May 2008

Just a few more random pics...way too many to post but a good small sampling..

• Harajuku - spent the day in Harajuku and i could have stayed the whole day just in Yoyogi park. It had a street lined with hopeful bands that played throughout the day (rock mostly) and people were just watching, clapping and buying CDs as they saw fit. The inside of the park was also filled with other groups of people that were practicing their dance routines, salsa routines, juggling, etc.. and other people were just having a picnic on a nice day in the park.

• Went to the infamous bridge where goth/lolita-type people stand around and surprisingly, actually welcome people asking them to take pics with them. It's considered a compliment to to be asked to get a pic taken of (according to our friend Jay,see below). Took a pic with a couple girls giving free hugs (yep i got two) and two goth-type girls. There weren't very many cosplay-type teens on the bridge but something definitely worth seeing on a Sunday afternoon!

• Met up with an old-school friend (went back to P.A.C.E. since grade 4), Jay, in Harajuku and couldn't have asked for better company to hang with and spend the day in Harajuku with! Met up with him in Yoyogi park, right by the Rockabilliy boys (another Harajuku sight/tradition). He's been teaching english for 8 non-consecutive years and is enjoying every minute of it there.

• Jay gracously took us around Harajuku/Omotesando (high-end Yorkville-type place) /Takeshita-Dori (small, narrow street a la Kensington market). Spent a lot of time catching up (we went to P.A.C.E. together since Gr 4 (the real old school P.A.C.E.rs eh Jay? lol) until end of High School and havent seen each other since (10+ years..). Jay also explained a few Japan-isms that we had questions to and even managed to write 'Sandico' in proper Japanese text/symbols! Like we said Jay, if you're ever in UK anytime soon or back in T.O., give us a call!!

• May Grand Sumo Tournament - went with a half-day tour to watch a sumo tourney - we were lucky in the sense that there was a real sumo tourney going on at the time and it was day 9 of 15. A very Japanese experience and the crowd really got into to it when the bigger wrestlers were up. As usual, they save the yokozunas and ozeki (2nd-highest ranking) wrestlers bouts' towards the end of the day but the rituals and pre-fight routines and the actual match were off the hook!! There are currently 2 yokozunas, each with their own personalities, and when one of them got pissed, Ashawaroyu (or something like that, the other yokozuna was Hakoucho or something), he starts slapping his belt and body angrily, and the crowd goes wild! Seriously, these 'fat' guys are like huge mounds of muscle and it is very surprising to see their quickness, agility and all the humour/hype surrounding each bout. Another definite must-see in Japan if you get the chance!

• Went back to Shibuya 109, the place we've been told by a few locals, is THE place to go to see the latest trends and to see the hottest of the hott! Siick.

• Common trend #1 - short short shorts with thigh-high black stockings and heels

• Common trend #2 - country-style-quilt-pattern short dresses with cowboy boots

• Common trend #3 - 80's is back! Fluorescent-pastel coloured jeans with shirts with big glittery writing

• Common trned #4,5,6,etc... - you just have to go youself and see it. wow. Really the best place for fashion.

Back to the T-Dot in the morning...

Finally back in Tokyo for the last few days before (unfortunately) heading back home..

• Shinjuku - huge station again and there are a ton of department stores right around the station. Of course there is 1 or 2 men's levels and 3 or 4 women's levels. The outside is like a big financial/business district and lots of good architected skyscrapers around the city. At night, we went to Kobuki-cho, which is considered Tokyo's red light district! Lots of neon lights here again, roads were closed for the night and the place was filled with hostess bars, regular bars, pachinko places, etc. and lots of people hanging around. Not a place to bring a date but fun to walk around..

• Had A drink and dessert plate at Park Hyatt Hotel - the infamous bar featured in Lost in Translation! Extremely nice hotel and the New York Bar was located on the 52nd floor with great surrounding views of Tokyo/Shinjuku area. Very expensive and they also charge a cover charge of $20CDN per person if you stay after 8. We left at 7:30.

