Arrival

Just arrived inVancouver form Narita. I spent the last few days taking everything from the apartment in Yokosuka and getting rid of it. I ended up giving tons of of stuff away. I've slept maybe a 16 hours in the last 4 days. I worked until 11pm the night before. I stayed up until 3am cleaning and then was up again at 7am. I ended up having 5 kilos overweight and they wanted to charge me 700$ to bring my suitcase. So I went aside and stuffed a big pile of papers into the backpack. Turns out I had 6 kilos of papers. I still had to pay 50$ as the regular overweight fee but it's not 700$! The flight back was good, I ordered a kosher meal when booking and it was good food. It looked a lot better than what anyone else got and there was also more food in total. I Had fish with corn and some kind of sauce, big hard crackers, some sort of soft cookie thing, apple compote, chocolate pudding and a potato salad that was 90% green peas (I didn't eat much of that). Breakfast strangely was very similar but without the chocolate pudding and with a fish salad as the main course. I tried to sleep on the plane but I was way too tired. I made friends with the guy who was sitting next to me. We ended up having many empty spaces on the flight so we got to have 3 seats for 2 people, it was nice and roomy. Security was crazy at the entry of Vancouver, there was some big shot visiting while we we entering (maybe the PM?) and he was surrounded by dozens of armed police officers. Now I have to wait from 10am till 7:30pm for my connecting flight. I could go earlier but I was told my check in luggage can't follow me and I'd have to come back and get it. So I'm not going to be able to advance my flight. I'm tempted to leave the airport but I'm not really in the mood to walk around Vancouver and not have a place to sit or use the internet. Vancouver airports internet is great. Free and available everywhere.

Going

Well, after a lot of thinking and debating I've decided to go back to Canada in July. I'll leave the job at GABA and look for work in Calgary. Summer's the only time I'll be able to find a job in Canada. Since there is so little time, I am now running to get everything done before then, airplane tickets, selling furniture, packing things quickly, canceling water, gas and electricity... I'm sad to leave Japan so quickly but there are some things which we must sometimes do. I still have many articles to write and pictures to post, so I'll still be updating this blog for a while.

Alone

WELL Jen is back in Canada now. I'm going to be working 7 days a week from now on. So I won't be posting much anymore but I'll try to keep adding a few updates.

Why you should keep your old printer

WHEN I arrived in Japan I needed to buy a printer to be able to print resumes and lessons for my private students. I ended up getting a slightly used 2009 model at HardOff for 5000yen. It's an EPSON PM900 (North American model RX700) it's a super fancy printer with multiple memory card slots, 6 separate colours and a powerful scanner. It's also big and bulky. However in Japan all printers are very large and bulky. They also seem to cost on average about 20000 to 40000 yen! I was happy with it but recently it started giving me warnings then one day stopped working. I checked online and found out that I would have to take it to Epson to get it fixed and that it was simply a matter of resetting some kind of counter. Epson's new printers have a counter which automatically locks the printer when a certain number of prints have been made, regardless of if it's still able to print it will force a user to go pay money to Epson to have their printer "fixed". So I downloaded the software and did it myself. It worked fine until finally the ink pads were full and I had to clean them. I found the service manual online and set to taking it apart. It took me 4 hours of painstaking work to get to the ink pads. The printer was built on top of them from the bottom up! Then I cleaned the pads, dried them and put it back together. To my satisfaction it worked again! Then a week later it stopped gain... Taking it apart again was not something I wanted to do. Jen found an old Epson P 760C (North American model photo 720) printer at her dorm. It's a 2001 model, very old and seems to have been bought and used last in 2003. It's been sitting in a box for 6 years... So I dusted it off and powered it up in the off hope it might work. I then hacked the drivers for a Japanese windows XP to make it work on the English Windows Vista. To my surprise it seemed a bit squeaky but functional. I gave it a bit of oil and then ran it through a 10 minute head cleaning. And... It works! Amazing! I'm flabbergasted, even the ink is still half full! Thanks to the dry ink clogging the heads, I don't even need to buy ink. The moral of the story is: new stuff is made to break, old stuff is solid.

