Shinjuku

It took us awhile to get to Tokyo from Daegu. We took a bus to Busan, a train to Narita airport, and another train into the city. We wandered around looking for our hotel until a nice man pointed us in the right direction. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Japanese addresses actually make sense, and we found our hotel by counting to the right number. We settled in and headed out for Shinjuku, Tokyo's business district. We were headed for the Tokyo Metropolitan Tower, which provides views of the city. Bobby loves to visit towers, and as an added bonus, this one was free. We had gelato (for me) and beer (for Bobby) in the observation lounge. Afterwards, we wandered out to find dinner. We were disappointed to find a lot of stool or standing restaurants, but eventually we found a sit down place with just about everything on the menu. It was like Japanese tapas. We indulged.

Tokyo from the Metropolitan towers

Another view

Toy vending machines!  One has a nintendo DS pet.

Seriously, don't squat on the toilet seat

at night

Shinjuku

Asakusa, Ginza, and Shibuya

We headed for Asakusa in the morning, which was close to our hotel. I was determined to get a decent map from the tourist information center. Asakusa has Tokyo's most famous shrine, but since we were going to Kyoto, we skipped this one, instead opting to wander around the market. As it turns out, I'm a total sucker for Japanese souvenirs. They are all so cute, and many have cats on them! The maneki neko, or lucky cat, was ubiquitous. There were also a lot of rabbits, since this is the year of the rabbit.

From Asakusa, we went to Ginza to see—well, eat from—the Tsukiji fish market. My doctor told me I could eat sushi from reputable places, so we went to a famous restaurant that provides sushi from the fish market. Japanese sushi is, of course, amazing, and has ruined all other sushi for me. The proprietor, probably pleased that we ordered the expensive stuff instead of the lunch special, which was only written in Japanese, gave me a stuffed bear for the baby. We walked past the massive market, stopping to see a turtle in the dirty river. I guess he eats the leftovers from the market. We enjoyed a peaceful walk through the park, which used to be a pleasure garden for Japanese nobles. It was right on Tokyo bay. Afterwards, we walked to the Sony Museum, where we played with the latest electronics. It was a little underwhelming, but I did find a camera that turned photos into anime. We visited a Japanese toy store and marveled at the robot toys. I bought a bizarre looking stuffed toy for the baby.

We spent the evening in Shibuya, which looked like the center of Japanese nightlife. The subway station was packed with people. We shoved our way towards the Hachiko statue, which honors a loyal dog who waited for his owner at the train station every day, even after the man died. Hachiko is now apparently a popular meeting place. We pushed our way out of the crowd and crossed the famous crossing. We managed to find a place in a nearby mall where we could watch the tide of humanity that flooded the crossing every couple of minutes. We had dinner in the mall—always a good place to find a meal—and headed home.

A food joint outside of our hotel

Vending machine restaurants.  Select a food item, pay, and bring the ticket inside for food.

Asakusa

Subway station

Me in the park

Bobby barely clears the torii gates

Ginza

An arcade full of claw cranes

Hachiko, surrounded by bored looking young people

Shibuya crossing

Ueno, the Imperial Palace, and Akibahara

We breakfasted at a Denny's. I had a salad and pancakes, which, as it turns out, makes a wonderful breakfast. Afterwards, on the advice of the tourism office, we went to Ueno to see the museums. We visited the Tokyo National Museum, where we saw silk paintings, samurai costumes, and some photographs from 100 years ago. We walked through the park in search of the statue of the samurai with his dog, which we eventually found. The samurai publicly disemboweled himself in protest of the Meiji government, but we were more interested in his dog. We had lunch at a vending machine restaurant. Afterwards, Bobby discovered a grape mountain dew in another vending machine. We headed for the imperial palace, where we found out that the subway machines ate our tickets if we transferred to another company's line. A woman in the ticket booth helped us get them back.