• Night at Roppongi Hills - spent a couple nights at Roppongi Hills, which is a huge modern shopping/commercial complex and probably the place where we saw the most foreigners hang out. Checked out Heartland (filled with foreigners in business attire and Japanese women a la meat market style..) and Roppongi Bar.

• Akihabara - this place is an anime and manga and electronics-enthusiast dream place to be. As soon as we walked out of Akihabara station, we were greeted with huge billboards of anime characters and also girls in maid outfits handing out flyers from everything from maid cafes (see below) to other stores. Walking around the streets here was another sensory overload and you could find everything anime-related, tons of duty-free stores, huge arcades and any kind of electronic you could want. If i could understand Japanese, i probably would have bought a DVD set of any anime series but unfortunately, 99% of the DVDs sold here have no english subtitles...

• Maid Cafe - haha! another truly Japanese experience. Went to find a maid cafe and found Royal Milk off one of the side streets in Akihabara. The novelty here is that you are served by girls in maid outfits and you ring a small little bell on your table to call them over. Of course, there was the language barrier again but it was pretty much point and order. No pics allowed in here. Guy beside us was wearing homemade ear muffs that resembled a cat or rabbit and was drawing cat people in his book.....weird but cool and nobody bothered to notice...

• Ueno Park - walked through the park to try and visit the Tokyo National Museum but got there with one hour before close and it was 1500 YEN each. Looked nice from the outside..

Today is our second last day and plan to spend it in Harajuku area and meet an old friend....stay tuned!

We're baaack! Spent the last couple nights in Hakone, close to Mt Fuji in an old-school typical Japanese Inn called a ryokan. Of course, there was no internet but it was simply amazing and something you have to experience. We were nestled in a little valley and had to take a 6min cable car down to our inn, where we were treated with the utmost respect and taken care of by the cutest old lady who spoke no english but was always trying to explain things to us and we were doing our best with our Japanese phrasebook.

• Took the shinkansen 2.5 hours to Odawara and from there took an old railway up the mountain to Miyanoshita where our ryokan, Taiseikan, was located. We were checked into their 100-yr-old suite, as they knew we were celebrating our 1-year anniversary, and we had the perfect view of the mountains and rushing river below us.

• The room had tatami mats where we sat and (tried to) kneel/sit while being served our kaiseki (Japanes set meal) dinner/breakfast each day. Our dinners were seriously meant for kings/queens. The first night, we had something like a 10-15 course meal full of Japanese dishes, some we recognized, some we didn't but we devoured them all. One of them was like a giant clam that (we think) was still alive as it was cooking under a hot plate while we ate the other dishes. The second night we had shabu shabu and shared 10 pieces of beef plus a whole slew of other dishes. VERY VERY good, and the breakfasts we were served always set us up for a long day of sight-seeing and travelling. Mama-san, the cute old lady who was always our waitress, always amazed me by setting the dishes in a set way for both of us, each dish had it's own location, and then carrying away the dirty dishes when she left. I am truly amazed at the service we get and how much pride all Japanese people take in their work...love it!!

• On our full day in Hakone, we had to take a variety of different types of transportation to actually get to Hakone from our ryokan. A combination of old railway cars, two cable cars across the mountains, and a 30 min ride aboard a pirate-looking ship across Lake Ashi was what it took to get to Hakone. Trust me, the travel to Hakone was much better than Hakone itself, lol, but we did only have 2 hrs in the area before we had to leave and catch our dinner back at the ryokan.

• We had public bath and private bath at our ryokan - meaning public and private hot springs. AMAZING EXPERIENCE! Everything we though about a hot spring we had - hot water (not warmed by any artificial means) piped from the mountain, rock/garden surroundings. The public bath was quite the experience too as you had to go buck-naked into the main area share by other people (men and women were separated though) and use a little stool and tabo to clean yourself before going in. And the water is scalding hot! Seriously, you have to try an onsen if you are in Japan...

