Introduction

Hey everyone, and welcome to my Japan Travel Blog.

NB: the blog is now complete (as of early August 2007), hope you enjoyed it. I surely enjoyed writing it, getting comments, and more than anything of course, the trip to Japan itself :)

Most of these entries were written on the train & in hostels without immediate access to internet. So I was only able to post them after getting back from the trip.

The posts go from the bottom up, so the latest post is always at the top.

Special thanks to Corey, Yumi, Gil, Julien and Till, for giving me some tips for what to expect in Japan.

Very special thanks to Minos, who received me in Kyoto, guided me thru my first week in Japan.

Bonus post

I've been asked for another post, but I have to make a disclaimer that it's been 2 months, and the impressions aren't fresh anymore. Most of these posts were written while in Japan, the same day as the experience. So my writing style cannot give it justice from this distance in time and space.

Nevertheless, since the readers have been so loyal indeed, I've added another little bonus deelio, which is a set of pictures of signs & products from Japan written in perfectly grammatically correct Engrish.



So Here they are. Enjoy.

What I haven't covered & what I missed

What I haven't covered:

• My experience in the hostels
• Karaoke trips in Kyoto & Tokyo
• Electronics shopping in Akiabara
• My trip to Nikko
• Osaka Aquarium
• Visit to the Austrian Embassy for an art exhibition
  

What I missed doing or seeing:

• The Robot museum in Nagoya
• The Samurai castle in Himeji
• Miyajima island near Hiroshima
• A tea drinking ceremony
• Kabuki theater
• A Ninja training camp visit
• Sumo wrestling / Jiu-jitsu championship
• Hokkaido and the snow macaques.
  
• A visit to the Tokyo stock market
• Korea town, or a visit to Seoul.
  

Next time.

Last night, New York Bar

So this is it, my last night in Tokyo. I went to New York Bar on top of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Shinjuku. This is the one that was featured in Lost in Translation. The drink was so-so, but the atmosphere and the view were superb.



I'm tired as a dog, but I had a great time here and this was a good way to end it. Goodbye Tokyo, I'm sure I'll be back.

Women only

There is a wagon on each metro train which is designated as Women Only during rush hour. In the clubs, some seats are Women Only. You can't drink champaigne because it's for women only. In the internet cafes, there's a whole section designated as Women Only.

Roppongi

This area of Tokyo is where the embassies are, and naturally it's least Japanese at all. There are more white people and Indians here than anywhere else in Japan, and everything is as English-friendly as possible: the menus, the ads, the staff. The cafes and shops are all western chains, and for the first time in Japan, there are enough places to sit! Yaay!

This area has two important parts: Roppongi Crossing and Roppongi Hills. The first is a nasty traffic-congested area with hotels, bars, clubs, and cheap restaurants - all sorts of jam-packed entertainment layered from 2 basements to 7th floor. At night it's full of black people (all from Ghana for some reason) agressively promoting strip clubs to the lonely businessmen and programmers who came here for work.


The Roppongi Hills area is something I couldn't really find at first, until I realized it is not a topological landmark with hills & meadows, but instead a name of a huge shopping complex. The complex is centered around a skyscraper with a great observation deck, and is surrounded by a convoluted web of annexes with escalators left and right.


There is a lot of (good) modern art around and ultra-expensive shops selling shiny things and clothes you'd only wear once. Good for all sorts of uppidy-yuppidies - really reminds me of Beverly Hills, except better architecture and better taste. It's a good place to wind down, find a bench and chill with some air conditioning & nice fountains.

Overall if you're in Tokyo for 2-3 days, i'd skip Roppongi altogether, and get a taste of real Japan instead. But now i'm tired of all the sightseeing and Japanese-ness, and find it a good place to spend my last few days.

Prices in Japan

So is Japan expensive? My experience shows it is not very expensive. Food, especially seafood is cheap. Fruits and vegetables are the only exceptions - how about a box of cherries for $6?

Public transport is reasonably cheap, museum tickets also $3-10. Clothes are at Scandinavian prices, not cheap, but affordable. Electronics? Considerably cheaper, with incredible variety and ahead of the trends in Europe and America.

