaurant in the train station closed, only cuz i figured that with an 8 hour train ride ahead of me, i needed to eat.

Almost got on the wrong Shinkansen too, cuz i remembered the time wrong (gotta stop doing that!) and was off by 2 mins...anyways, by the time i got to the platform, the bells were ringing for the doors to close. Before thinking, I just lept into a train. Luckily it was the right one (Otherwise, it would have been a while before i could have gotten off!)!

Ohwell, so just got into Nagano and am staying in the youth hostel really close to the Zenkoji temple. The temple here is actually quite nice (I wasnt expecting much after seeing the temples in Nikko)! I met a Bolivian/German dude fresh off the plane here and am working at trying to get him adjusted.

Now that ive gotten the rail pass activated, ive gotten my average daily costs down to about $60 bucks! woot! hope is stays that way. If so, major party and gifts for everyone!
(if i dont die of accidental hunger first!)

Sapporo!

Greetings! Been a while!

First of all congrats out to Ed Milovic out there who is now a proud daddy! Also thanks out to Griffin who let me crash at his hotel room (the very lavish Cerulean towers in Shibuya which drew many ooos and awws from the locals at the pubs) and also bought me a nice western style buffet breakfast.

Ok, where did i leave off..hmm..So i ventured back from Sendai back down to Tokyo to meet up with Grif. Unforunately, Somehwere between his and my email systems there was a a HUGE delay and he JUST got my email about 5 hours after i said id be in tokyo. Luckily, I hung around a smidge more than id said i would and he popped up!

So Sendai turned out to be a pretty cool spot, albeit a little slow on the night life. Of course, its probably going to be pretty darn hard to beat Tokyo where just about every night ive visited a pub ive found some cool people to hang out with.

So Grif ended up leaving Tokyo on the 13th, so i activated my railpass and took off to Aomori which is on the Northern tip of Honshu. This was the first time i rode the Shinkansen (the Japanese bullet trains). Theyre pretty darn fast (it took about 2 hours to get to Sendai vs the 7 it took me via local trains which is the cheapest method in lieu using a rail pass). So it took about 4-5 hours total to get up to Hachinohe which is where the Shnkansen line ends, then another 1.75 hours to get to Aomori. Unfortunately, little did i know that this weekend was a holdiay weekend (i only know cuz grif mentioned it) and EVERYTHING was booked. Blah. Funny because Grif actually offered to let me make calls from his room. So, after walking to about 6 different hotels and calling about 2 others. I gave up and went back to the station where i was looking for a cozy park bench (The lonely Planet has a nice little sidebar about this EXACT same thing happening to one of the guys, although THAT was during some　sort of festival in august). So, lucky for me, the bus stop benches are in this nice covered area....However, I went in the station to check one thing out and lo and behold, a 10:45PM train to Sapporro that takes 8 hours!! woot! Its where i wanted to end up anyways, so i booked it. Lucky thing too cuz the wind started to pick up....

So the Japanese trains typically run like clock work and are ALWAYS on time. Only this time, the train ended up arriving in Sapporo a little late, which worked out fine for me cuz i dunno what i was going to to in Sapporo at 6 in the morning anyways. It wasnt until i met a German dude in the hostel (who was on the same train) who explained that it was because of a typhoon (that apparently hit S. Korea pretty hard) that the train was delayed (so thats why it was so windy in Aomori....)!

Hohum, so, starting out at 7AM in Sapporo, I made a good day out of it. The best deal ive had so far, is a place called Kaitaku no maru which is a collection of old buildings (Early 20th century) from all over Hokkaido. 610 yen. The had actors dressed in old style colthing, a tea ceremony thingy with a manju, and bunches and bunches of cool buildings to walk through. The bus out there was also free cuz of my rail pass!

So other things in Sapporo I saw were a nice little park, the old prefecture capitol (where i stumbled across a dude jacking off in the garden!), and also the local mountain top which had a soso view of the city cuz it was a bit hazy.