• At one of our stops on the way to Hakone, we stopped at a natural sulphor-emitting place where it stank like rotten eggs and there was smoke coming out of the mountain. But we had these black eggs that supposedly gave us 7 yrs of happiness!

• If you are ever in Japan, you must visit the country/outskirts, get away from the city for a bit and try a ryokan. Taiseikan, in Miyanoshita, highly recommended!

• Again, pics will be posted when we get back..or next month when my monthly upload limit resets..

Now we're back in Tokyo, bright lights, big city and spending the weekend until Tuesday here. One last hurrah in Tokyo before coming back to O CANADA! I think today we will try to go to Roppongi or Shinjuku and tonight we will try to have a drink at the bar featured in Lost in Translation...

• Took the subway/JR special express to Kyoto station (trust me, if you can do luggage forwarding service, it might be worth it - imagine lugging around 2 full-size luggages down stairs in the middle of Union station at rush hour..)..and onto Hotel Okura, right in the middle of Kyoto and a central starting point to visit the many sites around here.

• Had our Kobe beef 1 year anniversary dinner (!!!) at Ashiya (down a very small alleyway in Kiyomizu) and it was worth every penny! The courses served around the actual beef were typical north american fare (salad, baked potato, etc.) but the actual beef was so tender and was like butter when biting down on it. I now know why this type of meat is on the high end scale and is probably the best cut of beef i've ever had, hands down. Ashiya is a family-run restaurant and our waitress, the grand-daughter of the mama-san (who by the way played 3 practical jokes on me!) is in geisha school..

• Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavillion) - Took the 59 bus to the Golden Pavillion temple; place was packed with tourists. Basically, it's a temple covered in gold leaf paper surrounded by water and you can't actually go into it but rather just walk around and take nice pictures.

• Ryojani Temple (Zen rock garden) - This is one of Japan's most famous rock gardens and its only 25x10m big. Interesting to see and there is a viewing area in which you could sit and contemplate stuff i guess but i guess with all the other tourists there, it was hard to do that. Still, a defiinte must-see.

• Kiyomizu Temple - huge temple in the Kiyomizu area, about 15 min cab ride from our hotel. Probably the most popular temple in Kyoto and well worth the visit. Again, ton of tourists here and 90% of them were schoolkids on day trips or something. Here, you get an awesome view of Kyoto and on the narrow street to get up to the temple, there were many food stalls and little shops to buy good souveniers.

• Fushimi Inari Shrine - Shinto shrine in Kyoto, dedicated to Inari, the God of rice. A TON of red torii gates here and this temple is located on a hill so to get to the top, the path is lined with hundreds, if not thousands of torii gates and its ALL UPHILL. Wow, it was hot getting up and i think i read that the path was like 4km long...with two washroom stops..lol. This place was also featured in Memoirs of a Geisha.

• Saw our first Geishas today! (4 of them walked right by us!)

• I love how the retail store employees bow to the store before they go into the backroom. Everyone is so polite and helpful and do their best to try and communicate with you even though their english is almost non-existent

• Arashiyama - very, very nice quiet river-side town sort of like a Niagara-on-the-Lake town

• Gion district - Had dinner at a small place called Yagembori - AWESOME, must go here and service is excellent! Wasn't quite the pub-feel we were looking for but the food was amazing (probably the best toro (fatty tuna) i've ever had) and when conversing with them, i gave compliments to the chef in Japanese and when we left, the whol restaurant walked us to the door! The daughter was going to Winnipeg in September for studies too. After we went to an izakaya by our hotel called Manzara Honten - place was ok but the tax driver went the ten extra miles to make sure we found the place (he didnt speak english at all!).

• Somehow i accidentally went over my upload limit for pictures for the month for the site..will have to re-update with pics in June.
  

Off to Hakone in the morning (right by Mt Fuji) for a ryokan experience (and kaiseki meal)..woohoo!