Japan 2006, Part 8

Day 8

The morning after was great because we had a chance to eat breakfast at the Sky Restaurant. Dinner the night before didn’t really have me eating much, so I was really hungry by now. I’m glad that they had food I liked at breakfast. Surprisingly, I passed the bacon, eggs and sausage I normally would’ve gotten and went straight for the Japanese breakfast. My plate was full of fried noodles, Japanese omelets, some kind of dumpling, fish, and a side of misou soup. We grabbed a window seat and enjoy the scenery during our meal. This morning had a cloudy overcast, so I really couldn’t see very far into the distance (no Mt. Fuji). However, I still enjoyed seeing the town busy with activity. I saw a couple busses pass by as well as a few students on bikes heading to school. I saw clothes hanging outside the packed apartment complexes and even a cemetery in the distance.

The restaurant itself is located on the 7^th floor of the west wing. It’s huge ball room surrounded by windows. In the middle of the room was a buffet style set, with western style food on one side, and Japanese food on the other. There was another section of bread, drinks, and dessert. Behind that table was a lady who would pass out bowls of rice and misou. I can remember the room was a yellowish color, very light yellow, almost white. It had a nice roomy feel to it, so it was easy to get comfortable while eating.

Today was also our last day of sightseeing. After the ryokkan, all that was left of our trip was the actual traveling back to Osaka, and eventually the airport. There’s no shinkansen straight to Osaka from where we were so our entire day was pretty much spent traveling. After checking out, the hotel concierge gave us a ride to the train station. The path we had to take first had us going back to Tokyo. On our way here, we took local trains all the way to Fuji. This time, we wanted to take a coach bus back. The bus ride was about 3 and half hours long, with 3 stops along the way. The first stop was right in front of the amusement park, which looked bigger than I thought it would be. On that stop, we picked up a family that spoke English. They had a British accent, which I haven’t heard once since I arrived in Japan. The other 2 were some random ones I didn’t pay attention to, was too busy looking at the scenery. After the 3 hours, we found ourselves at Tokyo terminal, a very familiar place to us by now. At this point, we were debating whether or not to store our luggage somewhere and finish shopping aka Akihabara or to just take the shinkansen back. We ended up choosing the latter because we couldn’t find any lockers big enough to store our luggage.

The shinkansen ride was much more comfortable, but longer. It took about 5 hours on a train going 200 mph to reach Osaka. Nothing much happened on the train; I just read the signs trying to learn more kanji. On a separate thought, my kanji reading has gotten better in the past week than in the entire year I had in Japanese class. There’s this attendant that walks around with a cart offering all sorts of drinks and cold foods. She came around maybe 3 or 4 times, yes I was that bored to count the times certain people walk through. Our car got a few more passengers, but not crowded like in the local trains.

We arrived at Osaka station around 7:30 pm and headed back to the hostel we went to the first time we arrived. The one thing I hate about this station is that you have to climb 2 flights of stairs just to get to the platforms. It isn’t so bad if you had nothing on you, but we had our luggage with us, so it was a workout going up and down those stairs. There’s something about Osaka station that I really liked, it was the amount of stuff you can get there. I know there was more stuff at the bigger stations like Tokyo and Kyoto, but Osaka had a lot of small shops. We were all starving when we arrived, so passing all the bakeries, ramen shops, etc, etc made me very hungry.

As we arrived at the base of the hostel, a bunch of noisy Japanese ladies came in and piled on the elevator we were waiting for. It ended up that Roy didn’t get to ride the first one up there and all they were saying was just to come in anyway and saying sorry. A little useless info, but I found it funny. We checked into the hostel and went into our room. Luckily, the front desk told us no roommates tonight. The lobby was full of Korean tourists sitting around in the tables and watching tv. The hostel has nice bookshelves full of manga. There were children and adults alike sitting on the elevated floor reading them. We all shuffled into our room to unload our gear and talked about where to eat next. Our first thought was to eat at the seafood place downstairs by the elevator. As we went past it, Roy couldn’t read any of the kanji and decided not to eat there. I suggested that we head back to the station because there was this ramen shop that caught my eye was we were coming from the shinkansen. At this point, we were all starving and didn’t really care where we went, so off to the station we headed.

At the station, we made a beeline to the shop and were greeted by a couple of the workers there. Outside of the shop they had plastic representations of what they were serving. I had my eye on the beef ramen ever since we passed it the first time, so my mind was already set. Roy had the same thing, Hugh got the pork version, and Kuya Phil got fried chicken. With this ramen, it also came with a bowl of fried rice. I don’t know what they did to it, but it was very tasty. Carlo’s travel tip: Japanese portions are usually small, with the exception of ramen, which are served by huge bowls. After that very fulfilling meal, we started headed back to the hostel to prepare for tomorrow’s flight home. Roy spotted a nice pudding shop and bought something with Phil. The main reason why Roy wanted to buy it was because he wanted to chat with the cute girls running the shop. I can’t blame him, they were pretty cute though. However, Phil was complaining later that night about how he feels funny eating it..food poisoning maybe?

We arrived back to the hostel for good and I decided to go to the lobby to hang out and catch up on the blog. I’m an avid people watcher, so staying in the lobby was a real treat for me. As usual, the bookshelves had kids surrounding it reading their manga(s) for the night. There were a couple German people there discussing over a map, and there was a table with 2 Japanese and a Polish person. It was an interesting scene because the polish guy could speak a little English, one of the Japanese guys spoke fluent English, and the other Japanese didn’t speak any English. So, when the no-English Japanese guy talked, the fluent English Japanese guy would use broken English to try to communicate with the Polish guy who spoke a little English. They didn’t mind, because they were laughing and having a good time. From my seat I could see the cafeteria where the Korean tour group was doing some sort of activity that consisted of waving hands and walking around the tables. Don’t ask me, I just write what I observe. The wireless still didn’t work, I know I must be doing something wrong, but at least I can catch up with the blog. 30 minutes later, Roy and Phil came up to see what I was doing and decided to eat their ice cream at my table. They commented on what we’ve been doing this past week and how we’re going to miss all of this. We stayed and talked for about 15 minutes before those two decided to go back to the room to play UNO. Meanwhile, I stayed at the lobby to continue my people watching/blog writing. I stayed upstairs for maybe 15 minutes more before I got tired and went back down the room where the other 3 were in an intense game of UNO. I ended up just watching them for an hour while plugging in my electronics to charge. We all did our nightly toiletries and headed to bed, knowing that our Japanese vacation was coming to a close.

