A few more gripes & observations about the land of the rising sun

There are no rubbish bins. Anywhere.

The Japanese feel the need to individually wrap everything, then wrap it in a paper bag & neatly seal it and give you a receipt. Even a postcard: already individually plastic wrapped (why???), then placed in a paper bag, folded over, sellotaped shut, and handed to me ceremoniously with the receipt. For which there was no conveniently located (or even inconveniently located) rubbish bin, so I had to carry the receipt around all day.

It's apparently extremely offensive to blow your nose in public. Rather, it's better to sniff continuously until you can hide yourself away from the world and do your dirty business in shame by yourself.
(on that note, I wonder how many Japanese people have glue ear?)

Japanese toilets. Sorry, but I find squatting and peeing quite undignified.

The western world: they know it exists, but they choose to ignore it. We slept on pillows filled with rice last night. Come to think of it, they were filled with rice at our last 2 hostels (incl the capsule hotel)

The coffee here is TERRIBLE.

Why must they cuten and cartoonise everything??? Even Mt Fuji has been immortalised as a blue fluffy soft toy character that's available as a handbag, keychain, plush soft toy (in several sizes), socks, t-shirts, you name it. (pic from Google). And of course there's a girl Mt Fuji to go with it (it's pink)

And my favourite, Engrish. It can be frustrating, but in the end it's very entertaining :D

Mt Fuji - a brief glimpse

Today's weather was better than yesterday. It was drizzling a little in the morning but quickly stopped and the sun came out around lunchtime. Still lots of low-hanging cloud around so Fuji-san wasn't actually visible. Around 4pm there were a few breaks in the clouds and we caught a glimpse of snow-covered mountainside, and just before we got on the bus to go back to Tokyo the peak was visible. The nice guy running our hostel let me climb on the roof to get a picture :)

Here's Fuji-san behind the Kawaguchi-ko station, a glimpse of it behind the lake and us having a 'slumber party' in our yukatas at the ryokan. Enjoy!

Mt Fuji (apparently)

Am currently sitting in the basement common room of the Kawaguchiko Station Inn.　Kawaguchiko is a lakeside town with a spectacular view of Mt Fuji and cherry blossoms... except for today. It:s raining cats & dogs outside, and Mt Fuji isn:t visible at all. We did the tikki tour on the local sightseeing bus anyway to get the lay of the land, decided to pack it in and have gone back to the hostel. The cool thing is it:s a traditional Japanese ryokan (inn), meaning we are in a sparsely furnished (read: not furnished at all) room with tatami mats on the floor and will sleep on roll-out futons tonight. They also have a sento (washroom with spa and sauna) which is heated to "really hot", which is just delicious on a day like this. Imagine coming in from the cold, wet rain, scrubbing down & sitting in a hot tub, then bundling up in a traditional yukata (kimono-style crossover dressing gown that the ryokan has for its guests). Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Will post some photos if Mt Fuji ever comes out!!

Until next time x

Tokyo Drift

Hi everyone,

I've recovered from my hissy fit last night about the Japanese food. Ended up getting sweet & sour pork stir-fry from the supermarket and microwaving it at the hostel, followed by a bag of chips. Had a great yakitori chicken set for lunch today with our free guide Nori-san while wandering the back streets of an unpronounceable and unlocateable non-tourist suburb in Tokyo, here's a photo:

We've been in Tokyo for nearly a week now. the first 2 days we were completely shrine'd and temple'd out so we went to Disneyland and DisneySea. It was the best thing we could have done! Tokyo Disneyland is a strange mish-mash of Americanism (it's a replica of the original California park) and Japanism, because everyone is uber-polite with the mandatory excessive greeting and thanking you for going on the rides. But interestingly enough, instead of bowing they wave at you - a rather fake excessive wave. they do it when you go on the ride and your car pulls away, they do it when you get off the ride and walk towards the exit, they do it if they catch your eye anywhere in the park (remember this is ALL staff)... I think it must be enforced Americanism from the Disney franchise. But in any case, it really is the happiest place on earth and we had an awesome couple of days :)





Laura has some more photos of us doing fun stuff at the Disney parks.
www.stacy-laura.blogspot.com
DisneySea is really cool - it''s an ad-hoc park a bit like the Animal Kingdom in Florida. It's on the coast and is ocean-themed. They've built a frickin volcano in the middle of the park, the Journey to the Centre of the Earth ride goes right through it. They've also built Mexico where you can find the Indiana Jones ride and number of Mexican-themed shops and eateries. Each area of the park is so well done, they've created a piece of the world and imported bits & pieces to add to the authenticity. There was a mariachi band playing at the mexican restaurant :P The day we went to DisneySea it was nice & sunny, such a welcome change to the freezing raining weather we've had a lot of the time.