Sapporos also famous for its Ramen, so i went out of my way to grab a bowl before i left! Compared to the ramen i had in tokyo, it was only soso, but I think it had more to do with the broth i chose. Out here, theres three different kinds you can choose from: miso, salt, and a third one i forgot. I had Miso in Sapporo, and i dunno what i had in Tokyo (it was a milky white) but that was definitely the best ramen ive ever had! I dunno if i can ever eat that instant noodle crud any more!

So, after a night in Sapporo (spent the night in a hostel next to the train station, and on top of that, 2 of the dorm mates came in at 1am sounding drunk or something cuz they were loud as hell despite 2 others sleeping) I came back down to Hakodate where i am now. Not too much here. Its a harbor type of town slightly reminicent of smoehting like fishermans warf (touristy). Theres quite a few western buildings here because it was one of the ports opened upon Commodore Perry's arrival (with his Black Fleet).

So, next stop: Nagano! Ive got a train to catch at 3AM(!). Dont know what im gonna do till then (10 more hours....), but i decided to do this night train thing every now and then to save time and money.

Bike Riding in Japan

Wow, what an amazing coincidence. Here in Sendai there's rather a lack of events to really report (Temples, museums, shopping, eating..), so i was just thinking about doing a little blurb about bike riding!

Its sort of weird because depite such great mass transit, theres tonnes of cars. Of course, unlike in the US, the car drivers all seem to be pretty curteous, especially to pedestrians. Surprisingly, despite the narrow streets, SUVs and the larger cars can be found (even with lifts and BF Goodrich All Terrains) on the city streets intermixes with the usual sub-compacts. Oops, back to bikes. Tonnes of people also ride bikes! I guess its really convenient because crime is so low that people just leave their bike parked and unlocked and can actualy return to find it still there!

But for the most part, the bike riders are horrible. Theyre like the cars in the US. They arent paying attention half the time while riding through PACKED crowds. Here in Sendai, bikers are weaving their way through Mall foottraffic (outdoors), while doing things like talking on the phone, or playing games (i guess the guy could have been dialing...whatever it was, he wasnt looking where he was going). Ive yet to see an accident yet, but have heard a few brake squeals. They also ride their bikes FAST and zoom right past you! None of that "reduce speed while passing" stuff. Oh yeah, and the bikes share the sidewalks with the people too.

Its pretty amazing to see people from all walks riding a bike too, from the usual kids/casually dressed folk all the way up to business suits and stylishly dressed women. Lotsa folding bikes too. Up till last month, ive never seen one (one of my old coworkers got one to take on bart and caltrain), but here theyre everywhere,although i have yet to see one on the subway/train....

Anywho...in the end it seems like bikers are fairly well catered to here with only very few "no bike" zones. Had a close call with a bike once so far when i wasn't pay attention (was in the mall checking out the restaurants and bars).

Half the bars here are NOT on the first floor and thus quite hard to find, not to mention makes checking them out (to see if its bustling or not) quite difficult without actually going in...

Matsushima

Did a day trip out to Matsushima today which was soso. The guide makes it out to be a pretty big sight to check out, as it contains 1 of the 3 (i forgot what the other 2 are) that MUST be seen. I also when into Shiogama (dunno if i spelled that right) and took a boat to Matsushima like the guide recommended. The boat was freakin expensive and the view a little anticlimactic. The gist of the place is that there are 260 little tiny islands that dot the bay and its supposed to form a spectacualr view. Ohwell, it wasnt that bad. There was also a temple and a nice little trail around one of the closer islands that was pretty cool.

I am not going to escape the bath thing. So im staying in a hostel, but its Japanese style (called a Ryokan). There is 1 shower. So i get in at 4:30 and i figure nobody else is gonna take a shower (bath time is regimented and supposed to be 5-10:30). Just my luck, an old guy casually breaks in 1/2 way into my shower (theres 3 'washing stations' and 1 bath which your supposed to soak in after you wash yourself). Ohwell, not really a big deal, but just thought feed your imaginations a bit!

Not much else going on in Sendai. I visited a department store for the first time (missed em in Tokyo) and wow, they are HUGE. This one place had a grocery store, complete with restaurants, snack vendors, and food/gift vendors all on a floor of the basement. The subway was beneath and the clothing and other stuff consumed the upper 5 floors.