Japan 2006, Part 7

Day 7

Day 7 started with another trip to the restaurant downstairs and another $28 down the drain. I decided to be a little adventurous and actually try a Japanese breakfast. My breakfast included rice, omelets, misou soup, fish, all washed down with orange juice. Today was also our last day at the Yokohama Intercontinental, so that meant we had to lug our luggage around after checkout. Kuya Phil decided not to go with us this morning because he wanted to rest up for where we were going next, Mt. Fuji.

After breakfast we headed back to the room and started to pack up. Due to Roy's paranoia, the room hasn't been cleaned in 4 days; it was looking like a college dorm by this time. kuya Phil and I decided to go on ahead to the station while Roy and Hugh handled the checkout. I think by this time I've gotten used to lugging the stuff around while walking long distances, because it didn't seem as painful as the first day. I can remember that it was a nice sunny day with a cool breeze, so I didn't sweat so much walking to the train station. We decided to meet in front of the big tv by the station entrance. As we waited, I took my camera out and shot the Landmark Tower, the tallest structure in Japan, as well as the people walking by. That day had a lot of elderly people walking around, almost made me think there was some sort of tour group there, but what am I saying, I'm in Japan: the land of overcrowding. We waited about 10 minutes before meeting up with the other 2 and we all headed to Mt. Fuji.

Mt. Fuji is about 97 km from Tokyo Tower, so getting there was a big trip in itself. There was no shinkansen line there, so we took local trains all the way, We rode in the city trains for about 45 minutes, making about 12 stops before we had to switch trains. The next train we had to go to was not covered by our rail passes, so we had to pay for it. I paid my $11 dollars and was on my way. The local train there had us going through the country side, where I saw staggered rice fields and the farmers tending to them. It was a pretty rural area where we were headed, so the train was mostly of locals. The town we were going through seemed to have a lot of school in the area because I saw a lot of students in uniform getting on and off our train. One particular group was a bunch of kindergarteners who stormed our car and made lots of noise and commotion. It was really cute because all I could see down the car was a sea of yellow hats bouncing up and down. I took a picture of them doing what they do best, being kids. It was so funny because they didn't care who was around them, and just went on laughing and talking amongst each other. When their stop came by, I saw the flood of yellow depart from the car and migrate to the group of parents waiting for them by the exit. As we neared our destination, we passed by a park which had a huge roller coaster. I think it was the Fujiyuku Highland Park. I think I've seen this park on TV when I watched an episode of Morning Musume's commercial roller coaster segment. When we finally got to the stop, it was noticeably cooler. Roy made a phone call to the ryokkan and had someone pick us up in van.

Ten minutes went by before the guy came to pick us up, and even loaded all our luggage in the van, The drive to the ryokkan took about 5 minutes, turning in and out of local streets before stopping at this huge building. We were amazed when we stepped into the lobby which had boasted some fine Japanese interior decoration. The service there was top class, from the minute we stepped out of the van to the moment we closed our room door, there was someone there carrying our luggage, explaining things, or leading us around. The room definitely didn't fail to deliver. It was even better than what the brochure explained. It had 2 beds and a large tatami mat area complete with 4 chairs and a small table. The hostess showed us in and served us tea. As we were drinking, she asked us what sizes we needed for our yukatas. After she left, we were able to fully appreciate this Japanese style inn. The bathroom was a great feature of the room. It had the shower and bath setup where you would wash yourself with the shower, then finish up by taking a dip in the bath. Roy spent no time in taking first dibs on the bath. I spent my time going through the hotel information and flipping thorough the channels on tv. This hotel has a natural hot springs in the middle of the 2 wings of the hotel. It also was on the lake side so you had a beautiful view of the town.

I decided to explore a little bit and found some interesting things. First of all, the lakeside view that I read about, was breathtaking. The way it was set up looked like someone is going to have/has had a wedding recently. After taking a few dozen pictures and 10 mins of camcorder time, I went back to continue my exploration of the hotel. I went downstairs to find the public bath. There were 2 separate baths, for men and women. You couldn't wear shoes in there, so slippers lined the entrances where you would exchange shoes for slippers. A bit further down the hall, I found a row of massage chairs. A lady was watching over them, making sure her patrons on the seats were getting the right programs into the seats for a full back massage. The row was facing out the window where you could see the sky with the mountains in the background. Passing the hallway of chairs, I found the dining area. It consisted of 3 or 4 rooms that groups of people would go into and they would serve you. I didn't know how it would work, but I would find out later that night. There was also a small game room with a couple ufo machines, as well as slot and pachinko machines. At this time, I managed myself at the base of the west wing of the hotel and saw that there was an observatory on the 7th floor. I quickly took the elevator up and found myself in a room with 4 large windows and a telescope in the middle of the room. Unfortunately, it was cloudy weather all day so I had no way to see Mt. Fuji. The view from up there was also very nice. I stayed up there for awhile before heading back down to the lobby to admire it as I made my way back to the east wing.