Japan and summer clothes

IT'S starting to get warm in Japan. Summer is just around the corner. So I thought I'd write a quick post about one of the different habits of Japanese women. In Japan having very light white skin is the only way to go. So during summer, most women will wear long sleeved sweaters, turtlenecks, jackets and arm sleeves to keep the sun away from their faces and arms. Some even wear gloves to keep their hands from tanning. I find it amazing that they can wear such thick clothing when it so hot and humid.

Movie

TODAY I went to IMAX and saw Alice in Wonderland. It was pretty good, I don't think it's the best movie Johny Deep has ever done but it was worth seeing. I also went shopping and Jen bought some cool jeans and a gundam t-shirt!

Weird man on the train

ON friday, a few days ago I was taking the train home. It was late and I was a long trip home. I was at Kanazawa-bunko, one stop(12 min) from my place. An old woman came on and I gave her my seat. I then went and stood. There was a very drunk man standing near me. He was slowly spinning in circles as he lurched and kept grabbing the handle to stay straight. He was holding a large paper bag with some things inside and kept hitting me with it. So I moved down a ring. After a few seconds he saw me. He then extended his hand and tried to grab my face with one of his hands... So I jerked back and gave him an angry stare. He seemed to jump in surprise. I decided to move a few more rings down. He followed me. Then he took out his cellphone, opened it and tried to stick it in my pocket. I swatted his hand away and moved many rings farther away. He continued to slowly move towards me. Thankfully by the time he was getting close again it was my stop. I jumped off the train and walked away. This was the weirdest person I ever met!

Well I finally figured out where there are free public wifi spots. Although there are quite a few inside cafes, many are inside buildings or shopping centers, meaning free wifi is just around the corner from the front door.

http://www.freespot.com/users/map_e.html

Laptop

Whoo! I bought a new (for me) laptop. I got it used from a person selling them on gaijinpot.com. It's an older model from Toshiba, and it's also a Japan only model, Dynabook SS21.
I think it's about 5 years old, it has:
a Pentium M,
768Mb of Ram,
and a 30Gig HDD.
It's a good laptop for what I need though, it's really light, even with the battery, about 1.2kg. when it came out it was selling at about $3000, lucky for me I got it for $160. So now when Jen goes in June, I'll still have some way to use internet.

Asakusa

ON Sunday We met with a friend at Asakusa for Sanja Matsuri *literally "Three Shrine Festival")

It is one of the three great Shinto festivals in Tokyo, it is considered one of the wildest and largest. The festival is held in honor of the three men who established and founded Sensō-ji.

It is believed that two fishermen—brothers named Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari—found a statuette of the Bodhisattva Kannon caught in a fishing net in the Sumida River in May. The third man, a wealthy landlord named Hajino Nakatomo, heard about the discovery, approached the brothers and converted them to Buddhism. The three men then devoted their lives to the Buddhist faith and consecrated the statue in a small temple. This temple, now known as the Sensō-ji, currently houses the Kannon statue and is the oldest temple in Tokyo.

Sanja Matsuri is held on the third weekend of every May at Asakusa Shrine. To celebrate people play music and carry on their backs huge portable versions of shrines while shaking them up and down. These shrines weigh about a ton each and it takes a big group of people to carry them. Anyone can participate in carrying them. However you have to wear the right clothes. It's basically a white and blue shirt, with sumo wrestler bottoms.

The procession of the three Asakusa Shrine-owned mikoshi begin their march early Sunday morning. These three elaborate shrines honor and represent the three men responsible for founding the Sensō-ji. These important mikoshi are split up in order to visit and bestow blessing to all 44 districts of downtown and residential Asakusa. When evening falls, the three shrines slowly weave their way back to Asakusa Shrine in another grand procession that lasts late into the night.

We watched many parts of the festival and were within touching distance of all three mikoshi (three portable shrines referenced in the festival's name). It was really interesting and we really enjoyed the atmosphere or festivity which was everywhere. The streets were crowded with people and to get through intersections we had to slowly shove our way through.