So why does Tokyo have such a reputation for being expensive? It's the housing & hotels. Many places I called had prices above $250 per single room, and rental apartments in Shibuya or Shinjuku are supposedly as high as $3000-5000 per month!!!

Also there's a lot of high end jewelry and clothing stores in Shibuya, Ginza. I saw quite a few places where shoes cost more than my plane ticket here!

But if you want to have a good time in Japan, and can afford the plane ticket, you can get by without burning a big hole in your pocket.

Japanese politics at first glance

At another point in time, I saw yet another interesting insight into Japan. It was English-speaking news for foreigners in Japan, and they talked about politics. Apparently Japan has a 2-party system, except one party has all the power, while the other has none. So the political process consists of the ruling party (LDP) doing what they want, and the opposition not being able to do anything about it.

Here's how the process goes:
1) The ruling party puts forth a proposition
2) The opposition party is against it and wants to debate
3) The ruling party doesn't care, and wants to ignore the opposition
4) The opposition party protests vigorously screaming loudly and trying to convince the ruling party of their point
5) The ruling party doesn't care, and continues to ignore the opposition
6) A crazy member of the opposition physically attacks a major ruling party member
7) The ruling party calls this improper behavior, while still ignoring the opposition
8) The opposition party walks off in protest, claiming there was not sufficient time to debate the issue
9) The ruling party still doesn't care and the proposition is passed into law.

Wow, what a great system!

P.S. Update: As of August 2007, the opposition party (DPJ) has gained the majority. Now there'll be hell to pay for the LDP!!

TV observations

TV here in the hotels and hostels looks quite like Lost in Translation, i.e. just about everything is in Japanese. At the hotel the only English channel is the retarded infotainment of CNN. So I got myself up to date on the latest beef between Hillary and Obama, the missing pregnant woman from Ohio, and Paris Hilton's prison term. What else is there to know in this world?

On the Japanese channels, there's definitely some noteworthy stuff. One channel shows old samurai movies. Another one shows crazy game shows. The people in the game shows are all a little crazy even for Japanese standards, but it makes for good entertainment. In one episode they played some kind of tictactoe, and the team who lost got blasted with a stream of icicles.

A third channel worth noting was one where two masters played the game of Go.

While the masters were thinking (it takes a loooong time to make a move, this game is harder than chess), a commentator analyzed the position and played thru variations. The fun part is the commentator was not alone. There was a girl there (not so pretty) whose job it was to act stupid and emphasize the skill level of the teacher-commentator. So the commentary consisted of her making shy questions, from the frame of "I'm so stupid and unworthy to ask this, but will u please be so kind and share your knowledge with me, oh man-of-infinite-wisdom". Of course the old man was happy to oblige, correcting her or explaining things, while the girl kept saying "Hi, hi, hi...", which just means "Yes...". So after every unworthy question, she said yes about 20 times, frantically nodding her head, and thanking the teacher.



The above photo shows the Go column in a major newspaper.

John Lennon Museum

John Lennon Museum. I had my eyes on this prize since I first saw it in the travel book, and today was the day. The museum is located in a rich suburb of Tokyo, which still has a major stadium and a few 30-story buildings.
It was very well done showcasing John's life thru childhood, Beatles years, the Beatles breakup, Yoko Ono years & their peace activism and his death. I am usually impatient with museums, but this one held my attention thruout, with music samples, instruments, notes & photos. Of course the museum is dedicated by Yoko Ono, and it spends a good amount of time on their relationship. Apparently she was an avantgarde artist and Lennon met her at one of HER exhibitions. They seem to both be super creative people who like to think outside the box, so on the artistic level they matched very well. The museum does not deny the fact that Yoko was a big contributor to Lennon splitting off from the Beatles.
The museum was unfortunately not well visited, and I was the only westerner there. Plus the great music was playing everywhere often overlapping with the other pieces. But overall it was very well done, as it filled me with nostalgia, and I highly recommend this place for any Beatles fan visiting Tokyo.

Harajuku girls

Today I went to Harajuku to see the world famous Harajuku girls + punk bands. According to the guide book, it was supposed to happen around 12 o'clock on Sundays, and when I arrived 30 mins late I was under the impression that I either missed it or the event was not as popular as it was cracked up to be. There were no bands, and only a few semi-interesting outfits in the crowd, but nothing to write home about.

