Ninja socks, antiques & karaoke

Hi everyone,

Well, we've come to the end of our Japan trip. 3 weeks sure went fast! Over the last few days we've been exploring different pockets of Tokyo and stumbled across some neat stuff.

We started off in Ueno, an area fairly close to us that has a huge park. The park itself isn't quite what we expected; no open grassy areas to sit on, but lots of neatly manicured looking-gardens (i.e. look but don't interact with it). Ueno Park is also home to the National museum, a zoo and a number of other large museums. Right next to it is a famous shopping street which we checked out (of course!), it was cool because it was a market for locals rather than tourists. We had lunch at a sushi train restaurant, I got to try toro (an expensive cut of tuna, delicious!) but poor Laura only had 2 pieces of rice because she doesn't eat fish. After lunch I bought a pair of ninja socks with sakura designs, and wore them with my jandals which is what they're designed for. I felt like an idiot and took them off a few minutes later.


The other day we went on a mission to Harajuku to find an antiques market in the basement of a famous building that we'd read about in the Lonely Planet. Laura was looking for Edo-period coins and I wanted an antique hairpin. However the universe had other plans: the building was closed for renovations and the market had disappeared (much like the previous antiques flea market we had tried to find). I stopped to ask for directions at a pharmacy which wasx quite an adventure in itself: the poor girl didn't speak any English and tried to ask one of her coworkers, but none of them spoke any English either. I then tried to ask about the Hanae Mori building in my broken Japanese, using the "negative" hand signal (crossing your arms in an X in front of your body) to try to say "closed?", but she still didn't understand. Then to my surprise a customer piped up "that building is closed". I explained to her that we were looking for the antiques market in the basement but she wasn't from around here so asked an older lady behind the counter, who confirmed (i grasped bits of Japanese) that there did used to be an antiques market, but its gone now. She did manage to point us in the direction of a nearby street with lots of antique dealers amongst lots of hand gestures, map-pointing and broken bits of Japanese. So finally we were on our way, i bowed profusely to all kind ladies involved who all bowed back etc. and the poor girl I asked in the beginning looked like she was about to cry, she was so disappointed with herself at not being able to help me!

So we went to the street which turned out to be fine antique dealers and not really what we were looking for, but one of the dealers did tell us about a part of town called Nishi ojikubo, which has a concentration of junky/antiquey stores (perfect!). 15 minutes on the JR Chuo line saw us arriving at this little town and asking a policeman for directions. "Sumimasen, ANTIIKU SHOPPU-wa doko desu ka?" to which he replied "A!!!! ANTIIKU SHOPPU map wa... hai doozo!!" Turns out they have a map of the local area with all the antique dealers marked on it, like a trail you can follow. Fun! So we did a circuit of this little town, it was a really nice part of town away from the hustle and bustle of central Tokyo. The things I'm looking for are called kanzashi and turns out they're quite rare and hard to find. We found a few here and there, some were made of plastic but I managed to find a pair of really nice ones made of tortoiseshell with carved ends. Laura found a set of commemorative Japanese coins, and we also found a whole lot of Japanese handkerchiefs, which they twist & tie on their heads at festivals. Team bandanna!! At only Y200 a pop, we had to get them. Mine has a drum and a blue Japanese pattern on it, Stacy's has the angry Buddha enforcer and apparently is from a hospital :P


To celebrate our last night together in Tokyo, and also because we'd been talking about it all week with our hostel buddies, last night we went to a karaoke bar!! We started off with a few drinks at the hostel where we made friends with a bunch of 4 young British guys (;Team London'), some Americans doing the teaching English thing (Texas and 2 girls), Moran our Israeli friend, a random Brit called Zac ('the fellow in the glasses'), plus us 3 makes quite a crowd. I had bought some extremely fake-looking fake eyelashes for the occasion and got myself all Harajuku'd out with crazy hair, excessive makeup and of course the minnie mouse ears :) (A girl at the club later on even pointed and said kawaii!). It was a most enjoyable evening!




Today is considerably quieter, everybody except me flew out today so I'm just chilling by myself until I head to Bangkok tomorrow. Next post will be from Thailand!

Sayonara!

Oh yeah, here are some random things, a cake factory next to a dentist, a picture of the Tokyo Tower and some interesting-looking sushi (I styled it myself!)

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")