The imperial palace gardens were nondescript, though the huge walls that surrounded them were interesting. Bobby liked the koi ponds. I was upset to discover that my new maneki neko camera case had fallen out of my bag somewhere. We stopped by the 7-11 for a red bean ice cream to ease the loss.  There were several people standing around reading the manga on the shelves.  I wondered why the shopkeeper didn't tell them to buy something or leave.

That night, we went to Akibahara, which was not far from our hotel. I had been pestering Bobby to read the guidebook and pick a place in Tokyo where he wanted to go, and he selected Akibahara, which is Tokyo's nerd central. Besides being a center for buying discount electronics, it had a lot of anime and game shops. It turned out to be one of my favorite spots in Tokyo, with lots of people in costume. We explored a six story Sega building, where Bobby won me a new camera case from one of the claw cranes. The building had two stories full of claw cranes, and the other four were various types of video games. I wanted to get a picture, but there were no photo signs plastered everywhere. We went to a mazelike restaurant for dinner which was full of private room/booths. We were dismayed to discover that we were supposed to order food from a computer screen in Japanese, but an English speaking waiter helped us.

a shrine in Ueno park

The samurai and his dog

Imperial palace gardens

Akibahara

How do we order from this thing?

Gion

We spent an inordinate amount of time getting to Kyoto, since the train was delayed due to heavy rain. By the time we arrived, it was the afternoon. We wandered through what turned out to be the biggest train station I have ever visited looking for food. We went to “ramen street” on the tenth floor, but the lines dissuaded us, so we headed for the hotel. When we got there, it was after three, and since most historic attractions in Kyoto close at four or five and we still hadn't eaten, I considered the day a loss. Fortunately, I was wrong! We walked around our neighborhood looking for a restaurant, and we ended up in a beautiful glass walled place that was surrounded by a zen garden. We were served by women in kimonos. It had a ten page menu, so we ended up getting noodles, sushi, and shabu shabu, which is meat cooked in a hot pot on the table. I finished it off with some fancy Japanese tea, which was refreshing. Thoroughly satiated, we walked down to Gion.

Gion is the historic geisha district, and I was excited to see it. The neighborhood sports historic architecture, but it is still functioning, so it became more interesting as the sun went down. We could peer inside the teahouses where geisha entertained, but we couldn't afford to go in. We wandered down the cobblestone streets for awhile, then went back.

canal outside of our hotel

she was an actress

Gion

Bobby liked this picture

Eastern Kyoto

I had planned to spend our only whole day in Kyoto in the temple and shrine district, which is the “must see” part of Tokyo. I suspected that we would get temple and shrine fatigue after awhile, but we held up pretty well. First on the list was Ginkaguji, which had the loveliest zen garden I have ever seen. We walked down the “path of philosophy,” a peaceful trail bordered by a stream on one side and some old style houses on the other. We wandered into a shrine that was in some disrepair, but had a lot of animal statues. While headed towards Heian Shrine, we stumbled across a shrine that was said to promote easy childbirth. We bumbled around the structure like the clueless foreigners we are and ended up dumping money in the money box in the hopes that that would be enough to get me some good childbirth juju. I think we were supposed to ring a bell, clap, or tie something on a tree, but we were not sure which. Heian shrine was massive, as promised, and had some nice gardens. While walking towards some more temples, we came across a cafe and had lunch. The nondescript looking place made a surprisingly good vegetable curry and honey ginger iced tea. We walked up a hill, stopping periodically to look at temples. We ended with Chion-in, another massive structure with “nightingale floors,” which deliberately creak so that occupants can hear intruders. We headed back, but not until after I bought and consumed ice cream from a vending machine.

Zen garden

People in kimonos!

On the side of the path of philosophy

Overgrown shrine

Rabbits at the childbirth shrine.  Rabbits are symbols of childbirth.

The childbirth shrine

Massive torii gates outside of Heian shrine

The garden with the stepping stones

Paper trees.  I think the papers are prayers..?