Dinner time came around pm where they were waiting for us. They escorted us to a private room where the table was set with the first course. This would be a long night because they served us 7 courses of food. There were some foods I liked, but there were just some I didn't. Truthfully, I'm not a big sushi eater. So when I saw 3 courses full of sushi, I kind of had to force myself to eat. Fortunately, there was wine available, so I drank a lot. By the 4th course, I was already feeling light headed and started talking nonsense. Phil took some pictures of the meals they served us. It was pretty unique because each course was dressed and arrange in a certain way. It was truly a Japanese style dinner. Roy had a great time, enjoying all his food and some of mine as well. If I tried to explain what each of the dishes looked like, I’d be typing for a few more pages, which I don't feel like doing. Let me just say, they were pretty creatively arranged. We all left that dinner pretty full, and pretty drunk. I decided to head back to the room and take a bath and get ready for bed. Roy and Phil decided to go karaoke while the alcohol was still inhibiting their better judgment. I later found out that when Phil started singing, everyone left the room.

After my bath, I got dressed in my yukata and decided to walk around downstairs. Remembering those massage chairs earlier that day, I found myself sitting in one while the nice old lady was setting the chair up for me. She made some small talk with Roy while I just sat there trying not to paralyze myself when the machine went down my spine. Feeling refreshed from the massage I walked around a little more before heading up to my room where on tv I found myself watching some tv drama. One was in a high school setting and there seemed to be some drama between this guy and girl. I was just watching it because the girl was cute. The other drama I found myself watching was about another high school girl that seemed to be affiliated with Yakuza. She was carrying around a tommy gun during the show's introduction song. I decided that was enough tv for me and went to bed in the futon (which was prepared by the staff while I was at dinner). Futons are actually pretty comfortable, maybe I might do that back home to save myself a lot of space. I went to bed pretty satisfied to have experienced what a ryokkan was like. I hope to do this again when I return.

Japan 2006, Part 6

Day 6

Day 6 was another day where Roy had conference. So, the 3 of us decided to go to Shibuya and Shinjuku. At Shibuya we went to the busiest intersection in the world, Shibuya Crossings. The reason why is because there are 3 intersections going at once. Also, it's located in the middle of 3 or 4 major department stores. We really had no plan to go anywhere specific, so we headed the nearest department store. This particular store had 7 floors of stuff. On the fourth floor, we found ourselves in the gaming floor. All the PS2 games here are either not released/not going to be released in the U.S. The other 2 had to drag me away from the floor as I saw the new Dragon Ball Z! Over here it's called SparKing! Neo! but over in the states it will be called Tenkaichi 2.

Continuing with our aimless wandering, we entered a Sega game room. They didn't have many games, but there were 2 floors of pachinko machines. Pachinko is like Plinko in The Price is Right. I tried one which had the Fist of the North Star theme. First of all, I have no idea on how to play a pachinko machine, so I inserted my 100 yen and pressed all the buttons. Things were happening, but of course I had no clue what. I finally realized that there was a knob on the right side that controlled the balls that shot out from the top. There were also buttons that had me choosing characters on the screen. I was just pressing all the things that were lighting up. Apparently I didn't win anything because it just came up with a big game over. After playing with the pachinko machines, I wanted to go to bookstores to find a specific book. I didn't find it; however, I found lots of other interesting books. It would just be what you would find at a Border's or something, but I found a lot of photo books of actors and actresses. If I lived here, I know I'd have a nice collection of singers and actresses. I managed to film a couple minutes of us walking down the busy streets of Shibuya, but we entered quite a few buildings, that I really didn't have time to stop and video tape my surroundings. We only spent a couple hours there before we headed to Shinjuku.

Shinjuku is another big shopping area in Japan. The headquarters of the JR rail system as well as the DoCoMo phone rental companies are located. Right out of the station we headed for the Times Square department store. This is a high class place because everything there was super expensive. $700 glasses, and $5000 watches were common site in the store's 8 floors. If anything we got good at in Japan, it would be window shopping. With $40 underwear and $213 ties, we had to use that skill extensively in that store. The great thing about this department store is that they have several stores that are right next to each other. So all you had to do was walk across a hall and you would be in another store. The store we wandered into was called Tokyu Hands. It was 8 floors of outdoor gear. It had really cool stuff like a backpack that looked like a turtle shell. About this time it was getting late because we had a banquet to attend to. We decided to skip a second trip to Akihabara and head straight to Shin Yokahama station and eat the ramen museum.

The ramen museum was a lot more than I expected. The first floor where you entered was an exhibit of ramen history, types, local flavors, etc, etc. They also had plenty of souvenirs. On the basement floor, it was a whole different world. The surroundings itself was a setting of Japan in the 1700-1800s. As you came in, they gave you a brochure where you would pick from a choice of 8-9 ramen stalls. In the descriptions, they'd explain where that specific ramen came from, and its uniqueness. Everything looked good, so we just picked a random one. Ordering here is a little different from any normal thing I've experienced. There's a vending machine in front of the store and you had a choice of what you wanted in your ramen. You'd press the button by the picture and it would print out a ticket. You'd give this ticket to the hosts and they'd yell it to the guy who was cooking. It took about 6 minutes and they gave you a HUGE bowl with lots of beef (at least in my order). I'm so glad I ate there because it's the first time I've eaten ramen that hasn't been processed and cooked under 3 minutes. A very filling meal, we headed back to the hotel for a small break before going to the planned excursion.

The excursion led us to a place called Sea Paradise, which is a huge theme park. We went with the conference group to the reserved show. I managed to video tape the entire show. What I found really neat was when the dolphins would push the ladies through the water. The routines had them being launched in the air, as well as dolphins jumping over a boat. They also had a routine where there was a lady trying to clean the deck, but the walrus was giving her a hard time. It was pretty funny watching them go through it, as well as amazed in how they managed to train the animals to do what they did. The finale of the show had about 9 dolphins jumping in groups of 3 through the air in synchronized motions. I never realized how high dolphins jumped. At the end of the finale, they did a routing to the song YMCA where the animals danced around to the music.