...like the day trip to Kamakura. Bloody freezing! There are quite a few shrines etc. to see but we limited it to the famous giant buddha (Daibutsu) then promptly ran home again.

The area we're in is called Asakusa, it's an older part of Tokyo which is home to the Senso-ji Shrine, the oldest in Tokyo. It's got a horribly touristed-out shopping street leading up to it, but the shrine itself is nice and has all the usual trimmings; incense stand, big bell that you can ring, fortunes tied to a tree, dragon guarding the water fountain at which you purify yourself. There are a lot of covered shopping streets leading off it into a rabbit warren of eateries and game parlours, it's fun just to wander through them and get lost.

We're explored a few areas of Tokyo now. It's an unimagineably large city, with a mind-boggling amount of transport options. There is a subway system to rival London's or Paris's, PLUS a rail system of the same complexity above ground. It's kinda fun to try and master it, I think we're doing pretty well!

We wandered around Shinjuku last night, one of the neon shopping areas. Prepare to be assaulted by flashing lights and beeping noises!



Today with our guide we walked through Akihabara "Electric Town" (actually just shops selling electronics), and later on through Ginza which is gorgeous. It's a beautifully paved, tree-lined boulevard which becomes a pedestrian mall in the weekends when they block all vehicle access. All the luxury boutiques have ENORMOUS stores in this part of town: Prada, LV, Tiffany's, De Beers, Mikimoto, Chanel, Bulgari, and the list goes on. As a traveller in my Kathmandu polar fleece I felt extremely shabby and way too uncool to be there. Doesn't help that Japanese women don't even go the 7-Eleven without looking immaculate.

This morning we met a Sumo wrestler!!! We wanted to watch a practise session and scoured the Ryogoku area for the smaller stables with our guide to find something, but they had all finished by the time we got there, plus a lot of rings (they call them sumo stables) are out of action at the moment because they're all re-laying their clay rings for the big Tokyo tournament next month. But we met this big guy and his buddies:

Oh, and we also visited the Ghibli museum, the home of Hayao Miyazaki and all his anime creations, including
- My Neighbour Totoro
- Ponyo
- Spirited Away
- Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind
- Howl's Moving Castle

Here's Totoro in the window: (to those of you who don't like anime, this will mean nothing to you)
it was a really cool place, we got an insight into how the animation is created and where all his inspiration comes from. The museum itself is located in Mikata, an outlying suburb of Tokyo which had a nice big park and cute little surburbian streets that we explored for a while.


Tomorrow we're planning to hit an antiques flea market at the Togo shrine, then head to Harajuku just next door to go Harajuku girl spotting!!! Watch this space for crazy costumes!!!

Until next time!

Love,
May Lee

I'm really over Japanese food

No I don't want your bowl of noodles!! I don't want donburi either! How about some steak & chips? Sorry, too hard. And why don't you just make regular chips instead of weird party picnic flavoured vege crisps?! And while we're at it, green tea flavoured Oreos are REALLY BAD.

More Japanese oddities

Just a few more observations that amuse & confuse.

