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.