Jeff

Been a bit longer on writing this than I expected (I meant to write it over a week ago) but life happened and we started to go to weekly bar trivia (if you don’t know me, I am both a huge fan of bar trivia and also surprisingly good at it). But anyways, The final 5 days of our trip we spent in Tokyo, which is probably my favorite city in the whole world. No other city offers the stuff that Tokyo has, the public transit system, the variety of culture/style, the food (oh the food), gah. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back. When it is stated that Tokyo is the largest city in the world, it is not an exaggeration (I have also been to many of the largest, Tokyo is on its own level).

We got into Tokyo after a 2 hour ride on the shinkansen, which is an awesome way to travel. It required no security check, no hour wait to stand in line to board, no taxiing around the runway, no turbulence, just a casual climb to the platform, sit down on in your seats, and get off when the train pulls in. It had a nice view (sadly the pictures sucked, as trying to get a shot while stuck on a train going at least 150 mph does not give many good photos. But it was great, we arrived at Tokyo station and then just transferred to the line that took us to Harajuku (where we were staying). We were going to meet one of Kim’s high school classmates who is working in Tokyo teaching english to salarymen for work. It is always nice going to places with people who speak the native language and getting to eat the stuff that is just not possible when you can’t communicate properly with the people. Before we met up, we checked out (what I found out is one of many) Sakura-dori (or cherry blossom street) which had a ton of sakura trees in bloom (guess Tokyo beat Kyoto to the sakura bloom finish line).

The next day, we were going to meet one of Kim’s old high school friends, Lily. She now works for Orbitz, so we had to catch her for her lunch break while at work. It was nice for Kim to talk to her again, as they have not been in much communication since high school ended and life happened. They talked for a while and then Lily had to go back to work. So we walked off to ameyoko street, which is this long shopping street where we walked around looking for stuff, I wanted to get some more loose leaf tea, but none of what I saw seemed desirable. We then ended up at Ueno park, which was filled with people checking out all of the sakura blooms. This is called hanami and is kind of insane how crowded and ridiculous it was. The views were awesome however and I took a lot of pictures. I dragged Kim around a lot longer than she probably wanted to so that I could look for another good picture.

I then dragged Kim down to kappabashi-dori, which is a street lined with restaurant supply stories. It is an area often referred as “kitchen town”. I was hunting for a nice Japanese steel knife. The walk was further than I remember, but we went looking through various shops and ended up getting a nice sized, filet style chef’s knife (it is pretty thick for chopping meat, which compliments my ceramic knife well) along with some wooden rice bowls and a pair of long cooking chopsticks.

The next day, we were going to get lunch at this ramen shop in Tokyo station. We had heard about it from watching Mind of a Chef and found out it was supposed to be some of the best tsukemen ramen in the city. Tsukemen is just a style of ramen where the broth is very thick, but the noodles are served separately and are supposed to be dipped in. This allows for the noodles to be cool and the broth to be much stronger. This ramen was easily the best I have ever eaten. It was just so delicious and awesome. I got a large and just shoveled the whole thing down. I can not describe just how awesome it was, but if you are ever in Tokyo, you must go to this place and eat these noodles.

We then ventured to the sake brewers plaza (we went here last time we were in Tokyo) and did the tasting deal where we could spend 5 bucks to try 5 different sakes they were offering. We each picked a variety and tried them, deciding to get a bottle of one of the ones we liked. We ventured around the city some and then ended up hanging around Shinagawa to meet two of Kim’s friends from high school. It was raining pretty hard so we ended up in a pachinko parlor where we easily blew a few bucks trying to figure out what the hell the game is about and how to play. It would be interesting to burn a few bucks each week until you figure out how to really play and then see what sorts of winning you can get. We ended up getting some Chinese food with her friends and chatting for a while. They had to get home though so they could go to work the next day.

Our final day, we went to this sushi place in Shinjuku that we went to a number of times the last time we stayed and it was surprising how much it had changed. We then went to Shibuya and explored the area around there, doing some shopping and such. Eventually we went to an izakaya for dinner where we could make all of our orders via this wireless tablet. So we just decided when we wanted some food, found the items on the tablet, and a bit later, the food would show up (so did the beer :D). If something like this existed in the US, I would never go anywhere else (exaggerating, kind of). The next day we packed up and headed to the train to eventually fly back to Chicago and real life again.

tagged with:
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• travel
• japan

Been a bit, meant to write this on the flight home, but it ended up being on this old 747 which was an unpleasant flight back. But now I am recovering from the jetlag and trying to organize everything back into a normal day to day life. Found that I kind of missed work. Interesting things are always happening at the office these days, so that is good. Hopefully by the end of the month, I will have gone through all the photos on flickr and properly captioned them. Anyways, back to the trip.

