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.

Akihabara (tech)

Akihabara is famous for it's electronics stores and anime. On the main road, Antec has its shown showroom not unlike an Apple store (though it was closed today). Places like Sofmap sell tons of new PC parts, and there are even real electronics stores that are stacked floor to ceiling with meters, tools, electric adapters, and spools of every kind of wire imaginable.

The back streets are where it gets interesting. Store after store has bins of used or extremely low cost parts, obviously binned from recycled PCs and laptops. Some of the stores even just listed the brand, part number, and price lists on huge signs out front which made shopping convenient. Guys were checking prices via cell phones and calling people to verify if something was a good deal or not. And, even though Nintendo's been taking legal action against the some developers (or importers?) of hardware that allows pirated games to run on the DS you could certainly find multiple types of them for sale here. Those usb2/sata/ide adapters were even the equivalent of about $10 at some places.

Finally on the tech front, walking behind I think the main Sofmap store, they honestly had a poster on how to properly wire up RJ-45 keystone jacks! Ok, enough on the tech...

原宿 Harajuku

Across the tracks at Harajuku station is what appears to be the heart of the teenage fashion district. Again I made it there kinda early in the day so, while this picture shows what it was like before noon, it got busier enough that I heard mutterings of こんでいるね by some of the locals. There are a really wide variety of clothing and accessory stores there and once you get off the main roads and wander the side streets it was actually a quiet and nice area. The only weird thing that felt a little out of place was a few foreign run businesses where the guys would heckle passerbys to try and entice them in. It was more aggressive than the Japanese with signs yelling at you to come check out their stores. As for American type stores, Claire's was there, CK had guy ads, and Forever 21 was ridiculously popular.

After finishing up there I headed back to the station, noticed both trains stopped for longer than normal. They kept repeating something over the PA and I caught parts of it like the times but a nice guy next to me who was herding his 3 boys was fluent in English and explained that there was some sort of accident so it would be at least 30 minutes before the trains moved again...There have been wind and track problems in the last day or so due to some pretty strong winds.

明治神宮 Meiji Jingu

Across the tracks from the heart of Harajuku is a gigantic and important Shinto shrine known as Meiji Jingu. There were crowds of people there, and a wedding happened to be taking place as I walked into the main shrine complex with what looked like another one queuing up as I left. I had read about shrine etiquette but forgot most of it since I only happened to notice on the map that it was right at Harajuku so I tried to stay out of the way. You approach the shrine via a long walk through woods and streams. It was easily the most nature I've seen in Tokyo so far.

I've seen a few tour guides leading foreigners around and the lady at this one seemed to be carrying something like a swiffer duster to help the tourists follow her...

日枝神社 Hie-jinja

The Hie shrine is an important Shinto shrine near the Akasaka-Mitsuke stop. The orange torii are indicative of Shinto shrines I believe though don't believe what you see on the internet including that statement. It was a nice, quiet Sunday morning and few people were around.

On Business models

秋葉原 or Akihabara is filled with niche businesses catering to all sorts of things. While wandering around I thought I'd stumbled across a lolcats sign of some sort before realizing that it was a literal cat cafe. For 800円 you get a drink and can play with cats for half an hour. You of course aren't allowed to bother the cats and if they're sleeping you're supposed to leave them alone, etc. but it's definitely something different than your typical Maid Cafe, or Starbucks.

On the streets

I've seen a number of people carrying musical instruments around, even lugging keyboards around on small hand carts on the train. Outside Shinjuku station on Saturday, it seemed people were either taking turns or it was one group of performers alternating. Regardless this girl played the keyboard and had a good voice. I feel for her if she lugged all that gear around Tokyo without help.

My last day in Tokyo is tomorrow, and today I walked for miles around Harajuku, Akihabara, and Shinjuku. More on those places soon. I'll be in Kyoto for 3 days and then it's 1-2 day stops at a bunch of places so posts will probably slow down after tomorrow (or stop depending on time and access).

渋谷 Shibuya

Shibuya on a weekday is busy. Shibuya on a weekend is a neverending flood of people there to do, something. Each time the light changed at Hachiko gate/crossing hundreds (thousands?) of people swarmed the roads. Saw a group of guys with bigger, badder, better hair than any of the girls. The crowd picture here is actually one of the roads leading up to Shibuya 109, a pretty popular department store.

There's lots of "cute" here. Some of the artwork and even the back of the street sign stickers are cute yet kinda disturbing.

Yokohama Landmark Tower

Today I hit up みんあとみらい２１in Yokohama, home to, well, a lot of things. There were tons of young guys in suits and girls in yukata heading there on the train but they all disappeared into one of the huge exhibit halls. Minato Mirai means literally harbor/port future and it's home to a gigantic complex of a mall, amusement park, docks, boat rentals, and the tallest building in the country, Yokohama Landmark Tower. The building is just under 1000ft. in height and there's a pay observation deck on the 69th floor. Once my rail pass is active I'll try and head back out there in the evening at the end of this trip.

This seems to be a place to take your family and there are some long waterside walkways and grassy open areas to let the kids chase pigeons. While walking around I noticed a guy's wallet obviously placed on the edge of a large concrete planter. No one was in the exact area so it had probably been there for some time...

Edit: Added pic showing this tower's defensive sculpture...

都庁 Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

This building is the heart of Tokyo's government, and has free observation decks in each of the towers. The glass is super reflective and tripods wouldn't really help (if they are allowed, a monopod could help) so here are some ISO3200 1/30 shots with a bit of noise reduction, glass reflection, hand shake, etc. :) The view is pretty captivating and the subway line has an exit straight into the building which makes it hard to miss.