Chion-in

Beer vending machine

The gardens at Ginkaguji

Nijo-jo

Our plane wasn't scheduled to leave until evening, so we decided to see one more thing before we left Kyoto. We settled on Nijo castle, which once housed a Tokugawa shogun. Bobby read that it was a castle designed to make your guests fell imprisoned. It had a lot of nightingale floors, as well as elaborately painted wall panels, all of which we were not allowed to photograph. We had to leave our shoes at the door, which is normal at temples, but this was the first shoes-off castle I visited. The gardens included a neat pond with concrete stepping stones. After we left the castle, we went to a ramen restaurant. I had eaten ramen previously, but we had not been to a ramen restaurant. The food was wonderful; a nice goodbye Japan.

The gate to Nijo castle

The main structure

A heron in the gardens

I guess they serve crab

Not Hiroshima, and with a volcano

We planned to spend our second and last day in Japan at Hiroshima. The atomic bomb is not a part of American history I am proud of, but I felt, as Americans, that we should see it. We went to the train station that morning and asked for two tickets to Hiroshima. We had about 15 minutes to board the train: just enough time to find breakfast and coffee, get stuck in the turnstiles, and find our seats. Turnstiles are our nemeses here, and each one has some different method for crossing. All turnstiles are all the same type, which does nothing to indicate a wrong move until two barriers pop out to close on you. There are always helpful subway/train attendants who watch us carefully as we try to navigate the system and pop out to direct us through the idiot proof turnstile when we mess up. This time I had put the wrong ticket in the turnstile, as I had a Japanese and an English version.

Anyways, we were on the train and moving before I realized that our journey was 2 hours 20 minutes instead of the 70 minutes the internet said it would be. We were on a “slow” train (this train probably went about 85 miles per hour, but it was not the famed maglev bullet train). After about an hour and a half, everyone got off the slow train and boarded a bullet, so I figured the track was broken, which would explain the longer journey. I am no stranger to railroad mishaps.

It wasn't until I got off the train and went to the tourist information kiosk for a map that we realized we were in the wrong city. The lady at the train station in Fukuoka had misheard me and sent us to Kagoshima. Instead of 200 kilometers north, we went nearly 400 kilometers south. The floor dropped out from under me. All of our plans and we were in some nothing city! Bobby tried to cheer me up, saying we'd make the most out of it. We browsed our tourist map and saw a volcano island on the south side of town.

We've seen Mount St. Helens, so I wasn't expecting much. The moment we came in sight of the volcano and smoke began to billow slowly out of the top was priceless. It was an active volcano! It was truly inspiring to see. We found a nearby restaurant where we could eat lunch, and after some excellent ramen and a Kirin, we had decided we had made a fortunate mistake. If we had known there was an active volcano so close to us, we may have opted to go to Kagoshima anyways. Bobby loves volcanos. We decided to get closer.

We took a ferry to the island and a bus to get closer to the cone. Our observation point was covered in black ash, and we looked over a lava field from the catastrophic 1914 explosion that turned the island into a peninsula. Afterwards, we went to one of the island's many hot springs—this one for feet—and warmed our toes. Kagoshima was relatively warm and beautiful, with lush vegetation (once you got out of the ash covered area). The beaches were littered with black volcanic rocks. We watched the volcano turn red as the sun set, then headed back for the “road to the Meiji restoration,” which included a samurai house. We had dinner at a sushi joint—that's right, I had nothing but ramen and sushi the entire time I was in Japan—which was also a shopping mall with a ferris wheel on top. It was a long journey home, but we were both satisfied with our mistake. We lost an atom bomb memorial, but gained an active volcano.

This happened right when we came in sight of the volcano














The walkway was covered with ash


















The foot hot springs











The samurai house













The train station/mall. The ferris wheel looked much cooler at night, but my camera takes shoddy pictures of lights at night.

Fukuoka

As seeing Japan has been a dream of ours for awhile, we decided to take my long weekend to see the piece of Japan that is closest to us. Early this morning, we hopped a hydrofoil from Busan to Fukuoka. This ferry, called the Beetle, is a funny looking thing that sits above water on two fins and goes really fast. The trip took us two hours. I must say, approaching the islands by sea was a spectacular way to see the country for the first time.