People out here dress pretty stylishly too. Id say as a percentage, people here in Sendai look a lot better than Tokyo. Funny, cuz now that i think about it, most Japanese dress up ALL the time. When i was in Nikko, romping up 5 flights of stairs and going over uneven stone floors for the temples, there would be women wearing 2in heals there! Just saw a chick with a short short skirt riding a bike too! hehe. They're pretty good about covering the goods though (not that im looking!)

Sendai

OK, quick entry cuz im outta 100 yen coins.

Made it into Sendai just now after a 5hr train ride on the local trains. phew!

Yesterday i attempted a little hike while in Nikko. Theres this mountain which erupted and made a lake and a waterfall. Anyways, i looked at the map and it said 2400...2400 ft i figured, not bad...ill do it.
3 hrs later and panting for breath, i asked a dude, how much further to the top? 3 mins i heard him say....so i go...hmm..ok. 15 mins later i ask another dude...1 hr..very difficult he says (btw still typing on a japanese keyboard which precludes proper punctuation at times while im trying to churn this out)

sooo..i hit the abort button and came back down. it was a pretty arduous climb up, it not having a proper trail for the middle 2/3 that i made up. Anyways, as i was going down, it dawned on me that the japan, like the rest of the world except the states, uses the metric system and thus the maps was in meters, not ft. woops.

ok, of to shower.

btw, i tried the bath thing again. quite nice the second time around without having a gay guy asking me to :face me so i can hear you better:.

Whoa there!

(apologies in advance for all the typos, these days my typing has gotten terribly bad and on top of THAT, I'm typing on a Japanese keyboard!)

Had a rather eventful day yesterday in Tokyo. Toured the Imperial Gardens which, together with the imperial palace, lies on the ramains of the former Edo castle. The place is HUGE. There's a moat within a moat, an inner citadel, and an outer. Seemed like every few minutes I'd come across a new moat and a nother wall. And that was only in the East Gardens (the only part that's open to the public).

OK, nuff of the boring stuff. Backing up a bit, I also visited Kinokuniya in Shibuya to look for a nice map that gives transit times between the major cities. I didn't find any, but i picked up a good little book for 990 Yen called "The Tokyo Pub Crawl" which basically has a bunch of bar　recomendations for the various districts of Tokyo. So on my way back from the gardens, I decided to check out this place called "The Celtic Warrior". In the maze of the Ueno (2 subway stops away from the place i was staying at), I almost gave up looking for it.

So I go in during happy hour for a nice pint of Guiness (500 yen still). The place is half full (its a tiny place) and I just kick back reading a bit more through the LP guide. So about 30 min later, i'm about done when this chick comes in, seemingly meeting with a friend, but then she sits down next to me! Shes obviously a gaijin and i just sit there sipping away at the last drops of my drink. So she orders a Corona, and after the first sip she flags the bartender down and ends up spitting a mouthful of corona out into an ash tray. okaaaay. In a nutshell, she then starts talking to me: she's from Venezuela, married a japanese guy, moved over to Tokyo, has 2 kids, her 14 yo has a great body and big boobs (her description!), and how people in Tokyo are so unfriendly and how people are all sad, how her kids have a tough time cuz they're mixed, how the guys grab her when she runs through Ueno Park at night. All this in broken English with mixed Japanese. Bleh. Oh, this lady's got serious issues. Lucky for me this dude sitting next to her goes "Hey I overheard you're from California, what part?" Turns out the guy graduated from Cal in '95. So i start talking to him and the lady escuseds herself to talk to someone else.....

So i'm talking to this guy who apparently graduated from cal, lived in SF for some time and commuted somwhere in the east bay. He even graduated from CED (I forgot what it stands for) and spent sometime in Wurster...Of course i think, hey my GF was Architecture major and also spent some time in there, but before i mention anything, he said "hey, wanna tour of the area".

Why not? so i go around where he proceeds to point out the general thrift market where locals go to buy stuff, the cheap fish market, the international ATM, and other useful stuff. We then pass through the redlight district and describes how they work...a buncha guys with headsets are at the bottom where they basically make a deal, once they make a deal they radio back and i guess you go in. However, they trick you by sticking food or something in there and charge you 10K yen for it. All this is from stories he says, since he's never been to one..."uh huh" i think.

