Photos

I've posted a larger album for folks to browse..giving Picasa a try this time here. This blog's photo album is one level up as well though most of the blog pics are in the larger album. Captions will be added as time permits...

Back to reality

When this post goes live I'll be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on the way home. I'll update this blog with some sort of photo gallery link once I sort through all the duplicates and horribly boring ones (and deal with jet lag). Thanks to everyone who helped out with the trip from advice, lending materials, wandering around with me, reading this site, etc. It made the trip go much smoother than it would have otherwise and helped make it more fun. :)

雨の日 What else are you going to do...

...on a rainy day except visit a cat cafe? Actually this one was a cat playground of sorts and nothing except for some souvenir stickers was sold here though it is attached to a pet shop on the 8th floor of a department store. I must have wondered into the cat cafe district in Ikebukuro as I saw 3 different ones within a minute's walk of each other. Basically the idea is that a lot of rental places won't allow pets of any kind so you go to these sorts of places to interact with cats without having to take care of them. Apparently some of the cats at this place are rescue cats which is good to see. The staff appear to take very good care of them and the cats obviously liked them. One of the staff girls had a Nikon DSLR and was taking photos regularly. They have what looks like a twitter feed going too...

This place had enough cats that they left some in slightly small themed enclosures where they were fed, could sleep, and avoid people. They seemed to occasionally rotate which ones were out in the main rooms. There were numerous perches, raceways, etc. where the cats could be out of reach of any of the people.

I bought my ticket back to the airport for tomorrow and will probably head back to Shibuya one more time to pay for an overpriced chai tea latte to stay out of the rain...

長谷寺 Hase-dera Kamakura

If you're in Kamakura this temple's definitely worth a visit. It was crowded but nothing like a Tokyo subway car. The merging of commercialism and religion in all of these touristed temples is interesting. There are truly devout people visiting these places but they may also be cash carrying tourists at the same time. This temple has a restaurant on the grounds and a yummy stall selling some rice dumplings. I'd imagine if these temples weren't tourist attractions a lot of the history and treasures would be long gone by now.

One area of the temple is dedicated to the worship of a guardian of children which, at least in Japan, means that this photo of many statues is probably really sad...

大仏 Kamakura Daibutsu

I'm not sure how to describe the Great Buddha sculpture at Kamakura. It's huge, it weighs 93 tons, it's probably close to 800 years old, it's survived numerous storms/flooding that have repeatedly destroyed temples that were built around it (so much so that they gave up and have left it in the open air for the last 500 years), and it's iconic of Japan. Kamakura's about an hour from Shinjuku on some trains on the Shonan-Shinjuku line. It's definitely something to see in person. There are only 2 larger Buddha statues in the world and both were completed in the 1990s...

Even more らーめん

I knew my new favorite ramen restaurant has a branch in Ikebukuro and it happens to be only a few blocks from the hotel. The guy at the front desk was surprised when I specifically asked for directions to that restaurant (in English since the hotel caters mostly to foreign travelers). With less than 2 full days left in Japan I'm going to have to cram in a couple visits at least. This place had a line of about a dozen people around 5:30PM but it moved fast. Inside it was similar to the Shinjuku location but with a bit less space. I *really* wanted to try their Arctic ramen but went with their signature dish that's midway up the spicy scale again. Half the fun of the place is watching people mechanically deal with the spiciness of some of the food by grabbing more tissues, wiping themselves down with a towel, downing glasses of ice water, etc.

松島 Matsushima

The main reason for heading to Sendai was to get a small taste of the region to the North of Tokyo (there be pine trees here) and see Matsushima bay. That's the Pacific Ocean you're seeing, and at similar latitudes to California, only 5000 miles away. The area is about 30 minutes by train outside of Sendai and it's small enough that you can walk from the station and see the entire area. The bay is made up of hundreds of tiny islands though only two sizable ones are accessible via bridges from the mainland. The smaller one, Oshima had some really cool Buddhist ruins/carvings, most of which are being left to the elements. Many of the carved stone tablets or sculptures are almost worn smooth.

It was nice to note, however, that even this area is not immune to Hello Kitty. To the lower right of the worn statue there was a bunch of incense and a Hello Kitty pouch (maybe to hold matches?).