We ate lots of festival food, and while we were sitting, a photographer thought the foreigners sitting in front of a Japanese temple, eating traditional Japanese food with chopsticks was too incredible a sight to pass, so he came and took a set of pictures of us. He gave me his card and he said he'd email me the pictures later.

Kyoto

We went to see many more temples for the next couple of days, we saw the geisha street and I got a couple of pictures of them! Then we went to show where we saw traditional tea ceremony, dancing, plays and flower arranging. We saw a very famous temple with a bridge and to my great delight there were geisha doing a photo shoot. So of course I grabbed the opportunity to take some more pictures. The most interesting shrine was the 1000 tori gate temple. We didn't climb up the whole mountain but we did do a small tour. We got a lot of good pictures and saw quite a few friendly temple cats (I will update with full information later). The last day we went to the shrine near our house. It was beautiful, it was the largest I've seen. There were many buildings connected and at the front we got to feed lots of nearly tame pigeons who would fly up into your hands to eat from your palm of even eat right from your fingers. It was lots of fun! Then we saw it's sister shrine down the road. We then went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and took the Shinkansen home.

Kyoto

Today we woke up early, had breakfast and went to see many temples and shrines, Ninna-ji, Ryoanji, Shimogamo, Kamigamo and Kinkakuji. We bought day bus passes for 500yen each, a really good price. The most interesting was Kinkakuji, the golden temple. It was very nice, the temple has squares of gold leaf everywhere. A guide said each leaf is 2 inches by 2 inches and is worth 37$. He said the temple is covered with more than 200.000 of them! The most beautiful was Ryoanji, it has the world famous stone garden. We sat and looked at it for a while and enjoyed the gorgeous gardens and pond.
We walked a bit today, we did a good 4km trek between the temples. Got a bit of sunburn too.
However this morning I had a bad surprise, I had done a load of clothes washing in Osaka. Most were dry except my socks, so I rolled all those into a plastic bag and packed them, or so I thought... I discovered that I somehow didn't pack them! Now I only have two pairs of socks left... I'm going to have to go buy some! Some person right now is looking at a plastic bag with a dozen pairs of humid clean socks... And I'm going to be washing the same two pairs of socks and drying them everyday of this trip...

Osaka, the last day

Today was the last day of being in Osaka. We checked out, left the big suitcase with the front desk and went out to look at the last day of the big Golden Week sales. Today was a shopping day for omiyage and for souvenirs for friends. I also wanted to check out some electronics.
We got there at 10 am and found out we were still too early. Everything in the area opens at 11 am. So we went into a Mr. Donut and wasted some time with a donut and some water.
We started wandering around at 11 am and many shops were still not open. We looked at Japanese anime stores and random electronic goods. Though there were some decent deals for very old stuff, most electronics were still very expensive.
After we moved onto the big main shopping area of Osaka again. We looked at some stores where we had been two days before but now there were less people. We ended up going into America Town and it was funny to see Japanese people trying to look North American even though we would never wear such clothes. We ate some decent Indian curry for lunch.
Then we slowly made our way back to the hotel. We picked up our suitcase and took the train to Kyoto. The last leg of our trip! Nooooo.... It's going by so fast!
The hotel in Kyoto is really nice, it's called the Costa del Sol, and despite it's name is a Japanese style hotel, similar to a ryokan but more modern.

Kobe

FOR day three in Osaka we went to Kobe! I saw a bit of already it on the train trip to Himeji and it looked really clean and airy. We left in the morning and we got there around 11 am. It was so nice! It has a small town feel with a many good sized areas. |The closest I could think of was how some areas of Vancouver feel like. We first visited the shopping area near Sannomiya station where we got off. There are many small streets but also big streets and lots of interesting little stores. Then we visited the European area. We walked around and up and down the hill quite a bit but it was very quaint. I also saw the coolest Starbucks ever! It was in an old Victorian house and it was very nice and fit in with the area.
We had lunch at a small homemade Italian restaurant. The food was expensive and the pasta was not great, though Jen said the pizza as pretty good.
We then went to Chinatown, it looked very Chinese-ish and had lots of my favourite Chinese sweet, sesame balls! It was pretty small but there were a lot of people lining up to go to a restaurant there.
We moved on to the harbor and when we got there we saw the end of a festival! It was happening in front of the marine museum. There were many interesting boats on display, people selling stuff, flea market items, and lots of food vendors. I tried Tacoyaki and I found out it tastes a lot like Okonomiyaki, except without the noodles and the batter is rolled into a ball with a bit of octopus in the middle. I thought it was pretty tasty. We looked around a bit more then moved on to the stores in the harbor area. I ended up having a Big Mac for supper since we were too late to go to a local place to eat.
We got back and went to sleep early, checkout was at 9am the next morning!

