Japan Day 9 – The End

My last day in Japan I woke up with sad feeling in my mind and also a dry hungover feeling too. The night out before had been a great one but I was feeling like a vegetable and sad to be leaving a country I had begun to get quite used to. My flight was in the afternoon and so I had a morning left to wander the streets soaking up the atmosphere. I went to a few places I had enjoyed and grabbed a few gifts and postcards. The last thing I had to do was get some nice food before I left for the airport…one last sushi train 🙂 I piled the plates high because I knew I wouldn’t be getting much more quality sushi anytime soon.

The bullet train flew to the airport in its usual style where I wandered around haplessly, as you do in airports. I found somewhere to buy some drinks and food and pondered over my time in Japan. I could have stayed for much longer and seen many other things but I was happy I’d had such a good time, seen some fantastic sights and met some great people. The last gift Japan had left to give me was a large tremor whilst sitting at a bar plane watching. I’d been in a few tremors whilst I’d been in Japan but this one was a bit bigger. I was going to be happy to get on the plane and leave for my next adventure.

Japan Day 8 – My penultimate folly in Tokyo

Well, as my last full day in Tokyo I had a number of things I wanted to do and the weather finally agreed to play ball. For the first time in Tokyo the clouds parted and out came the wonderfully hot sunshine. A walk in the park was in order!

Here in the park I managed to find both a totem pole and the gates to hell! A great start…From here I decided to make the most of the good weather and head for some viewing points above the city. The first I would head for was the Tokyo tower. This was a near identical copy of the Eiffel Tower apart from in a striking red and white paint job.

It was a nice enough view from half way up the tower but the queue for the top of the tower was 55mins once having worked up to the central platform. I had heard the view from Rappongi Hills was better and I didn’t have the stomach to wait an hour for a so-so view.

The attractions around the bottom of the tower had seen better days too with some sixties style buildings and rides surrounding the structure. It wasn’t a patch on the Eiffel Tower. To Rappongi Hills it was. Having not read my guide book thoroughly enough or listening to the advice people had given me I discovered Rappongi Hills was actually a rather fancy shopping centre complex/office block/skyscraper which had the largest building in Tokyo, called the Mori building, apart from the soon to be opened Tokyo Skytree (Although it has actually opened now!).

Now the weirdest thing about standing on top of the highest skyscraper in Tokyo was that they had a very bizarre Disney tribute which surrounded the helipad that was up there. Every minute it would kick off, all the mirrored Mickey Mouse heads would spin around and strange Disney music would play with one large mirrorball that would move forward and open to reveal a golden Mickey Mouse…. Hmmmm.  Apart from this oddity the view was fantastic and I had a great day for it. It made the Tokyo Tower seem positively small. In the top floors of the Mori building their was also housed a modern art museum which had a beautiful display on by one of Asia’s top female artists, Lee Bul. Google image her name and you will see some of her work. For me, I found her style and work very beautiful and it was displayed tremendously well. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of her work, which I was gutted about, but I would have been thrown out immediately! There was a cool One Piece exhibition I could photo though…. One Piece is amazingly popular, it seems, evident by the huge queues that formed to see the main exhibition! I only saw the small warmup.

 

Next step for me was back to Akihabra to try and experience a more lively electric city and ‘Maid Girl’ experience! It wouldn’t disappoint this time as it was the weekend and the place had a really lively throng to it! Punters were in the streets and the Maid Girls were out in force, although not all wanted their pictures taken. I wandered around and soaked up the more bizarre side of Japanese culture.