仙台 Sendai

A little over 900km (550+ miles) away from Osaka is Sendai. Yesterday, even the Shinkansen can fail and due to some >20 minute delays around Tokyo I missed a connector train. The normal connection time seems to be 6-15 minutes. Thankfully they got me booked on a train that left only a few minutes after I managed to get the ticket. Not counting the delay time this train was only a bit slower than the one I should have been on. It also separated into two trains partway through the trip so you had to be sure you were in the half you needed to be in (and you could not pass between them from inside).

Sendai station has multiple levels filled with おみやげ　shops and restaurants, even a grocery store. A good number of the restaurants served the local specialty, 牛タン, grilled cow tongue. There were over 75 taxis waiting outside in the evening but few people seem to use them. Also, the pillow at the hotel came with an instruction sheet which was kind of scary. They do provide wired and 64bit WEP wireless and a really good breakfast buffet though.

Osaka's DenDen Town

Osaka's DenDen town doesn't quite have the craziness of Akihabara but it does have a heavy focus on electronics of all sorts. Anime is there too, mostly off the main street. There were a few lost looking maids handing out flyers along the sidestreets and it looked like the maid cafe phenomenon has made some inroads into this area but it was mainly folks looking to buy electronics or cheap merchandise. There was also what seems to be a mythical Lawson's 100 yen store where things like a 500ml Coke were 105 yen whereas every other convenience store sells them for exactly 147yen (to beat the 150yen price of the vending machines).

I didn't notice this until after looking at the picture but that SuperPotatoPC place mentions all sorts of retro gaming systems like the Famicom, PC Engine (Turbografx16 in the US), Dreamcast, etc. I should have actually gone inside. :)

In Osaka many names that would normally be translated with 'n' sounds used 'm' in romaji. Like Dotombori in hiragana is どとんぼり or a station nearby, Namba was なんば. Japanese doesn't really have the standalone 'm' sound but it was pretty consistently used this way here and nowhere else I've seen so far.

Going back to Dotombori, once it got dark a few groups of young guys in suits who spent a lot of time on their hair seemed to stand around and not do much besides smoke in some of the more crowded areas. They seemed to be having fun though.

大阪 Osaka

Osaka's an interesting town. It's kind of like Tokyo, only a bit smaller, and if anything, even more people seem to smoke here. The food's been great, Dotombori (Bladerunner inspiration?) is kind of a crazy shopping mall/restaurant neighborhood. Osaka-jo has a great 360 degree view from the top of it. The outside of the castle is restored to something similar to the original but the inside is basically a small musem, stairwells, and even an elevator due to the complete(?) reconstruction of it in the 90s.

By the way, the matcha (green tea) softserve ice cream here is addictive. Some places have a ton of flavors and when you buy one they load in a softserve cartridge into the machine that then dispenses the ice cream.

鹿児島 Kagoshima

There wasn't much time to spend down in Kagoshima but just seeing the active volcano Sakurajima and getting ash dumped on me all afternoon was enough. Apparently the volcano's been spewing a lot of smoke and ash lately and the city had little piles of gritty black soot everywhere. It used to be an island but a 1914 major eruption turned it into a peninsula and buried parts of the place in lava flows.

I'm not sure living next to something like that would be good for your health...It would clear up but then the wind would change and you could just see this grey cloud coming towards the city and within 15 minutes or so you'd start getting grit in your eyes and mouth...

There are continuous ferries that take only 15 minutes to get over to the volcano which has a number of developments and small town areas around it. At 150 yen it costs less than a streetcar ride in Kagoshima. Kagoshima, like Fukuoka, seems like a more balanced city with open areas, parks, playgrounds, etc.

福岡 Fukuoka Day 2

Today I met up again with my friend only this time she brought her sister and (ちょうかわいい) extremely cute 2 year old niece. We went to Dazaifu and visited a temple, did a bit of sightseeing, and watched her niece being adorable (she can definitely say "happy!" and "byebye!"), before heading back to Fukuoka to check out a park with many sakura in full bloom, and Fukuoka tower which had some pretty amazing views (you get discounted admission if you're not Japanese!). Again I have to thank her and her sister for their hospitality.