Anywhoo, we pass through with no incidents and only a couple of friendly waves from some hookers. We wander through a Pachinko parlor (often named "Oriental Passage") where they utlize a nice loophole to legally gamble. Esentially, you win a "prize" for a given number of balls. And then, conveneintly enough, there a place right next store that is willing to pay　money for those prizes!

Okkkk....Then he oints out a sign "Hey there's the Japanese Bath place i was talking about earlier". So let me preface this with the fact that many guides have large sections about the Japanese Onsen and how the Japanese bath is deeply rooted in their culture. They say they go to one at least once a week (these are less real "baths" and more like day spas). So he asks, "wanna try it?" Sooooo, figuring "what the hell?" I say ok.

Another little background on the Japanese bathing experience. Its esentially a public bath. Single sex (all guys) and it's a no no to even bring a towel into the bath (though you can use it outide of the water). Ok, since i got some extra time, let e describe the process. You bascially go in, stick your shoes in a locker and exchange the shoe key for another locker key. This locker contains a couple towels, some shorts, and a robe. You then stip down, sticking on the shorts and the robe.
You then proceed towards the bath area where you strip butt nekkid and take 1 towel with you (the smaller of the two).
You take some water from the bath and splash it on yourself, then sit on this stool in front of a shower thingy where you wash yourself down. Then they have an outdoor spa and an indoor spa you go into. Again, butt nekkid. In addition to the spa, there's showers, a sauna, a room with seats to read in fron of the TV, a room with lazy boy's with built in LCD TVs, and a room with futons where you can take a little snooze (apparently, you can use these places to spend the night if you're in a bind). Oh ya, there's also a room where you can order food and stuff.

So, things started becoming a little bit awkward (Comments like "gee, I bet you didn't think you'd be seeing me naked" and "Can you turn to face me a little more" [while sitting naked on the balcony] and "They all stare at me because I'm white and want to see my big dick") it basically turns out that this dude I'm with is gay. Well first he said "bi", then he said gay..oh boy...I was outta there pretty fast. So fast that i got lost on my way back and had to double back a couple times!

So now i'm slightly traumetized by the whole onsen experinece....
And i thought i was doing so well with this culture assimilation thing!

SOOOOO. I am in Nikko right now and it is rather a stroke of luck that i have a few hours to kill plus the attendant tripped over the power cord,giving me 1hr free after profusely appologizing.

BTW, not only did that guy go to Cal, the guy who ran my Hotel in Tokyo apparenlty has an Aunt who used to run a Japanese restaurant in Danville and knew the Bay Area pretty well...freaky. It's like i'm being followed!

Made it!

Made it into Tokyo just a couple hours earlier. Right as I stepped into the doorway of the hotel, the crackle of thunder could be heard.

Soo..first few hours in Japan have been interesting. Within two hours:

1) I saw a schoolgirl using glue stick to keep her socks up (by the look of it, she was re-applying the glue)

2) Saw a guy ride a bike with an umbrella, in the rain, talking on a cel phone.

3) Saw a guy peeing on the side of the street.

So far everything is A-OK, except for all the rain! Preventing me from really venturing forth for fear of getting drenched. (Though the front desk says it won't rain anymore...hmmm...)

Oh, yeah, and i experienced the sink ontop of the toilet thing that Penny's friend Wendy mentioned. Neat idea (It fills the tank via an auto faucet on top of the tank, under which you can wash your hands!)

Packing Phrenzy!

Ack! Packing is such a pain in the butt. On one hand I'm bringing too much! (My bag weighs a TON!) But it feels like something's missing. But then, if I'm missing something, I can always buy it there. But then again, I'm probably gonna pay a fat surcharge to buy it out there.

Getting all the paperwork and iternerary and organizational stuff ready. One of the things I didn't really realize till now is that the Japanese cities are HUGE! (even the unknown ones) and the addressing system quite random. Thus, to find EACH place (or more importantly, each hostel) you need to print out a nice little map.

Ohwell, we'll find out how good of a packing job i did soon enough....

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