 

 

After wandering aimlessly around the streets of Akihabra, through the electronics shops and strange whatever eccentric shops they had in the area it was time for food and then to head back to the hostel. As it was my last night out in Tokyo I was determined not to go out on a whimper! As I said before, my hostel, even though clean and friendly, was sorely lacking any kind of life so I decided to head back to where my former hostel was in order to maybe find a bar or some people who were willing to have a good night out. I made my way back over the river to near where I had been staying and found a reasonable size bar which was attached to a hostel which had a few people milling about in it. It didn’t take me long to start chatting to a few people who were at the bar and was soon deep in conversation with multiple different people! In particular I met one one English guy named Rob who had befriended a girl named Junko who was looking to move to the UK. She was at the bar with her dad trying to get advice about living in the UK and also to practice her English. Her dad was legendarily funny and we sat and talked with them for a good while over quite a few drinks! Eventually they had to leave so Rob and I decided we should go out. We rounded up a few people that Rob had met in the hostel, including a couple of really funny German guys and some sound malaysians, and hit the streets of Tokyo eventually ending up in a 280 yen bar, ordering food and drinking merrily. I was glad I had met some great people to spend my last evening with in Tokyo!

Japan Day 7 – Sad to go, Kyoto :(

My last day in Kyoto! What to do? After the previous night’s festivities I was feeling a little worse for wear! A morning walk to the local food market could be the only thing for it, although I wouldn’t know what sort of food to expect? I left with Arek, a Polish guy who you’d never in a million years expect to be Polish because he had the thickest Irish accent. We set off bellies at the ready, we wouldn’t be let down.

The morning market definitely set me in good stead for the day ahead! The highlight being the squid on a stick (seen above). They marinated the squid in a delicious sweet sauce and then stuffed an egg yoke down inside it so that when you bit in you got a sweet tasting squid with an egg in the middle…. maybe the Japanese version of a scotch egg!. It was damn tasty whatever! Next was supposed to be the manga museum but because of my morning hangover I marked the wrong place on the map….. We couldn’t find it so we went to Nijo Castle. A former seat of the emperor of Japan. It was quite impressive… although they didn’t let us photo the insides of his palace 😦 Within the castle walls there were some beautiful gardens and loads of space compared to European castles! I think only the elite would have lived inside these badboys….

When walking around inside the Emperors quarters you would notice the famous ‘nightingale floor’. The floorboards were designed to squeak as you walked over them as an early form of security for the emperor. Any would be assassins would be given away by the sound of the specially constructed floors. It was really fascinating to hear.

With the day half gone and Arek not so interested in paying to see the manga museum I headed off on my own. I had managed to track it down after my earlier mistake and was only disappointed by the fact I didn’t have more time to spend inside learning a bit more about the history of manga in Japan. I did manage to take a few snaps of things I wasn’t supposed to take snaps of…. mainly because I only saw the signs after I took the photos…. Whoops! I spent too much time buying stuff in the shop afterwards as well! Good stuff though! 🙂

The afternoon was closing in and I had a bullet train to catch. I returned to the hostel to meet up with Dipesh who I ‘d met the previous night out and to make our way to the train station. Luckily enough the walk could be done underground away from the afternoon sun. We did the 20 min walk with our heavy luggage and arrived at the luxury of the bullet train. Whoosh… away to Tokyo again. I had really enjoyed my time in Kyoto and could have spent a few more days there finding new temples and places to see as I had only scratched the surface.

By the time I had negotiated the metro in Tokyo and found my hostel it was dark and I was getting hungry. My new hostel, although having extremely friendly staff and very clean rooms was lacking in atmosphere and people to meet. One English guy turned up who was friendly but wasn’t in the mood to go out because he’d had a long day. I went out onto the streets in search of food but was struck with too much choice, as was always the case in Tokyo. I ended up in a small restaurant filled with locals, ate some food, had a drink and went back to my room to ready myself for my last full day in Tokyo the next day.

Made it to NZ although internet can be sparse

I made it to my final destination in one piece!

Well it appears not everyone has internet here in NZ. I am glad I have finally made it though! There is a nice relaxed lifestyle out here, especially in Rotorua where I am currently staying. I will be living in Limbo until I manage to sort myself out with car, flat and job….and actually feel like I am getting somewhere. My licence returns to me on the 16th May…nearly there.