福岡 Fukuoka Day 1

After Tsuwano I headed south a couple hours to Fukuoka (Tenjin) and met up with a friend in the area. She very graciously showed me around and let me not have to worry about deciphering the transit system here. We stumbled into a Yabusume (horse mounted archery) display, then took a waterway/canal cruise in Yanagawa 柳川. According to Wikipedia, in the 80s Studio Ghibli made an animated documentary on the history of Yanagawa's waterways. The sakura are in full bloom down here in Kyushu so there were plenty of hanami parties going on. Hanami means "cherry blossom viewing" but in reality it's, "cherry blossom viewing while sitting on a blue tarp and drinking (with some eating and activities for the kids). Some kind old drunk gentlemen even invited me to join them while we passed by on the river tour (2nd hanami invite that day, I stand out here apparently). We passed a 3 boat long wedding party on the tour making it the 2nd wedding I've randomly run across here.

Yanagawa is also famous for its unagi so afterwards we had some unagi then met up with a few of her friends for a good dinner at an Izakaya near my hotel. The night was almost entirely in Japanese so a lot of it was hard to understand but it was still really fun (2 people mostly fluent in Japanese and English, one Japanese only speaker, and me). Oh, and her friends knew what cat cafe's are and pointed out that there was at least one in the area so it's apparently not just an Akihabara thing!

津和野 Tsuwano

After leaving Hiroshima it was on to probably the most remote part of the trip in a tiny mountain town called Tsuwano. While waiting for the first train of the trip I ran into a couple from Ocean Beach of all places who were going to the same place for similar reasons (few tourists, off the beaten path, etc.). Small world...After the first leg of the trip I was going to have to get a ticket on a normal train line. Oddly enough starting in March each year there is a "special" train that is apparently a big tourist draw that runs once per day...and that's how I ended up on what I hope is the last steam powered train in Japan. It took 2 hours and there were *lots* of professional photographers camped out on scenic spots of the route. The townspeople at each stop all came out to wave at the train and we even had cars pace the train while filming...When they had to re-stoke(?) the coal the train would stop for a few minutes, everyone would get out and take photos, then run back inside the cars.

Anyway Tsuwano is a town that seems to subsist mostly on tourism. It has some really old castle ruins overlooking the whole valley area, more carp in streetside waterways than people, and a couple Catholic churches which is pretty odd for Japan. It was very picturesque and the weather was finally warming up a little bit. The sculpture photo here represents dancers dressed up as herons however they look like something the Silent Hill series could run with...

京都 Kyoto

The shrines here really understand moss. It's everywhere and one that I stopped at even had samples and species names of all the moss they have on the premises. They also really get landscape architecture. I can't recall the guy's name but hundreds(?) of years ago he designed the gardens of at least several of the major shrines in the area and they are pretty impressive. The paths are all meticulously lined with bamboo and trees are propped and trimmed perfectly to barely not be in your way.

広島 Hiroshima

I've stopped off in Hiroshima for a day to see what was ground zero for the first atomic bomb attack on humankind, and eat Okonomiyaki. The building, numerous monuments, and the museum are all absolutely worth seeing. The weather was in the low 40s, windy, with occasional light rain letting up an hour or so after I got here...in other words it may look like an ok day in the pictures but everyone was saying, "さむい。　そとさむい！” so it wasn't just me. I kept finding somewhere indoors to thaw before heading back outside.

The tour groups of Japanese were interesting. I'm not sure if there are sports tournaments which are good excuses to go tour but all the high school age groups seem to have track suits from Adidas or some other brands. Also, this is from back in Kyoto but every school sports club seems to have their own uniforms or bags, like for handball or archery teams. When you belong to something you definitely show it off everywhere.

Tomorrow it's off to Tsuwano, a place most Japanese seem to not have heard of and that's a good thing. There shouldn't be much there and there are supposedly more fish than people in the town's waterways. Even the weather channel doesn't know of it's existence but there really is a train stop there.

伏見稲荷大社 Fushimi Inari Taisha

If you've seen the cover of Memoirs of a Geisha then you've seen one tiny piece of this sprawling shrine. More than a third of the Shinto shrines in Japan are dedicated to the god Inari, and this one is the oldest, and largest, dating back over a thousand years. There are thousands upon thousands of torii lining almost every pathway here, each donated by a Japanese business due to the nature of the shrine. The Inari stop on the JR Nara line dumps you out right in front of this shrine. The fox statues all over the place were pretty cool. With the rain there were very few people around. Some of the open shops up in the temple were pretty much unstaffed...