Upon landing, we were immediately confronted with one of Japan's bigger frustrations (for foreigners, at least). Most Japanese ATMS will not take foreign cards. This is an issue in Korea as well, but we can at least count on train and subway stations to have foreign card ATMS. This is not the case in Japan. On the advice of a friendly tourist information counter attendant, we hiked a good half mile to the 7-11, suitcases in tow. There we found an ATM's that would accept our cards.

That blip aside, we made it to our hotel, where they told us we couldn't check in until 2. We stored the bags and set out for Canal City, a very sophisticated looking mall. There is a canal running through the center. I have never been a huge fan of malls, but in Korea I've found they're one of the best places to eat. The same seems to be true in Japan. We found a sushi restaurant with a conveyer belt. Here's how it works: various dishes with two or three pieces of sushi pass by on a conveyer belt. Each price has a different color plate. You select your sushi plates, eat them, and stack them on the counter. When you are ready to leave, the attendants count your plates and give you your bill. The restaurant also included little green tea fountains at each seat, which was icing on the (sushi filled) cake.

After checking into our room, we wandered about a bit. We ran across a Shinto shrine, which is similar to a Korean buddhist temple in structure and layout, but very different. Japanese temples lack the elaborate paintings of Korean ones, but they have these beautiful gate structures. There also appears to be far more writing on Japanese temples—Korean temples have mainly pictures. There was a vending machine where (I think) you could purchase certain prayers.

Fukuoka is a ramen city, apparently, and we saw several outdoor ramen shops lining the canals. Almost all of them had big red lanterns outside, and they set up at dusk. We went looking for Ippudo, a much lauded ramen shop. We actually wandered into the wrong restaurant, but the host pointed us the way to the correct one. Japanese people, like Koreans, are very considerate. At Ippudo, there were only three items on the menu, but the ramen I had was soulful. I have heard that real ramen is a treat, and I have been waiting to try it. Korean ra-myun, as far as I've seen, is very similar to the kind that comes out of a bag. This is not so in Fukuoka. The broth itself has so many flavors I can only imagine what it is made of.

There are a few things we noticed about Japan off the bat More people in Japan speak English. There are a lot of bikers in Daegu, but there are scads in Fukuoka (Bobby pointed out that unlike Daegu, Fukuoka is flat). Japanese restaurants are “your plate, my plate” kinds of places, unlike Japanese restaurants in Daegu. I have so fallen into the habit of sharing food that I still pick off of Bobby's plate, which I'm not sure he likes. Japan is expensive, more so with the weak dollar. Japanese tea is out of this world. Japanese people are not as pushy as Koreans can be, and you don't have cars driving on the sidewalks or people fighting to be the first in the door like you do in Korea. There are no public displays of drunkenness. Nonetheless, I was a little miffed when an American we met at the sushi restaurant said that Japanese people are considerate, unlike Koreans (he has not been to Korea). I remember all the Koreans who have gone out of their way to help us when we look confused. The two cultures are different, but both are considerate. Japanese people will stand back at a crowded doorway, but no one has stopped to help me while I am staring at a map, a menu, or a pile of coins in my hand.

The recycling here is confusing enough to require a class. There are different trash cans for bottles, plastic, paper, and “combustibles”, though no food waste. I had to turn on my LAN port to get internet (to be precise, I had to call the front desk and tell them my internet isn't working and have them show me how to turn on my LAN port). The toilets here all have heated seats and several buttons, though it's difficult to find the flusher.

There are less neon lights than in Korea, but there is more art to them. In Korea, there are several signs made up of lighted letters. In Fukuoka, there are elaborate LED displays with pictures.

Tomorrow, Hiroshima. (Editor's note: I left the last line on the post for novelty's sake).



The fabulous sushi conveyor belt















Canal World














One gate in the shrine















The Japanese are fond of vending machines























The river at night









The intelligent box was just too intelligent for me