It’s really great to be staying with my cousin MC, she has been really generous letting me stay with her and her family. I am on babysitting duties though!… which is all good because she has great kids 🙂

I will get around to updating my final days in Japan as soon as I can….

Love to all 😉

Japan Day 6 – A Nara day and night in Japan

After my night on the couch, and the fight through the morning sore head, a day in Nara was on the cards. I gathered my thoughts and headed for the train station. I was looking forward to a day in Japan’s very first capital and it would not disappoint:


The Todai-ji and Daibutsuden (The Great Temple and Great Buddha) are one of the most impressive things I have ever seen in my life. The temple is the largest wooden building in the world and the Buddha is the largest  bronze Buddha in the world. I am not a religious type but a massive sense of awe and respect was felt in the presence of these massive religious offerings. It truly was a remarkable spectacle to behold.

The temples and buildings of the surrounding areas were of similar beauty and the whole sense that you got from Nara was that of peace and tranquility. This was of stark contrast to the high-rise and bustling parts of Kyoto and Tokyo.

Another day of serious walking and temple viewing!

By the time I had got back to the comfort of my hotel some people I had met in my first few days in Tokyo had arrived! Hooray! Party time! Along with the guys who had just moved into my dorm we went to an all you can drink bar for 1400 Yen…. or about £12….. Bonus. We got smashed…. unsurprisingly 🙂

Job Done…

Japan Day 5 – Temples galore and thieving Kiwis

After the beauty of arriving in Kyoto at dusk the morning sun soon changed my opinion of the city. The old city was definitely beautiful but the main strip and suburbs were just like the rest of Japan. Today though I was up for some missions and I decided to head out west to a place called Arashiyama with some world heritage sights and temples galore! It had Zen gardens and temples that were hundreds of years old along with a beautiful bamboo grove…

The day went on with a lot of walking…. I should have really hired a bike like some people had advised me to do…. I had to stick it out on foot though…. After a morning of temples in the hills I thought I’d catch some oldschool tram/railway thing back into town.

After my journey into town I headed north to find the Golden Pavillion! It was a pavillion….. It was gold! Wow, I don’t miss a trick….It was very beautiful but we weren’t allowed to see the inside… the best bit! It was getting later in the afternoon and I was getting tired. After buying a few little trinkets I though I’d get on a bus to make my journey home easier! This was a good idea, badly implemented… After being on the bus for what seemed ages I decided I must have gone too far and so I got off…. Bad move. I ended up wandering back in the direction the bus had came to get myself completely lost amongst the near identical streets of Kyoto. My final solution was to find a western looking guy and ask him directions. This took longer than I thought but I eventually found my way back to the hostel! He luckily lived in Kyoto and guided me to the correct bus….Hooray! I could finally rest my feet! I must have walked 15-20km…. no joke. It was also hot and humid whilst remaining overcast. Definitely time for an evening out!

Sitting in the common room I made friends with a couple of English girls on holiday in Japan, Jo and Nichola, who’d been  working in Vietnam teaching. They had already started drinking and so with a little friendly twist of the arm I managed to persuade them to go for a drink! The problem with drinking in Japan is that it’s hard to actually decide where to go for drink…. there are millions of places to eat but deciding if somewhere is a bar is much harder… After walking along the edge of the red light district (you could tell due to the scantily clad pictures of Japanese girls adorning the hallways into the venues) and seemingly only having men around us we stumbled across a bar that was pumping out classic 90s hip hop….That was the one to start… We decided to avoid the drink called wanko and settled into the hip hop vibe. 5 or 6 drinks later we stumbled onto the streets looking for more bars. The next one we found was a reggae bar. This bar was banging out the reggae,  full of Japanese peeps and a few of them were very very drunk. A few of the more drunk guys started to talk to us and were fine until they took a fancy to one of the girls I was with. One of them started writing love notes (we got them translated later) to Jo in Japanese which was very funny cos he kept on falling over. The other drunk guy then tried to touch up Jo and grab her tits. After being quite funny this changed the mood quite quickly and I told them to get lost….in not such nice words. After I said this they soon scarpered and the evening continued in joyous fashion. These boys needed to learn how to hold their drinks!