- Everything is electronic. Even the local noodle stand - you put your money in the vending machine, take a ticket, and give it to the chef who gives you your noodles.
- Japanese Disneyland-goers go extreme on the Disney accessories - hats, headbands, rain ponchos, souvenir popcorn buckets, phone straps, you name it. And not just the kids, grown men and women too (see below). And lots of people carrying soft toys around - not soft toys they'd just purchased, but soft toys that they own. As if they were child-replacements. I had to join in on the dress up game (when in Rome), so I got myself a pair of clip-on Minnie Mouse ears :)
- Japanese girls dressed as dolls. Long blonde curly hair extensions, coloured contacts, mini mini mini skirts and heels. And LOTS of makeup and fake eyelashes. Can't wait to go to Harajuku this Sunday to see the madness in all it's glory.
- Job creation. There is a person to do every single thing you could possibly imagine. A man standing at the entrance to a parking building with a LED-studded hi-vis vest and orange light saber, directing cars coming out of the parking building onto the street. Women sitting in a kiosk on the train platform selling gum, snacks, papers etc. when there's a vending machine two steps away. Millions of Japanese people working in department stores where there really aren't that many customers.
- IRASSHAIMASE!!!!! Incessant over-politeness. Every time you walk past a shopkeeper, sales attendant, etc you get irasshaimase'd (funniest thing - at retail outlets they do it whether someone's coming or not, they just mumble to themselves). As you're leaving, it's a battle of "who gets last word" as they thank you for your business, you say thank you for your change, they say THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS "arigatoo gozamisahitaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" you say thank you again for serving us... a;ll with lots and lots of bowing. My favourite game is to try and get the last word at a restaurant. You're supposed to say gochisosama deshita which means "it was a real feast" (or similar) but they insist on thanking you for eating with them every step you take towards the door, to which you must of course politely bow in response and thank them back. My trick is to say it as I'm walking out the door :P
- Toilet slippers. Why do you need a separate set of slippers for inside the house, then a set for inside the toilet??? Especially when the toilet is Japanese-sized and you could probably sit straight on it from the hallway.
- Black crows: the harbingers of death. Seriously, these freaky black deathmongers are everywhere, cackling and screeching and swooping overhead ominously.
- Engrish: Please have a rocker key around on your wrist to prevent loosing. I'm keeping a log of all the Engrish I see and will post it for everyone's enjoyment after I leave Japan.






Until next time!

(PS if you didn't get it, "rocker" is supposed to be "locker")

10 things Japan has that NZ doesn't have

1. Toilets with control panels


2. Shrines in the middle of shopping malls

3. Green Tea-flavoured Kit Kats

4. Bunches of schoolkids that wanna have their picture taken with you because you're a foreigner



5. Face Absorb Paper


6. A bajillion vending machines, mostly selling drinks but also ice cream, cigarettes, alcohol (no ID required, but there's a stern warning on the machine to make you feel guilty) and 2-minute noodles. Drinks are either hot or cold, most are only labelled in Japanese.

7. Tommy Lee Jones selling drinks out of said vending machines


8. Bloodthirsty deer



9. Ninja shoes that separate the big toe from the other toes - and rickshaw drivers that wear them



10. and of course, Engrish!

The Japandamonium continues!

Hello all,

Just a quick update on the last couple of days. Days 3 and 4 in Japan have gone fast, the time is already flying by and we only have 3 more days before heading off to Tokyo. Yesterday we went to the Chion-ji temple to check out the local flea market. It wasn't so much of a flea market, more of a folk handicrafts & food market. It was so much fun, we were pretty much the only tourists and as usual, nobody spoke a lick of English. I'm really glad we did that rudimentary course last year, knowing a few phrases makes all the difference!! The temple setting was really nice, and we saw lots of traditional Japanese handcrafts, mostly involving making things out of printed textiles. The Japanese are very cutesy but moreso a very visual/aesthetic culture, as in everything has to look just right, neat & tidy, everything has to 'go' perfectly. Everything is just so cute, probably quaint is the word I'm looking for. Anyway I got a hairpin with 2 flowers made of red printed silk on it.

Oh, another interesting thing - every other shop (tourist-targeted and otherwise) sells squares of fabric, again, very beautiful to look at, nice Japanese prints involving cherry blossoms and cute animals. They're not handkerchiefs. They're called tenugui and furoshiki (depending on the size). The Japanese use them to fold carry bags, most often to wrap up their lunchboxes. The larger ones (furoshiki) can be folded several different ways into decent-sized handbags. Sugoi desu ne! I've been thinking about getting one but really, what do I need a square of fabric for?

After the market we went tp Ginkaku-ji, another pavilion/temple type thing (they're starting to all look the same, Kyoto has about 17 shrines/temples/pagodas per capita and you can't walk a block without tripping over one). Then we headed over to Kiyo-mizu area to do our maiko-hensin!! (Maiko dress up). Laura has posted some cool photos on her blog, I've put one below and one of my own. Later that night we went to Gion corner and saw some real-live Maiko on the streets! After being dressed up like that and having everyone stare at me (literally stopping in their tracks to stare open-mouthed, cameras poised), I have some sympathy for the real geisha and maiko that are just trying to do their jobs, and get hassles & followed on the streets by nosy tourists. there's an unobtrusive way to observe a local culture, then there's being a disrespectful tourist who runs after a geisha.