When I came back 2 hours later to give it another try, there still wasn't that much activity. But what I did see was a fresh breath of all out Japanese insanity. There was a Bono impersonator and 2 punk bands (all with groupies). The best part was this transvestite with rainbow colored hair singing waaay off tune, and Harajuku girls head banging around him and going nuts. But see it for yourself.


And here's some more of this:

Tsukiji Fish Market

This morning I went to the Tokyo Fish Market, reportedly the biggest fish market in the world. I got there by 7am, where they were beginning to wrap up (yes, they actually start at 4am!). It was in a big hangar / garage, and there was fish & sea creatures as far as the eye could see. Octopi, squid, tuna, dolphins, crab, eel, clams - you name it.

The atmosphere was complete chaos, While navigating between the isles, you had to watch out for these strollers / motorized carts, which either carried piles of fish or nothing (on their way out). There was no particular order of who is turning where, and they were constantly very close to hitting pedestrians or each other with no intention of stopping. It was sort of what you would expect from a market in Vietnam.

They seemed to dislike tourists here. Hey we get in the way, take too many pictures (guilty) and don't buy anything. There were several signs (in proper English) like "Don't touch the fish unless you are buying, it is a Japanese custom, and you should follow our customs in Japan".

Hmmm what's up with u silly westerners? Why the hell would u touch the fish? To see if it's real?

Tokyo Bay, Odaibo

Today I went to Tokyo Bay, the south portion of the city, where there's a ton of siteseeing, especially for the futuristic- science minded. The way to get there is (very appropriately) the ultra-modern monorail. It's not as fast as the bullet train, but the ride is really smooth, and the tracks wind between skyscrapers, providing the best impression of modernity. It's like a little rollercoaster, with loops, arches, unexpected turns, and a great panorama.

My first stop was the science museum, which was loads of nerdy fun. This included a virtual reality demo, a bunch of fun hands on exhibitions about superconductivity, DNA, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, the space program, computer related inventions, particle physics, and many more. Bill Nye the Science Guy would love this place. And of course most importantly I saw a robot show (yessss!!!!)



Then there was the Fuji building, and the Tokyo Big Sight, which are both fantastic ultra-modern buildings. A picture is worth a thousand words, so without further ado, here they are:

Fuji Building

Tokyo Big Sight

Tokyo (Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku)

Today was my first full day in Tokyo, so I decided to get a little overview, by going to Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Harajuku districts. Shinkjuku was supposed to have the tallest buildings & be the busiest train station in the world. But to my big dissapointment, there were neither the insane crowds I was promised, and the buildings were nothing special. A German couple at the hostel told me they were impressed, but what do Germans from Freiburg know about skyscrapers anyway?
And then there was an area called Takashimaya Times Square, and I thought - oh THAT must be where it's at, but it really didn't impress me at all.

On to Shibuya. I was told there's some good shopping there, and indeed there was a ton. Mostly upscale & posh stuff I couldn't afford, but anyways it was nice to look at. Plus Shibuya made up for my dissapointment at Shinjuku, because finally there were MAJOR crowds. Just what I was looking for in Tokyo. There is a central intersection next to the train station, and every 2 minutes or so it gathers a few thousand people as they wait at the red light.

And every time the green light comes on, the crowd gushes out into the street, like water from a broken dam. Wham, and you got people around you going each and every way!

And then it's all quiet again (or back to the density of Times Square in New York).

That was fun. Oh plus I got tired in the middle of the day & took a big nap in one of the internet cafes. God bless Japan.

After realizing I couldn't afford anything at Shibuya (plus the fact that they rarely have a choice of size larger than Medium), I had to move on.

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Harajuku was the next stop, and it's known for its crazy fashions. Indeed it was all that I was cracked up to be. The shops carried all sorts of discount & weird clothes, including hippie, rastafarian & goth. The selection of Goth was better than anything i've ever seen.
Marylin Manson would be proud of these people! Although I didn't see as many people actually wearing the crazy stuff sold in the stores. One of the salesmen in the hippie store was from Ghana and spoke fluent Japanese. Respect!