Himeji

We went to Himeji today. The train ride was 1 hour long. We got there and visited the castle but couldn't go inside because it was under construction. It was really hot +25 but we somehow didn't get a sunburn. We walked around the grounds and took many pictures. We then went to Mount Shosha. We went and saw some very nice shrines and temples. We were supposed to be able to see some special wooden statues which were made in 1007 and were on display together for a few days only, but because of construction they closed the shrine and you can't see them anyway?... We were a bit confused by this but there was nothing to do about it. The best part is that we saw the temple where "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise was filmed. We went inside and there was pictures of when they filmed it. We walked around and we were told about the fake sakura blossoms which were attached to the tree to make it look like it was blooming, and the snow scenes which were made using lots of corn starch!

Osaka

The bus ride was pretty tiring. It was about 6 hours. We got there at 5 am and wandered around until Macdonald's opened. We had a heart stopping breakfast there then went to the hotel. We managed to check into the hotel at 9 am. I went to get the money from the machine but my card wouldn't work So I called my bank and had it fixed. After we took a nap at the hotel. After a nice nap we wandered around and visited the castle and a nearby shrine. It was great. The castle had beautiful gardens, stall vendors and there were some nice exhibits in the museum there too. I was very impressed. We walked back to the hotel and bought some very tasty dried strawberries and pineapples. Then it was time to get some bentos and then sleep!
This morning we went to the second shrine and the gardens next to it, sumiyoshitaisha. It was a very nice shrine, probably the nicest I've seen in Japan yet! Then we went to Namba park, a shopping center with a cool park on top. Also a very nice place and an impressive design like a canyon. After we went and walked around the famous shinsaibashi shopping and a few nearby streets. There are many Golden week sales so we did quite a bit of window shopping but not much buying. We didn't get to go to the electronics street, Donburi, but that will hopefully be for tomorrow evening!

Hiroshima

Hiroshima was really nice! We took a high end night bus to Hiroshima. It was comfortable but not as comfortable as the picture made it look like. We tossed and turned a for a bit but finally dozed off for a few hours. The bus ride was very bumpy and noisy. It was okay for the 12 hours but we arrived with a bit of lost sleep. We dropped off the big suitcase at the hotel and went into town. We arrived at 8 am but couldn't check-in until 2pm. With a little suaveness we got a nice room overlooking the river. We spent the day walking around the city and visiting and sightseeing. First we went to the Castle, a pretty cool castle with many places to enter and visit. We went inside the outside wall and then went inside the castle itself. It was very nice inside and it had English audio for the video presentations which means this is the best historical place I have visited yet. I was looking at some traditional clothes they had for people to try on and a security guard seeing two foreigners jumped in and pushed pulled and dressed us up in these complicated Japanese clothes faster than we knew what was happening! Then he took pictures of us. It was really nice. We then visited the Peace park and the Atomic Museum. It was very interesting but I was a bit disappointed that the Room with all the shadows wasn't open while we were there. That night we went to the Okonomiyaki street (actually more like a tower) and we had the best Okonomiyaki ever! I loved it! We ate at a place on the 3rd floor, and at the back right.
The next day we went to the island of Miyajima. We checkout out of our hotel and left the big suitcase at the reception. We took the tramway to get there and back. And the ferry was very quick. We took pictures of the famous shrines, tori gates and buildings. My favourite building was the senjo-kaku. it was very old an many old paintings and carvings were still there. It was good that we went to the castle first because we could understand more about why and how it was all built thanks to the English videos explaining Hiroshima.
We also found Deer there, they looked a lot like the Nara deer. They also ate people's maps just like Nara deer. On the island it seems the famous thing is maple leaves. I ate a big fried fish paste stick with cheese inside and bacon on the outside. It was okay but very greasy and fishy. We also ate Okonomiyaki again for lunch! It was also good but the first place was best. We went around town and did some shopping then. After the shops closed and a few things were bought, we went back to the hotel get the luggage, with a bit of repacking the new stuff fir into our suitcase. Then we went to the station, and hung out at a MacDonald's from 8:30 to 10:30pm waiting for our next bus. This time we took a cheap overnight bus, no blanks and special seats. We got on and had just as much trouble sleeping as the first bus.