Tomorrow we're headed to Arashiyama, there's a bamboo forest and monkeys. Let's see how that goes :P Bedtime now, see yous later ow!

Irasshaimase!

Minnasan, konnichi wa!

Welcome to Japan! I arrived yesterday morning after a gruelling 22 hour journey from Auckland (6 hours at Changi airport - 10/10 btw, free wifi and butterfly garden!), dead on my feet, sleep deprived, feeling quite grimy but very excited to be here. Made my way to the J-hoppers hostel after much difficulty finding the right exit (read: ANY exit) from the bohemoth Kyoto train station then walking for about 10 mins. Met Laura & Stacy here who had hired a guide to show us around the for day; I literally just dropped the bags & headed out the door. It was a great first day, we visited the Kiyomizu shrine, Yasaka shrine and had okonomiyaki for lunch (Japanese pancakes with meat & cabbage inside). NOM! We spend some time wandering the streets around the Kiyomizu shrine; it's rows and rows of shops selling all kinds of Japanese stuff, some aimed at tourists but mostly specialist eateries selling only one kind of food (e.g. mochi/sweets, udon, fried... things). The area is an old district of Kyoto and the buildings are very historic-looking, it's the same area where we will be dressing up at maiko on Thursday.

Today we made an early start, hired bikes from the hostel and headed to the Fushimi Inari shrine around 8am, before most of the tourists got there. It's the shrine with lots of red torii (gates), that go for several kms around a hill. Good exercise to work off all the yummy food we've been eating! Photos below.

Today we also went to Nijo Castle. The castle itself was a bit meh, the gardens were gorgeous with lots of weeping cherry trees. It feels a bit like being inside a fairy tale, with random shrines and temples absolutely everywhere, cherry blossoms on the trees and little old Japanese women in kimonos here & there. the Cherry blossoms are starting to fall off the trees, so if there's a breeze they fall down and the effect is magical :)

OK so the panda hat - it was a present from Laura & Stacy. Looks a bit naf, bit it kept my head warm while we were biking around today!












Initial impressions of Japan: despite everything being cramped, it's very neat & tidy. The houses are so close together neighbours can probably touch each other out their windows, alleys are very narrow but full of bicycles, but everyone has gardens with beautiful Japanese pine trees and flowers. There are little eateries everywhere, anything from a bowl of udon to a full-on set including miso, salad, todu, dessert, pickles, rice and your main meat item. Fruit & veges are REALLY hard to find - an orange costs 300 yen (NZ$5, 2.5 euros). We're keeping the local 7-eleven running by buying bread, eggs, chips (bread comes in packets of 3 slices).

OK now it's bedtime, email me and/or leave a comment, will post photos of the maiko-henshin asap!!

ML

Surprise Farewell Party!

I got a big surprise on Thursday night; what I thought was going to be a quiet farewell drink with Marion turned into a surprise farewell with a bunch of my closest friends :) Their leaving present for me? A ride on a 1450cc HARLEY DAVIDSON... awesome!! :D It was a beautiful clear night for a cruise along the waterfront, and I even got to wear a very stylish black leather jacket with "Harley" emblazoned across the back.

The bike ride was followed by dinner at Daikoku, the local Japanese Teppankayi restaurant. Leave it to Marion to think of something fitting like that!

To all my friends, thanks for a wonderful evening and I will miss you all dearly. Keep an eye on your mailboxes for postcards :)

2 sleeps to go. Panic attacks happening several times a day. And I can't make my clothes fit in my pack. Bugger.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

PS - new banner image, what do you think?

7 sleeps to go!

The final countdown has begun! (no references to 80's pop songs please) I've been off work for a week already, finishing off some photoshopping work and tying up loose ends. Already the days are beginning to blend into on, and now it's time to make copies of all my documents, decide which clothes I'm going to pack etc.

I've embraced the new itinerary - got the Japan and Tokyo Lonely Planets from the library and dusted off my Japanese language course notes from some time ago. Practised some polite phrases at Soto during lunch - "AsahiBIIRU o onegaishimasu", "oishikatta!", "TOIRE wa doko desu ka?" and "gochisousama deshita!" - all the essentials. Really looking forward to hanging out with Laura & Stacy and laughing our way through Japan. I'm also planning a day trip to Kawaguchi-ko to see Mt Fuji and take some sunset photos - did you expect any less from me? I will post it asap, I promise.

That's all for now - will write again once I'm on the road!

ML