Ooh they got a Wendy's here! The home of the square patty!! Yummm...

Internet Cafes

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Internet cafes are really taken to the next level here. They're open 24-7, and it's a whole experience, where you pay per hour, but not only can you browse the web, play multiplayer games, but also you can drink soft drinks, borrow comic books, I might even start using these places just to sit down & chill after a long walk. And you sure can sit comfortably here. You can choose from a whole variety of chairs here: regular, reclining armchair, and even a massage chair!
...Slippers come with the seat.
... There's also a shower room & a tanning salon.
... You can get chicken wings & fries here, fried in the vending machine
... And rent DVDs

I feel like an intruder from the 20th century here.

... Free blueberry tea? I'm staying here forever

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Pork & crab dumplings Mmmmmm. If I had a rabbi, he would kill me right now

Arriving to Osaka

Arrived to Osaka with Minos. It's already more crowded than Times Square, and we're only at the edge of the shopping street...



People are more easy on the rituals here in Osaka. The service personnel don't maintain so much eye contact, and smile a lot less, don't bow so much. Hey, if u had to bow to 5000 customers in a fast food joint, you'd break your back!

Had a nice 5-7 course crab dinner here with Minos. Raw crab, boiled crab, fried crab, crab dumplings, crab soup, and of course vanilla ice cream. All that for 20 euros per person.

Instructions & packaging

There are instructions everywhere about everything. A hairbrush has instructions for brushing your hair, a toothpaste - instructions for brushing your teeth, a toilet seat - instructions on how to use that!


Everything also comes with excessive packaging, partly so you can have the instruction manual for your nail clipper, and partly so it looks pretty. The hair brush comes with a case, on top of which there's a plastic wrapper, and they won't forget to give you a plastic bag on top of that. The bento box (packaged lunch in a train station) is already a box with a plastic lid, which then is wrapped in plastic. When you order it, they put tape around it AND put in a plastic bag. Etc, etc.

I guess when the Japanese drafted the Kyoto protocol, they thought plastic was good for the environment.

Kyoto temples, seating, and misunderstandings

Went to see Ginkakuju temple. The temple itself is nothing impressive, but the area around it is just breathtakingly gorgeous. Amazing gardens, fountains, landscaped bushes, all in the middle of a pine forest. They really keep it up too. The closest thing to those who haven't been to Japan would be the garden from the last scene from Kill Bill Volume 1, where Uma Thurman chops off Lucy Liu's head.

The quality of the restaurants here is top-notch. The service is great, the food comes VERY quickly, and the quality of the food in an _average_ (low-class / fast food) restaurant is on par with the BEST Japanese restaurants in America.
The prices are also very reasonable. $3-4 for a meal that would cost $10-15 in America.
Mmm imagine living like this every day.

Usually restaurants have two types of seating, the standard chairs, and the elevated floors for people who like to sit in the lotus position. The Japanese people prefer it about fifty-fifty either way. The Europeans naturally gravitate towards the chairs.

---------------

- Black tea please
- Badak
- Black tea
- Hot ice?
- Hot
- Hot dog
- Hot tea
- Hot dog tea
- No, black tea
- Badak ti
- (confused face)
- (pointing to color) black
- Ohhh badak, hmm (confused face)
- forget it - just green tea
- gadin ti, hot dog?
- hot green tea
- (writes on paper) HGT
- OK

Hiroshima

On the train to Hiroshima now. The garbage collectors are a team of 2 girls in pink uniform with berettes. Before entering the wagon, they bow & say something to announce their entrance. On the way back from the wagon, they turn specifically to bow to the wagon and then exit... The conductor of the train does the same. Even if nobody's looking!

The speed of the train is clocked at 300km/h. The railway line is really straight, with no noticeable turns. In fact it is so straight that it doesn't go thru the big cities of Osaka & Kobe, rather stop wherever is convenient, and then u need to transfer to get into the center of the cities.