Western Japan trip

Well today we leave for our great western Japan trip! It's currently pouring rain in Yokosuka, however it looks like it's going to be fairly warm and sunny for the rest of the time in Hiroshima, Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto!

Everything is packed, the house is clean and I'm just making the final preparations.

Kamakura

WHEN I think of horseback archery I think of something pretty much impossible. I've gone horse riding a few times and I'm not bad at archery, on the ground that is. But I have a hard time imagining how difficult it must be to ride a horse and shoot a bow at the same time.

So on Sunday this is what I went to see. In Kamakura for the city's festival they had a special horseback archery demonstration and competition. The archers had really nice clothing and the horses they were riding were strong looking.

It was really packed! there must have been thousands of people. We were running a bit late so we didn't get to be close to the front. This was a bit of a problem but with some careful maneuvering in the crowd we got a spot where Jen could lean over and see and I could look over the heads of the people.

I thought they would be trotting by and shooting, and some riders did go slower than others. Btu most of them galloped at full speed. It was so fast we only managed to get a few decent pictures and videos.

Later we moved to another spot where we could see more. It was much better since we weren't being crushed by the crowd.

One of the archers had his arrow get stuck, he then had trouble getting the reins back and ran off the track, into a couple officials who ran out of the way, and almost into the stage at the end of the track. I think the rider was pretty shook up. He looked pale after stopping and turning around to get ready for his next try.

It was a fun experience but I think next time we should be there early and find the best place to see the show.

Yoshino Baigo

ON Sunday we went to Yoshino Baigo, near Hinatawada, for the plum blossom festival. We left early in the morning and we took 4 different trains. It was a really long trip of 2 1/2 hours to get there. Btu it was very beautiful, there were tens of thousands of plum trees blossoming. The Ume Matsuri has been a tradition in Japan for many centuries. People go to look at the plum blossoms and have drink while watching the petals fall. the blossoms on some trees are pearl white, other are pinkish and others almost red. Many people showed up thanks to the first warm and sunny weekend day in weeks.
We walked around for a few hours and watched some dancing and musical performances. It was really great.

Hokkaido trip

HOKKAIDO was really great. We left early on Thursday morning. Our flight was set to leave at 6:30 am. We got to the airport in time and met up with others who were coming along. It was really early and we hadn't slept well or much the night before, but we were excited to go!

As we got closer to the boarding zone we realized the plane we were going to take to Hokkaido was one of the specially painted ones. We were flying in a Pikachu painted 747... Even the inside had Pokemon and Pikachu pictures everywhere.

The flight was short, only 1 1/2h, and uneventful. It was quite a shock to see all the snow everywhere as we landed though, it looked like we had flown back to Canada!

We all took the train from the airport to the main station in downtown Sapporo. We split up because different groups went to different hotels. Finally at around 9 am we dropped off our bags at our hotel.

It was about -10 to -15 on average during our stay. We really felt like we were back in Canada!

We then walked around towards the Snow festival. We saw many ice sculptures and snow sculptures. It was really busy! There were many food vendors selling lots of different foods things which we had never seen before.

Lunch consisted of Sapporo fries, hotdogs on sticks, a chicken/fish burger and drinks.

After wandering around until late afternoon we went back to the hotel at 3pm and checked in. It was nice to be in a warm room after the many hours we had just spent walking around. We all took naps for a few hours.