After the exciting show, we were led to the aquarium where we had our dinner. It was held in a room enclosed in the main aquarium so we were able to see the fish swim by. The food there was also as good as the banquet, complete with sushi and sashimi, which is ironic because they had signs saying protect nature. There were no set tables because they wanted to walk around and enjoy the aquarium. Past the room surrounded by fish, there was aqua tunnel that led into the exhibit of other marine life. Some to note were the king crabs and their long legs. I remember seeing these in California for Kuya Larry's wedding for $60 each. I also got to view the shark tank where they isolated 3 or 4 sharks in one aquarium. Scary looking things up close, I would die if I ever see one open its mouth to show all those teeth. Moving on, there were smaller aquariums holding various fish, corrals, jellyfish and seahorses. One particular one caught my eye because it had shark eggs and their development. One was actually in the final stage before hatching and you could see the little thing moving around in there. Further down we got to the deep sea creatures, including some fish with no eyes, and octopi. There were also some deep sea jelly fish. These things looked so foreign that it looked out of this world. Sea Paradise has a very big collection of marine life, somewhat like a Sea World, I wouldn't mind coming here again and enjoy all the attractions. It was unfortunate that the trip was late at night; most of the park had already closed down by that time. After the dinner, we hoped on the bus and headed back for the hotel.

At the hotel, we did our usual night routine. Hugh passed out on the floor as Roy and Phil wanted to go back down to the lounge for a couple of drinks. After a few hours they came back and decided to get room service. I was already half asleep, but when they mentioned something about ordering food; I woke up and wanted to order with them. I decided to order just a hamburger, which ended up costing me $18. The other 2 ordered a half bottle of champagne which cost them $62. Roy, with his paranoia of being caught, wanted us to hide in the bathroom when room service arrived. So when the time came, we both rushed into the dark bathroom waiting for kuya Phil to get the food. I thought I'd like to mention it because it was such a retarded thing to do. After all that, I did enjoy the great $18 burger. It was another interesting day.

Japan 2006, Part 5

Day 5

Day 5 started pretty early for us. The reason being was that Roy had to attend conferences in the morning, leaving us 3 to explore Japan. Today we decided to visit Tokyo! We took the local train to the Shin-Yokohama station, and then hitched a ride on the first class Shinkansen to Tokyo. Tokyo terminal is huge! When we first arrived, we got our usual swamp of people switching train as we tried to make it out through the crowd. For such a big station, it was pretty hard to find a city map. There were literally hundreds of pamphlets around the tourist office, yet none had a map of the city. The closest thing around was a map of the station on the wall. Phil asked a lady who worked in the tour services for a map and we were on our way.

Stepping out of the station looking right up into the tall buildings reminded me of New York City. Except the fact that I couldn't read much and didn't understand much of what people were saying. Our first destination was the Imperial Palace. The Palace is only open twice a year, once on Jan 2, and once during the emperor's birthday. Unfortunately for us, it wasn't any of those, so the best we could do is walk around the perimeter and take pictures. We got some good pictures of beautiful fountains that really combined ancient and modern architecture. We also got a picture of Edo Castle. It was built in 1457 by Ota Dokan in what is now the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, but was then known as Ed, Toshima District, Musashi Province. Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate here, and as the residence of the shogun and location of the bakufu, it functioned as the military capital during the Edo period of Japanese history. Along with the Meiji Restoration, it became the residence of the emperor of Japan, or in Japanese kokyo. Some moats, walls and ramparts survive. However, during the Edo period, the grounds were much more extensive, with Tokyo Station and the Marunouchi section of the city lying withing the outermost moat. It also encompassed Kita-no-maru Park, the Nippon Budokan Hall and other landmarks of the area. After walking around for a half hour, we decided to take a train to Tokyo Tower.

Again, if I'm ever back in Japan, Tokyo Tower would be another place to head to. The view was magnificent! To go to the top floor costs about $14.20, but it was well worth it. In the main observatory room, they had directions and descriptions of what we could see from there. Also, they had machines that had specific buildings labeled to help us find certain ones. On a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji (97 km away). As for me, I saw the intersection that I've watched from a webcam when I dreamed about going to Japan. Now seeing it in person was one of the happiest moments in my life. I watched that intersection for about 10 minutes before Hugh and Phil came over to let me know that we were going up some more. At the special observatory, we could see even further out. I found where TV Tokyo (my favorite Japanese tv station) as well as a couple of workers on the OTHER SIDE of the glass cleaning it. The announcements mentioned something about history, but it was all in Japanese and I couldn't understand most of it. We spent the rest of our afternoon there and headed back to the hotel.

We arrived back around 5:30 where we met back up with my Roy who was at conferences all day. We got all dressed up and headed for the planned banquet. The event itself was pretty high class, serving gourmet food and plenty of various drinks. Tonight was also the first time I actually enjoyed shrimp, which surprised the rest of the group. We mingled a little bit with our table mates. The gentleman sitting to my left was from France and was in charge of maintaining quality of high tech equipment. I didn't quite pay attention to what he did because I was enjoying the food so much. It was a 5 course meal, but they served such small portions that I'm still a little hungry as I'm writing this now. The entertainment tonight featured a 10 year old violin prodigy whose impressive record already included several international awards for music performance. She had such an understanding of the dynamics of music that it moved me as I heard her play. If I ever have a daughter, she'll be playing the piano or violin. After the music performance, I had to leave because my ankle was acting up from rolling on it in Tokyo this afternoon. Tomorrow we have a rough plan, but I'm sure it'll be another packed day.

**Note: At Tokyo we had lunch at this small restaurant that served excellent meatballs. The funny thing I found to this restaurant that we had to walk a good flight of stairs to actually get in there. The restaurant was nothing but a small room with 4 tables in very close range of each other. You could actually touch the person next to you by just extending your elbows a little. I liked it because it's a common Japanese accommodation to be in small places, which made it unique to me.