---------------------------
In Hiroshima, Peace Memorial Park:



- Herro sir
- Hi
- Where are u from?
Blah blah blah chitchat ensues.
- Do you believe there will ever be world peace?
- Hmm I don't know (OK I just met you dude, and this is pretty deep, don't u wanna do some more fluff talk before asking a question like that? Actually I think we'll all die from either nuclear fallout or global warming, but let's not get into it right now, deal?)

So this was the first time I was approached by a Japanese person. It was a grandpa with 2 highschool kids by his side, and they wanted to practice a rittre Engrish. How cute. Right? Or is there a catch here?
... As one of the boys overcame his approach anxiety and fought thru his horrendous English, egged on by his grandpa / mentor, he started reading to me from a sheet (he bit his lip to the point of bleeding in the process). Lo and behold, here comes God and questions about the Bible. It turns out the dudes were Jehowah's Witnesses (and of course one of their principles is only speak to strangers if it's about religion). No people! Not here as i'm trying to Witness something else here - like the horrors of nuclear war maybe. Pleeeease. I quietly accepted their pamphlet and ejected.

---------
On to the Peace Memorial Museum. It has all the details about the bomb, the history, and what happened to the people of Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945.







Very tragic - imagine if this were to happen today.

One thing I found impressive is how quickly Hiroshima began its recovery and how the rest of Japan really pulled together to help those people. Really a heroic feat.
Now Hiroshima is a booming green city - you would never suspect what happened if it wasn't for the memorial. It's really a must see for those interested in history and the survival of the human race as a whole. This place sends chills thru your spine, and also fills you with pride for people who can overcome a tragedy like that.

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P.S. I don't know if I missed it, but there seemed to have been no discussion of the current events related to nuclear arms race: no explicit mention of Iran, Israel or North Korea. Nor was there a discussion of the cuban missile crisis of the early 60s (like, look how close we were to repeating the same mistake just 20 years later). It is a real shame not to include such highly relevant facts & events from a museum which is supposed to be a warning to current generations against nuclear war! This is not the place to be politically correct!!

I think i'm gonna skip the Miyajima island and head back to Kyoto. Time is running late and the weather sucks. I can feel the rainy season creeping in. But here's a picture of what I missed, NOT taken by me

Nara

Nara is the home of the largest wooden building in the world, which hosts the most famous statue of Buddha. I didn't have much to say on that day, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's the link to my Nara pictures from that day

Nara pictures

Service & finding a place to sit

Service here is superb everywhere you go. Everyone is super helpful even tho they don't speak English. Every time you pay for your order ib a convenience store, they bow to you. Not only the person you pay directly to, but also everyone within hearing distance. It's like a whole ritual, it's surreal.

------------------------------
There seems to be a real shortage of places to sit around here. Benches exist, but not nearly as much as in Europe or America, and there's a whole lot more people. Bus stop? No bench. Hostel room? No chair. Park? A couple of benches per thousands of people. Museum? Keep walking.
Train stop? 1 bench for 100 people.
It seems like in order to sit down you need to go somewhere to pay, like a restaurant. The beds are often also all just matresses on the floor. Not my thing really, makes it harder to get up.

Today I checked into a Japanese-style hostel. There is no front desk. The toilet is strange too, it's like a glorified version of a hole in the floor, i.e. You have to squat. Ehem.

learning to read Japanese

The electricity standard here is 100V and American appliances just plug in & work!
----------------------------
Well i've decided to learn to read Japanese a little bit. There's 4 systems of writing here. The first one is Kanji, which is similar to Chinese - has no phonetic information, so you can't guess how a word is pronouced, all you gotta do is memorize both the pronounciation & meaning. Then there's Hiragana, which is a syllabic system to break down Japanese words phonetically. There's about 40 symbols to memorize, but even if you can pronouce it, you still won't know
what it means. Then there is romaji - the Latin alphabet transctiption for words, but apparently they don't use it that much around here, so it's not much help.
Finally there's Katakana, which is yet another syllabic system, but this time for foreign loan words. I guess this was invented so that foreign words could be introduced into japanese, while still looking like japanese in writing.


The syllabi in this system are like "ka", "mi", "su", "ro", "to" with a lot of sounds like Z and L pretty much absent. So foreign words are also forced to SOUND like Japanese.

