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.