Japan 2006, Part 4

Day 4

Day 4 started with a beautiful morning over the fantastic view. I took more pictures of daytime Yokohama from my window. Also, I forgot to mention that when I step outside a room, there's a window across from me with another terrific view! After going through our morning grooming, us 4 headed downstairs to eat some lunch. I say lunch because we didn't want to get on the train anytime in the morning because of work rush hours. Rush hours on the trains here are really bad. Imagine the worst New York traffic jam, multiply the people by 100 and stick them on a train that seats maybe 40 at most per car. We were aiming late morning/early afternoon to even attempt to ride the train. The restaurant we went to was located in the lobby of the hotel. It was a very classy, upscale place, I felt almost underdressed to be inside. The theme of the restaurant was Oktoberfest, so they had lots of food from Germany. For a buffet style serving, the food was extremely good! I found myself stuffing my plate with various sausages, eggs, etc, etc. After spending $28 we headed out to the train station and headed to the otaku capital, Akihabara.
The plan was to meet someone from the city's tourism department at 2:30 to take us around town. We got there around 2pm and walked around the station for a little bit, but I think we spent too long because the guide never came or we missed the group. Not wanting the minor setback to get to us, we decided to walk around to see the town for ourselves. About an hour into walking, we were getting tired of not knowing where we were. Finally, we took out our map, grabbed our bearings and decided to hit the closest electronic store. However, luck was on our side because a bi-lingual reporter came up to us and wanted to know if we could accompany her to a maid cafe for a story. Now, maid cafes are pretty localized here in Japan, specifically in Akihabara. I won't get into the details, so it's easier to Google it or something. Her name is Sachiko and was a reporter for a paper that accommodated to Japanese people learning English. Anyways, she offered to do all our translating and actually showing us to a maid cafe.
The maid cafe we went to was called Cafe Doll. They hired girls to dress up in anime maid costumes and serve customers. "They do everything they can to create a homey atmosphere" Saichiko explained as she was telling us the details on what the purpose of a maid cafe was. To give you an example of what the experience was like: When we first made our way into the shop, the girls said something like "Welcome back home, master", which kind of freaked me out at first. Also, when they served your drink, if you had anything that needed to be added to it, they'd do it for you. It was a little overwhelming for me with the high pitched voices, the outfits, and the crazy lines. It almost bordered pedophilia. However, these kinds of shops are very common in Japan. Saichiko continued talking about how other maid cafes even had other services including hair salons and foot massages. Some cafes are so successful that you have to wait 90 minutes or more just to get a seat. These cafes usually had a waiting room where you can buy trading cards, towels, post cards of their favorite maids. This particular one we went to had notebooks each of the maids kept. In these books, customers would write comments like "did you watch this anime" or "what did you think of this manga". Surprisingly, the topics don't get vulgar at all. Some notebooks had the same 3 or 4 people write in them. The maids themselves reply in these notebooks and it looks like they're actually having an on-going correspondence. Another common, yet very successful practice is to charge money to take pictures with any maid you like for $3. Roy got 3 pictures taken while the rest of us got 1. It came out really nice, but I don’t' think I'll be seeing this in the states anytime soon. Sachiko asked some questions regarding what we thought of it and if we would go to places like this regularly. I told her that this kind of service would affect people depending on how they were raised. If you were raised to be somewhat conservative, you might find these kinds of businesses outrageous and ridiculous. Some would be more accepting to the fact if they knew the culture behind it. Also, for myself, I would visit because the service was great, a real different experience. The girls weren't bad to look at either (yes, I asked, or they don't hire people from high school, so they were all college students).
After the cafe, Saichiko thanked us and offered to take us to the biggest store in town. This store was called Ishiharu? and had eight floors of stuff. She recommended for us to head to the 4th floor because Hugh mentioned something about getting gundam figures. She was very right! The minute we stepped into the floor, we were overwhelmed with figures. Any figure from any anime you can think of was there. There were sizes ranging from tiny key chains to lifelike statues. Price ranges were from $10-$3000. We spent a good 2 hours just walking around looking at the figures themselves. I wanted to find a certain book while I was in Japan, so I went down to their bookstore on the 3rd floor. For all you hentai/ecchi fans, this bookstore is your heaven. It got so graphic that I felt guilty walking down the book aisle, need to go there tomorrow....Anyways we explored the other floors which basically consisted of various electronics and gadgets. I ended up spending $80 buying a stuffed animal and a figurine...need to go there tomorrow...If we have a chance to head back in that direction, I'm going to go back to the morning musume section and raid it clean. It was already getting late, so we wandered around the streets a little more before heading back to the station to return to our hotel.
Akihabara is a very nice place to go to if you're into electronics and anime. It's a Mecca for all the otakus! Everything there caught my eyes, the stores, the cosplayers, the tall buildings, everything! I know that when I get a chance to come back to Japan, Akihabara will be definitely on the check list.

Japan 2006, Part 3

Day 3

Day 3 started like the last 2 in the hostel, with a small breakfast with the cute kitchen staff. I wish I took pictures with them. Kuya Phil and I went ahead as the other 2 were late getting up. After all of us got done with breakfast, we packed our things for checkout. We asked the staff to keep our luggage in a separate room as we rented lockers for our backpacks.

We took the local trains to our next destination, Universal Studios, Japan. Like their state counterparts, there was plenty to do there. It's like going to the ones in America, but with the added obstacle of not knowing what's going on. We rode several rides: Back to the Future, Spider-man, and Jurassic Park. We also sat around for the Terminator 2 show.