There's a table of 5 vowels by 8 consonants (give or take a few minor quirks), which gives me about 40 symbols to memorize. Similar characters don't sound similar, for example the symbols for "su" and "ma" look a lot alike. But what the hell, I got 3 weeks, and this could really help. So here's some foreign loan words you would be able to read in Katakana:

Credit card - kurejito cado
bed - beddo
single room - shinguru rumu
double room - daburu rumu
elevator - erebeta
hotel - hoteru
bus - basu
ok - oke
restaurant - resutoran
beer - biiru
coffee - cohii
milk - miruku
salad - sarada

So even after being able to pronounce a word written in Katakana, you still need to do a bit of guess work.

-----------------

A businessman just went by another businessman on his bike, and instead of waving or saying something, he got off, and bowed. The othe guy bowed back & the first guy resumed biking.
...OK after walking around trying to read Katakana signs everywhere I found out you get gibberish syllables about half the time.

------------
a girl just walked by with a t-shirt that says
KICK CLASH RUMBLE - ANOTHER MYSELF
...
???
------------

Arriving to Japan

The train ticket is printed all in Japanese, including the destination city, the rail line and train "route" name.


Asking around is pretty much the only way to go. And since leaving the airport, the proportion of white people is no more than 1%.

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Sushi 3 times a day? I think I can live with that ...

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I'm on the bullet train to Kyoto. Whizzing thru Tokyo at lightning speeds, and yet the city just won't go away, it's so huge! I'm getting a bit of a fast-forward preview version of what's to come when I come back to Tokyo. And it's looking rock & roll!

--------------------------------------------------------
Out of the city now. All I see is hieroglyphs, thatched "pagoda-style" roofs, flooded rice fields, and peasants in triangular hats. I'm in Asia, baby!

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The taxi driver speaks no English. NO INGRISH! Had to pull over and ask a group of 4 ppl on the street to clarify directions, and call Minos so they could explain it to him in Japanese. Phew.

Part of the problem here is that there's not always a street name where you're going. Only the major ones have names, not alleys & and side streets - and there's definitely no house number. It took Minos 5 times asking in Japanese to find my hostel. This is gonna be hard.

So how do people find their way? Basically you must have a map with the place marked exactly on it. This reminds me of the game of Go, where the "traditional" way of remembering a sequence of moves is by drawing a board with numbered stones on it, instead of labeling the positions (the latter would be SO much easier)...

On the plane

Well today in the Heathrow airport I already saw more japanese people than in all my life until now. First the check-in terminal was sparsely filled with only white people, and toward checkin time the japanese people came quickly and quietly. Mostly they came in groups of 4-8 people, while the white people were either alone or in pairs.

Soon the terminal was filled with 60% japanese people, but they managed not to make much of an impact either by the space the took up, nor by the volume. All their interactions seemed quiet and restrained, with no apparent excitement, few smiles (those that I saw seemed to have come out of social conventions / propriety rather than actual fun & good vibe). The young people didn't stand out much either, also quiet & restrained, and their fashion styles semi-cool, not individualistic.
This is my first impression of Japanese people. Hope there's more of a wild side to them than that.

Talked to the japanese woman next to me on the plane, asking her if it was her first time in Europe. After about 3 minutes of fighting thru broken English, I found out it was her 20th (TWENTIETH). She goes to Europe every year, and has seen every fucking corner of this continent from Nantes in West France to Trondheim & the glaciers in Norway to Sicily.
Impressive. Took me about half an hour to get this info out of her tho. Shouldn't 20 years be enough to learn ONE european language properly? How about starting with English?
I think i'll be bitching a lot about this thruout my trip.

Flying over Novaya Zemlya, the site of the biggest nuclear detonation in history. This place is completely frozen over - no sign of life (or death for that matter). Every time I see a place like that I think how meaningless this world is, and if there was a Creator, what the hell was he thinking?

Me: So have you ever been to Korea?
Japanese woman: Nooo, nooo. Korean people come to Japan!

--------------------------------

Flying over Khabarovsk, Russia. It's the most beautiful location before we reach Japan. Green as far as the eye can see, and rivers in all directions (Amur and its tributaries). The city looks cozy, and not too industrial. Plenty of forests, hills and fields.