The next bar we stumbled into was a sports bar frequented by quite a few different westerner types… including some drunk kiwi boys. We had a few drinks there but by this point these boys were very drunk…. All these boys were interested in was cars and money. They were quite funny but because they were drunk they had started stealing drinks from a room upstairs. We didn’t want to get involved and so decided it was a good time to make a move. Damn, one of the safest places in the world and my fellow countrymen-to-be were stealing…. Not a good look… We couldn’t rat on them but we left feeling pretty guilty. It was now pretty late and so we headed back to the hostel. I woke up on the sofa in the common room with people eating breakfast around me! Haha, try and make it back to my bed next time Louis!

No Internet at my Mum’s

After a brief spell of stealing free wi-fi off someone near my mum’s flat I appear to have been locked out now so cafe’s are the only option left to me now in Oz. So my posts will slow for a while…..or I’m gonna be drinking a lot of coffee….slowly 🙂 There is at least one cool cafe where my mum lives called Slightly Twisted.

It is really great to see my mum again though! It’s been far too long.

Hopefully off to see Mount Kimbie here in Brisbane tonight! Let’s hope it’s not sold out!

Biggup!

Japan Day 4 – Bullet train to Kyoto

The day had finally come to leave Tokyo. I had had a great start to my journey in Tokyo and the only bad thing had been the weather. Wet and dreary the whole time whilst at least still remaining to be warm. Hopefully this would change in Kyoto. Check out was at 11am so I didn’t have too much of a rush to leave in the morning. The hostel I’d been staying in, although a bit small and a tiny bit smelly, had a really fun vibe and there was always somebody about to chat to or wanting to go for a drink. Packed and ready to go I made my way to Tokyo train station to get the Bullet Train or Shinkansen as they call it over here. As in true Japanese style you have your carriage number and seat pre-selected when you reserve your ticket.  You get to the platform and little queues form where your carriage is going to arrive. Everything is so efficient and organised here. Because it was the end of the line when the train arrived an army of cleaners assaulted the train to clear it up ready for the return journey. The best thing was that all the seats spin around so you always face the direction of travel! When on the train you have acres of space, plugs, internet and it moves seamlessly and smoothly at really high speed (200kph+) so you hardly realise you’re going so fast! It certainly beats the night bus which takes 7 or so hours overnight. You do it in 2.5 hours in comfort and style and there is a train every 30 mins. I wasn’t even on the fastest version. After negotiating a new subway/metro system in

Kyoto I found my way to my new hostel. This wasn’t like a hostel i’d seen before. It was more like a hotel but as cheap as a hostel. After a while sorting myself out at the hostel and meeting a few people  I decided to hit the streets to see what Kyoto was all about.  I think I chose the right way because after a few mins I had started to find some beautiful old streets full of traditional Japanese wooden houses and some small narrow alleyways and streets. It was starting to get dark by this point however and the light was starting to fade. This wasn’t a good thing though because my camera, it seems, takes crap photos at night and in low light. So, sorry for the shitty quality of the following images….

Without doubt though, these were amazingly beautiful old side streets with traditional housing and also with the occasional Geisha being spotted, shuffling in and out from the alleyways between. I would continue down the main street until I stumbled into a temple complex which looked beautiful lit up at night.

After a long day of travelling I was keen to get back to the hostel and maybe go out for a few drinks. Alas, I returned to the hostel to be met by the more studious type of traveller, all sunk into their own books or travel plans with no-one that interested in going out. It was a tuesday (I think). The common room was empty by 230am. I hoped my whole time in Kyoto wasn’t going to be as sedate in the evenings. A good day though all in all but you can’t always get what you want 🙂