Back to the Future ride was very fun. For some reason, I thought I rode this in the past. However, with the experience that happened, I knew this was the first time. I wish I knew what the story was, as Doc Brown was speaking in Japanese. It seemed that he wanted us to stop Biff from stealing the Delorian by using another one. The ride itself is modeled after the inside of a delorian. It would rise into a dome structure where you had a panoramic view of the chase. The car would rock, shake and move to the video, making it a bumpy ride. It also sprayed dry ice at various parts. My car in particular spewed out lots of ice and the people sitting in the front seat got so much that a lady started coughing at it..haha.

The next attraction we went to was the Spider man ride. Lines for these rides were pretty long, usually waiting hour and 30 mins to 2 hours. I've never been on this one, but I heard it was pretty good! True to the word, it was very exciting. Not only did the ride shake and move, but you wore 3d glasses as stuff came out at you from all over the place. Again, during the wait in line, there was supposed to be some story behind the ride. From what I picked up, the Daily Bugle designed these news vans that looked like small tanks without the cannon. The ride took us through the city looking for news when All of Spiderman’s nemesis came out and wreaked havoc upon our poor little vehicle. The thing I liked about this ride was the sudden jerking movements it would make. It seems that Universal studios took great pains to sync the movements with the activity. I thought it was even better than the Back to the Future ride.

After Spiderman, we had to navigate our way behind the crowds lined up for the parades, which seemed to happen every hour or so. We ended up in front of the Terminator attraction. I've always wanted to hear Arnold speak Japanese, so we waited in another line to get into it. This particular attraction was not a ride, but more of a show. They would gather everyone in a waiting room before heading into the theatre. In the waiting room, there was this lady that showed up on a balcony above us and started explaining about Skynet and all its wonders. She also was some sort of comedian because everyone would laugh after her lines, which I and my group couldn't understand. After about 10 mins of her comics, we headed into the main theatre where we took our 3d glasses and watched the show. The story was that John Conner is running away from the 2nd version of Terminator (the liquid morphing guy). They run in and out of the stage using 3d and real actors. It was pretty exciting, especially the part where they head into skynet headquarters where there was a huge metal liquid 3d spider fighting the actor Terminator. It was nicely timed with a very loud explosive ending. I highly suggest trying it if you find yourself at a Universal Studios.

It was getting late already, so we decided to go on one more ride, Jurassic Park. Actually, it was just me and kuya Phil because the other two got scared. The ride itself is like the ride in the states, so I knew all that was going to happen. However, the Japanese got me again and had no idea what was said. This time around I bought a poncho so I wouldn't get wet. I think my cousin got really scared the drop because when we saw the picture, he had his eyes closed with a look of horror on his face. It was one of the funniest pictures I've seen!

After the ride, kuya Phil wanted to buy some Back to the Future goods before we left. What was supposed to be a 10 minute shopping trip became an hour easy, as well as $350 out of his pocket. The funny thing was, he said he had to hold himself back from buying anymore. I have no idea how someone can spend that much on one movie. He attributed the fact that it doesn't sell in the U.S. anymore. After hearing all the moaning and buyer's regret, we headed back to the hostel. If you remember, we checked out of the hostel that morning, so we had the staff store our luggage in another room until we returned. My luggage is not very light, and there was a lot of walking, taking trains, and switching trains on the trip to Yokohama. At least this time when we boarded the shinkansen, we used our reserved seat power and got first class seats. Thank god we did, because these seats were nice. The reserved cars in the shinkansen consisted of 4 seats per row, as opposed to the 5 in the non-reserved cars. They also had attendant service where they gave you a small wet cloth to wash yourself as well as a cart full of goods. The ride over was about 3 hours with 3 stops at other terminals. Unfortunately, someone ended up sitting next to me, so I didn't have a row to myself. It didn't matter because the seats themselves were like the seats on the business class/first class of an airplane.

Our stop was at the Sakura-gichou terminal where we saw the InterContinental Hotel from the track. We had to trek about a mile carrying our entire luggage with us. By this time I was already tired from walking all day so this really wore me out. At least by the end of this trip, I would've had a great workout week. Getting back on subject, the hotel is widely known in Japan because if it's architecture. The building itself looks like a huge sail. We got a room on the 22nd floor and the elevator we took was a glass one, so we were able to see how far up we went. The view we have here is absolutely priceless! It overlooks the harbor with the Yokohama skyline in the background, truly a postcard picture moment. This hotel also gave me something I didn't have access to so far, internet. The minute I logged on, I checked my email; IM'd some friends/family, and let the rest of my group do their own emailing and such. We finally got in touch with folks/business back home, so it was a good way to end the day.

Japan 2006, Part 2

Day 2

The day started out pretty early for me, partly because of jetlag and the fact that all the hassle from landing, interrogation, train trip, etc wore me out. I woke up about 6:45am local time. I wanted to get up early so I had the best chance of hitting the showers before anyone really could. Around 7:30, all 4 of us went down for breakfast. They served very small portions for my tastes, and there weren't any seconds available. After breakfast, we left the hostel and headed to Kyoto.
There were no real problems going to Kyoto, at least not that I remembered. However, I do remember Kyoto station being very large, larger than any we have been to so far. We kind of wandered around, trying to find the booth that sells us day passes for the bus system. This one day pass cost me about $28, which will turn out to be a waste as I explain my activities for the day. As we stepped out of the station, the first thing we saw was the Kyoto Sky building, complete with a needle on top of it. I'm from a small town in Michigan, so the crowds amazed me. I think my Kuya Phil was more used to it because from living in New York. I've never really seen so many people walk around at the same time. I'm sure that when I arrive at Tokyo, I'll be blown away!

The first sight we see coming out of the Kyoto train station


Vending machines are everywhere! Want hot food? Just look for a vending machine.

Hugh and Roy while waiting for the bus.