That night we went to the famous ramen street and had amazing ramen! I tried miso-ramen, it was the best I've had so far.

After dinner we went back to the snow festival and saw the great light shows and music shows which were played onto the big snow sculptures. We stayed until 10pm at which time they shut all the shows and lights down.

We went to the hotel and slept well.

The next morning we ate breakfast (sweet breads, water and coffee) and then took the train to Otaru. It was a great little town about 30 minutes train ride from Sapporo. They have a few canals in the town which are famous, it is called the Venice of Japan. There is a lot of seafood in this town and many places to have sushi, but the prices were ridiculous ($30-$40 for 8-10 pieces of sushi).

We looked around at many glass blowing workshops and looked at many great glass works. We also saw many fish mongers, crab is also a big delicacy from here.

Lunch was chicken stir fry for Jen and I had salmon and seafood tempura. It was amazing! So good!

We went back later that night. I decided to have fresh Sapporo sushi and sashimi (much cheaper!) and it was good too.

The next morning we went to another part of Sapporo and visited the Chocolate Factory. We walked around the museum part and then looked at the manufacturing section. Finally we went and did some souvenir and gift shopping.

That night we went to a "beer factory" and had Genghis Khan. It was decent but not great. It was a big plate of rather fatty thin slices of lamb and some vegetable which you cook yourself on an inverted skillet.

The next morning we packed our stuff, did some shopping around and then went back to the airport to go home!

Disney Sea

FOR December 24th we went to Disney sea, it's a common thing for couples to do in Japan. It was my first time at a Disney place, I liked it. On this day there are few kids and it is mostly adult couples.

We did rides on the famous one like the Haunted Hotel and the Indiana Jones rides.
We saw a couple of special Disney sea shows for the holiday season and their Xmas fireworks.

Overall if was an awesome day!

Kabuki

WE saw a play Japanese style, Kabuki. Kabuki is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. All performers are men, women are portrayed by men wearing white masks.

Kabuki plays can last entire days but we went to see only a small hour show. The particular show we went to see had as a star a famous kabuki performer of women roles.

It was very interesting and very different from other theater. Unfortunatley there were no pictures allowed once inside so the only shot is from the outside.

Sumo fight

THE latest adventure is something I really wanted to see while I was in Japan, a real sumo fight!

We went to a special building for the Grand Basho, one of the big tournaments in the sumo series. It was next to the Tokyo Edo Museum where we had gone before. The seats were decent but we brought binoculars which ended up being a good idea.

The place was enormous! The fights were real interesting. This video shows one the super stars of sumo, Baruto. Interestingly enough many of the top sumo fighters are north Europeans or Mongolians. Some fights were very violent, with fighters flying out of the ring and into the spectators.

The white stuff they throw is salt being thrown to bring good luck in battle. The fight can't start until both make a specific move indicating they are ready. Intimidation plays a big part in sumo fights. And like in any professional sport, there is advertising, in this case people walk around the ring and show the sponsor's flags. The actual fighting is rarely more than a few seconds.

Namja town

ON the 11th of January, we went to a place called Namja town. It's across between an interior fun house and a food theme park. On our menu were Gyoza and Ice cream.

Inside it's a great place for parents and kids, there are many games like a treasure hunt game that uses special viewing machines to find clues all around the park. We went only for the food since all the games are in Japanese and are a bit hard for us to follow.

There is a gyoza museum which we went to. There were many different kinds of gyoza. We all bought some different types and shared a piece with each other. It was a tasty experience.

Then we went for dessert. The ice cream museum is the one in Japan with the most flavours of ice cream! We tied some pretty tame ones but there were some incredible flavours available, like jellyfish, lamb & raisin, sweet potato, charcoal, wasabi, eel, tulip, deep seawater, fish sauce, cherry blossom, barley, bottle gourd, fried noodle, caviar, squid, octopus, shark fin, soy sauce, potato & butter, cheese rizotto, garlic & mint and of course... viper!

octopus ice cream with real pieces!

Our exploration group

Back!

Whoo! After a few months I'm back online. I was out of internet and have a huge backlog of posts to make.