Japan Day 3 – The local touch

As I said, only 3 hrs sleep….I’ve never suffered jet lag like this before. A most curious product of time (zone) travel. So I get up and find Hannah. We’re off to see the main man Sho! Back to Shimo-kitazawa! My pronunciation is getting better but my memory for unfamiliar sounding names is not. We straddle the Tokyo metro system as normal and arrive in time to have a brief look around the vintage and second hand clothes stores. When the allotted  time arrives we meet Sho and without further hesitation we set off for breakfast/lunch. Always one of my favourite times of the day. Sho decided to take us for Japanese pancakes…. or as they are known locally: okonomiyaki. Good decision Sho! The first place he took us to was closed but we had better luck at the second. A couple of cool looking chefs set to work behind the stove and started to cook up some mean vegetable type pancake thingys… It was a cool little venue. Within a few minutes the pancakes were ready for eating. They were a mixture of cabbage, leeks, onion batter and other tasty stuff. They made us two varieties and they were both really good! We divided them up between us and they were soon gone. I could have probably eaten them both myself, but then I am quite greedy when it comes to food!

After this we continued our stroll through the more oldschool streets of Tokyo. They were really quiet and peaceful compared to the bigger high rise streets of central Tokyo.

Next stop was a little shop that looked like it sold eggs. I think they did sell eggs (in packs of 10 not 12) but they also sold what could only be described as creme caramels in little egg shaped containers. These made an ideal desert to our pancake lunches! Next stop, coffee house. This wasn’t just your average Costa or Starbucks though, this was a speciality coffee house. The Japanese owners had previously owned an award winning coffee house in NY city and had since moved back to Japan. They certainly put a lot of love into making our coffees. Mine was delicious but I think a little wasted on my palette as I’m used to drinking instant and hot chocolate in a massive mug and downing it in about a minute! I certainly hadn’t tasted coffee like that before. After a nice early afternoon wandering around the smaller streets of Tokyo we decided to head for Akihabara!

On our way to Akihabara I noticed a couple of fine looking, rather large Japanese blokes on the other side of the platform. I asked Sho if these were Sumo and before I knew it Sho had run over to ask if I could have my picture taken with them. That wasn’t quite what I meant when I asked him but nevertheless I got my picture taken. The biggest of the three looked a bit put out but he gestured to the smallest one to have his picture taken with me. As you can see he loved it! The other 2 were probably laughing behind him.

Akihabara aka Akiba and near Denki-Gai aka Electric Town is famed for its cheap electronics/maid bars/arcades and also manga comics and dvds. The first thing I wanted to do was go to the arcades! We went into a 5 story sega arcade and looked around at all the various games until I found the one I was looking for! Super Streetfighter 4 Arcade Edition! Hooray! I was there, the home of one of my favourite games in the world ever…. I played rubbish! Haha…. I made it through the first 4 or 5 games but then got destroyed…. Was not my best performance and I just wasn’t as good with an arcade joystick…. Where was my 360 controller. Ah well, I could see the other 2 had no interest in arcade games like me so we headed off and looked around the rest of Akihabra. It was ok, but not as exciting as I would have hoped. There was a mega selection of electronic goods but they were all at standard prices…. Oh well…. I would return.

By this point it was getting late in the day and Sho had a meeting to get to at University so we went with him to have a look around. It was a massive 20+ floor building right in the centre of Tokyo and certainly was impressive even if it wasn’t the main Tokyo Uni. Whilst Sho had his seminar Hannah and I got some Udon and the tiredness was beginning to tell. We were having real difficulty understanding what each other had to say and coffee wasn’t helping. Sho finished his meeting and was hungry so we went for more food. Hannah was already full after our udon but I knew I could fit in a bit more. We found a quiet little traditional Japanese venue where we had Japanese barbeque skewers and other such delicacies. The food was great along with the sake and sho taught us about some Japanese etiquette. Hannah was falling asleep at the table so we decided the day was done.

We said goodbye to Sho at the local metro station and made our way back to the hostel. We stopped at the hostel bar for a quick drink but I was shattered. I skulked back to the hostel cold, tired and wet. It had been a long three+ days and I finally managed to get a good nights sleep.