After gazing and a few pictures, we decided to take a bus to our first attraction, Rokuon-ji temple, site of the Kinkaku (Golden Pavillion). Before I get into that, let me go into a little of the bus experience in Kyoto. This was supposed to be on my all day, unlimited pass in the city. First of all, it would end up being the only ride I go that day. That's right, it was a $28 bus ride, and it wasn't even for more than 10 miles. The rest of the time we were walking, or in my case, cramping up a storm. Anyways, the buses here get pretty crowded, we were lucky to get into a bus that was fairly empty so that we could get seats for ourselves.. However, the further we went, the more passengers came on board. It reminded me of my MSU days when the Cata buses would pick up people beyond capacity. After about 45-50 mins, we arrived at our destination, sort of. We still had to walk another 10 minutes to get to the actual temple entrance.

Us being tourists.

Rokuon-ji temple is known world wide for its golden pavilion, Kinkaku. In the 1220’s it was the comfortable villa of Kintsune Saionoji. Yoshimitsu, the 3^rd Shogun of Ashikaga, abdicated the throne in 1394. After 3 years, he began to build Kitayamaden and made a special effort to make it a breath-taking site. He indulged in his peaceful life in this serene setting. After Yoshimitsu’s death, Kitayamaden was made into a Zen temple in accordance with his will. All the building os those days came to ruin except Kinkaku. The garden, however, remains as it was in former days and can be enjoyed as it was hundreds of years ago. It was inscribed as World Cultural Heritage in 1994.

The Kinkaku

Me with the Kinkaku

Closeup view from the side

Scenic shot from the top of the walkway

Carlo, Phil, and Hugh

Along with this pavilion, there was also a large pond. The name of it is Kyoko-chi (Mirror Pond). The pond contains many large and small islands. Climbing a few steps, I ended up on the edge of another small pond, Anmintaku. The small stone pagoda on the island is called Hakujano tsuka (the mound in memory of the white snake). I had only seen these places on tv like the Travel Channel, as well as some animes and variety shows. However, being there really puts all those other things to shame as I was able to see it myself. A nice surprise that I found was that at the end of the temple path, there were plenty of small shops where you can buy souvenirs, trinkets, and other goods that seemed to attract everyone. I ended up buying a small keychain to commemorate the visit. There was also a small Fudodo shrine where the stone Fudo-myoo (Acara) is enshrined as a guardian. Around this time the weather started getting cloudy and it started to sprinkle, but it went away as we left.

Islands on the Kyoko-chi Pond

The next place we headed to was the Ryoanji temple. It’s known to have a beautiful rock garden. It’s a simple garden, consisting only of white sand and 15 rocks, laid out at the end of the 15th century. It’s acknowledged to be one of the masterpieces of Japanese culture. Its simple beauty is said to inspire philosophical meditation. Supposedly, this simple formation intrigues the viewer to come to their own conclusion in deciphering its meaning. The more you think about it, the more sense it's supposed to make. The garden itself measures only 25 meters from east to west and 10 meters from north to south. The rectangular Zen garden is completely different from the gardens of court nobles constructed in the Middle Ages. No trees are to be seen; only 15 rock and white gravel are used in the garden. This rock garden surrounded by low earthen walls may be thought of as the quintessence of Zen art. The mastermind behind it was a person named Soami, a painter and gardener who died in 1525. Maybe I can take the pictures and replicate them in my backyard when I get home. Like the temple before, there was a gift shop at the end of the garden.

Behind the sitting area of the garden, was the Tea Room “Zoroku” Unfortunately, all you could do is look at it. The public are not allowed to walk through the room. It is a typical style favored by Kishuza, a tea master of the early 17^th century. Zoroku means to contain (or hide) six. The six stands for the head, tail, and four legs. Consequently Zoroku means a tortoise, which is the symbol of Genbu, the guardian god of the north.

Passing through the garden, I came across a particular object, a wash-basin stone. This particular one is called Tsubaki, which was used for the tea room. What made this basin unique was its inscription “I learn only to be contended”. This relates to a very important Zen concept: “He who learns only to be contented is spiritually rich, while the one who does not learn to be contented is spiritually poor even if he is materially wealthy”. The Tsubaki is said to have been contributed by Mitsukuni Tokugawa, a feudal lord and the compiler of the great History of Japan known as Dainippon-shi”.

The temple also had a beautiful pond known as the Kyoyochi Pond. It was made in the late 12th century. Until recent years many mandarin ducks were seen on the pond. Hence the Ryoanji was known as Oshidoridera, the temple of mandarin ducks. The water wells out from around the two rocks in the south. On the islet, named Bantenjima, is a hall, in which an image of Sarasvati has been housed.

Next on the agenda was lunch, however, getting there became a real effort. We got lost for a good hour walking around. This was when my legs started to cramp. At first, my left calf would start hurting, then I'd have to stop and rest because it felt like my muscle would knot into a ball every time I would step. To compensate for the pain, I'd have to stretch my heel out and do heel to toe steps with my left leg. Eventually, my shin started to cramp up as well. So for about 10 mins, I felt pain every other step. I finally gave in to the pain and decided to take a break. I made a quick stop in front of a vending machine to pick up some water that I thought would solve my problem. It seemed to work after a 5 minute breather. The odd part kicks in here where my left leg becomes fine and my right calf starts to hurt, then it's the whole process again. After that, the back of my thigh started to act up as well (it never has before in my life). By the time we arrived at our destination, I was in bad shape, and just glad we made it to where we were supposed to go.

The place we had lunch in was a theme park in itself called Kyoto Studio Park. It's themed after ninja and samurai complete with characters in costumes walking around a 17th century Japanese town. It's a nice park, but it kind of reminded me like a 2nd rate park like Michigan adventures. Not saying that it's bad, but it could use some work. The rides here were pathetic, some of the worst I've been on. There was this one that was supposed to be a simulation, complete with moving chairs. Several things went wrong on this one. First of all it looked like it was filmed in the 70s, along with the film flickering and obvious cut marks. The second was that the seats did nothing more than vibrate. It was so unrealistic that I almost fell asleep. I get more excitement sitting in Brookstone than sitting in one of those seats. Finally, the film didn't even match up with the movement and vibration! At least get that! Minor things included: bad acting, credits scrolling like a tv show, and just bad characters. We didn't stay much longer after that simulation, just walked around some more and getting a picture with one of the characters walking around. After leaving the park, we walked back to the train station and headed back to the hostel.