天龍寺 Tenryu-ji and Arashiyama

After Kinkaku-ji I aimed for Tenryu-ji in the Arashiyama area on the outskirts of Kyoto. The temple itself was completed in 1345 and it is the head site for one of the major Buddhism sects in Japan. Mainly it was the bamboo groves that drew me here. I'm not sure where I first saw them but this too should be on a mandatory list of things to see in Kyoto. After exiting the North gate of Tenryu-ji you go straight into the bamboo grove which eventually leads you to some huge number of temples and shrines in the area. I only had time for one other one but it was a really nice area to walk around and it would be easy to spend quite a while walking around (the rain was also a small factor).

金閣寺 Kinkaku-ji

Though the rain came all day long, most of it was fairly light. I managed to get a bunch of pictures one handed while holding the umbrella with the other. Overall it worked out pretty well and the place I'm staying at even has a shoe dryer which worked wonders this evening.

Kyoto seems like a place where you could spend as much or as little time as you want wandering around the endless shrines, temples, and historic areas of town. It's definitely a huge tourist draw as most of the businesses seem to have English menus and will immediately begin speaking to you in English when you walk in. Definitely have an itinerary in mind when you get here or else you'll be overwhelmed with your options.

First up was Kinkaku-ji, and yes it's actually coated in gold. This temple pretty much demands that you visit it if you get near Kyoto. But don't get there before they open like I did or else you'll have to find a coffee shop and wait out the 40 something degree temps and rain. Beat the crowds here though as the parking lot looked like it could hold a *lot* of tour buses.

More らーめん！

A big thanks to a conversation partner who recommended an excellent ramen place in Shinjuku that I never would have found on my own. The translation is something like Moko Tanmen Nakamoto and they have a couple locations in Tokyo. Some other guy wrote a much more detailed review of the Ikebukuro location here. Upon walking in you place and pay for your order at the vending machine and get in line. The place seats around 18 and like the other ramen places I've seen they have pitchers of ice water and boxes of tissues. As a guy got up to leave he wiped the sweat of the back of his neck with a wet towel...Once seated, I noticed the woman next to me had a napkin bib/apron from shoulders to thighs to protect her clothes from the slurping and was blowing her nose every couple minutes. She had ordered what I think was the "Arctic Ramen" which is the hottest ramen they sell. The guy next to me ordered what looked like the hottest thing on their menu, and he too had tissues, and a wet towel used to keep the sweating under control, and had to clean his glasses...I had the 蒙古タンメン (upper left of menu) which seemed to be safe enough and a signature dish. At halfway up their spicy scale it would definitely be considered spicy for most people and it was really, really good.

富士山 Mt. Fuji from 東京タワTokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower is similar to the Eiffel Tower, except that this one is the largest freestanding steel structure in the world. The views from Tokyo Tower at night are supposed to be great but the timing worked out that it was better to go there in the morning, and randomly today happened to be clear enough to see Mt. Fuji. If you ever go and the weather is clear, pay the extra money and plan to wait a bit longer on the main observation deck to go up to the top. They have a good queuing system that lets you wander around the main deck until your number is allowed to go up to the top level. At the lowest floor on the main level there is a window that you can look straight down to the people and traffic far below...Around part of the base of the tower there is a children's play area with rides, and oddly, a trained monkey show. He/she was rather talented to the delight of the crowd and was sporting some shorts and a hawaiian style t-shirt.

京都 Kyoto

Made it to Kyoto but it's raining, and the forecast is at 90-100% chance of rain for the entire time I'm going to be here unfortunately. So I'm taking the time this evening to try and plan for hitting up the highlights for the next 2 days. If it rains the whole time there won't be many photographs to show...The town is much more spacious and less crowded than the parts of Tokyo I was in and the shinkansen ride went very smoothly.

Akihabara (anime)

Aside from electronics, Akihabara is known as a center for all things anime related. Cosplaying girls and a guy were promoting various stores by handing out flyers or small packages of tissues (So far none of Japan's bathrooms do towels and some also don't do soap like in the stations so these serve a very practical purpose as well).

I didn't bother going in to most of the anime shops as they were basically shelves stacked floor to ceiling with inventory with signs posted about release dates for upcoming titles but it was pretty cool seeing large buildings plastered with huge banners.

Notice how the blood covered Gloomy Bear is the one closest to freedom? I wonder if he cannibalized his friends to get there...One of the machines inside just had bloody bear arm keychain/bag attachments.