It was a pretty quiet lobby that night, so I decided to hang out there to try to get the internet working. As I was doing that, the tv was playing some show where people would imitate acts of American musicians (or it seemed). The sad thing was that I recognized some of the comedians, singers, and actors on the panel. My internet luck was not so great because this so called free internet didn't even have access to the internet. The router I found didn't have an IP address from the ISP, which defeats the whole purpose of having internet. Giving up for the night, I went down in my room and fell asleep.

Japan 2006, Part 1

This is a beginning of a 10 part series about my trip to Japan. On October 6-16, I had an opportunity to visit this magnificent country and all it's splendor and cultural richness. In a matter of a few days, I was able to view some great areas and experience the culture first hand. On a separate note, I will be editing these with pictures as soon as I can. So check back often to see if I placed any new ones. With that being said, my story begins with:

Day 1

The flight into Japan was a long, tiring one. They said it was a 12 hour flight, but in actually was 15-17 hour flight due to delays. While in the plane, they served us a dinner, mid-flight snack, and breakfast. The in flight movies were X3, Cars, and Garfield 2. I've never seen Cars, which was actually pretty funny itself. Pixar really has a way of putting subtle adult humor in a childrenÂ’s movie and still get away with it. Whoever made Garfield 2 should be shot, because it was one of those films where they tried way to hard to make dialogue funny. X3 was the only movie I knew and really liked.

On long flights like this one, I usually try to sleep most of it off so the time goes by faster. Unfortunately, I couldn't do it for some reason on this particular flight. So, in between the eating and movie watching, I was playing my Nintendo DS. There was this girl sitting across the aisle from me and she had Mario Kart and Animal Crossings. We played a few times on Mario Kart, losing horribly. I wished there were more people available on that flight that played so I would at least have a chance at winning a race.

When we landed, there were still some things to take care of. First was getting past immigration. During the flight we were given these embarking/disembarking cards which we foreigners had to fill out as we entered Japan. It didn't go so bad because I was flagged over to check in the Japanese only immigration. The lady didn't speak a word to me and just stamped my passport and let me be on my way. The second thing we had to do was get our money exchanged. At the time we went to the line, there was already a group waiting, so we stood in line for a good hour or so. I decided to write out 3 traveler's checks for $300, but didn't know how to fill out the form. It ended up being that one of the guys working there did it for me, motioning me through the form on where to sign my name and all that stuff. It's really tough when you don't know the language enough to actually make your point across. So far, this is the biggest obstacle to overcome. As I was finishing up getting my money, a couple police officers in suits came up to interrogate us. They were asking us what we planned to do here, where we were staying, how long we were staying, etc, etc. At the end, they ended up taking our passport numbers. I don't know why they had to hassle us like that, but I guess to them it seems weird to see 4 Americans traveling together without a touring group.

On top of the troubles at airport, our next adventure was trying to figure out the train system and how use our newly acquired rail passes. After another 30 minutes discussing on what stuff meant, we finally found out where we had to go. We took a direct train to the Shin-Osaka station where our hostel was located. It was about an hour train ride, and all of us were just ready to go to bed. When we did get to the hostel, it was such an interesting scene. There were people hanging out in the lobby (which is what I'm doing now, trying to recall what's been happening these past few days). The first night was interesting because the people in the lobby were playing instruments and stuff, looked like such a hippy scene. Another thing was that the lobby wasn't full of Japanese people, it was a bunch of Americans and Europeans trying to be Japanese, which was the funniest thing of all. The lobby itself is pretty small, but their library is full of Japanese manga.

The hostel lobby is located on the 10th floor of some building; our room was on the 9th. Luckily there was an elevator going from the first floor, because I know I wouldn't have survived bringing my bags up ten flights of stairs. As I headed to the room, I noticed that there was a public bathroom and a public washroom. Our room itself consisted of 4 bunks, and 2 futons for the tatami mats. I also found out that there was only 1 shower stall in the ENTIRE hostel. So that meant that if I wanted to go take a shower around the time people go to bed or wake up, I'd have to wait in line to take a shower. The toilets worked a little different here as well. There's no toilet, just a thing on the ground that looks like a mini urinal. I'm always afraid of using them because I might pull a muscle. Finally, the last surprise about this hostel was that you roomed with 5 other people. It was 4 in my party already when we went in our room to sleep. We thought nothing of it and just laid all our stuff on the floor like we'd usually do in a hotel. However, about an hour later, this older man comes in saying that he's sleeping in the room as well. We quickly cleaned up after our slob, American selves, trying to save face to this stranger. Another 30 minutes pass by and our final roommate comes. Initially, we thought our room was pretty roomy for being a Japanese room, but with the 2 others that joined us, it went back to the pre-conceived thought. All I can really remember was being very tired and falling asleep shortly after our 2nd roommate came in.

Our first night in Japan after a long, tiring flight.

However, that didn't stop my excitement of being there.


My cousin Phil from the other side of the room.


The view the morning after.

An introduction of sorts

Many people express their experiences in different ways. Some remember it by photographs, some by videos. In my case, I like to write it down. It allows me to fully detail memories that are fresh in my mind now so that I may reminisces them later in the future. This isn't the first time I've documented my trips, thoughts, aspirations, desires, shortcomings, etc, etc, but it is the first time I'm putting it online for the world to share. With that being said, the first of such chronicles will be a big one, my trip to Japan. Hopefully, you will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it down.