After Arashiyama, the next day we decided to visit Kinkakuji, which is supposed to be the #1 attraction to see in Kyoto. Kim had talked about trying to use cabs as a good form of transport around the city, so we opted to give one a shot. The cabs in Japan are very courteous and I have never seen a typical “cabbie” as I often experience back in the US. The issue was that the cost was very high and the ride was not fast. We opted to just stick to using buses and trains, as they are cheaper and weren’t really much slower than the cab.

When we arrived at the temple, it was packed. They were not kidding when it was said this was the biggest attraction in Kyoto. When we finally managed to get to the temple, it was magnificent. Kinkakuji means “Golden Pavilion” and is this small pavilion seated on the end of this tranquil pond. It really looks amazing, even with a ton of obnoxious tourists walking all over the place (more on that in a possible post). The weather was a bit meh, but the grounds were very amazing looking, with some nice ponds and waterfalls. But at the end of the walk, there was this obnoxious tourist shop area, that was clogged with people. Really dampened the mood of the beautiful area we had just seen.

After the temple, we walked to this zen temple called Ryoanji. It was a lot less crowded and had some amazing grounds around the temple itself. The zen garden was really cool and had this (unblossomed) sakura tree that peaked over the wall in the center that would have looked glorious. I think I will try my hardest to get a sakura tree whenever I own a yard worth having one. The grounds outside had this really nice lake with a small temple in the middle on an island and a lot of nice forest around. There were a number of blossomed sakura trees around the grounds that gave us a chance to take pictures not full of Japanese tourists.

The next day, we decided to make the trip down to Nara, the first capitol of Japan, predating Kyoto. A lot of the temples and such are clustered in this large park that is known for all the deer in it. The deer are there because legend says that the deity of the shinto shrine rode one of the deers into the park. We did not make it to the shrine however. It was really raining all day, so it was overcast and we were not really excited to be getting too wet. We ventured up to see Todaiji temple, it is a huge wooden hall housing one of the largest bronze buddhas in the world. The temple is really awesome to see due to the great wooden architecture, age (some of the wood looked ancient), and the crazy statues of Buddhist deities everywhere. The wooden hall is supposed to be one of the largest wooden structures in the world, it used to be larger until it was burnt down.

On our final day in Kyoto, we finally walked to go see the Toji temple that was just south of us. I had put it off for a while, hoping that the sakura would bloom, it is supposed to be amazing with the sakura bloomed. The temple grounds are really awesome because of how they are just sort of dropped in the middle of the city, yet remain tranquil and picturesque. The main attraction is this giant pagoda in the middle of these really well done gardens. They had a shidarezakura or “weeping cherry” that was displayed prominently at the front of the gardens. We took some pictures throughout the grounds. Afterwards, we went back up to the large shopping streets to get some Japanese pickled vegetables (I need to figure out how to make my own) and wander around the shopping streets.

The next day we travelled to Tokyo via Shinkansen. I will try to write about that in a third (and final) post.

tagged with:
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• travel
• japan

Heh, haven’t posted anything on here in forever, doubt anyone still reads this, but whatever… This is the first of (hopefully) a few posts about this trip. It would be nice if I got back to posting more than once a year. Anyways, we are currently on vacation in Japan. Staying in Kyoto after a short stay in Osaka…

In Osaka, we spent 2 days, the first was a day of orientation where we went and got the shinkansen tickets to get to Tokyo later, I got an IC card for the trains (which is much easier), and then we explored the Umeda area (where we were staying). We checked out some of the malls and wondered around the area (and found this covered shopping street). It is really a different country, different in how people act around one another, different in how restaurants operate, different in how malls are set up and operated, and different in how people do their shopping. Having been here before, it still takes some adjustment to begin to operate and thrive in such a wildly different culture. Osaka was a good entry point into this culture as it lacks the bustle of Tokyo and the cultural style and rustic roots of Kyoto.

Our second day in Osaka, we wanted to go to Kobe and have some real Kobe beef. Kim did some research and had a list of a few places and we opted for the area around one of the stations. We got there early and explored the area and decided on a place. While waiting for it to open, we played some Taiko at an arcade and then explored Tokyu Hands (a DIY store common in Japan). There we found some of these little tea containers that where similar to one I purchased 4 years ago and I really liked, so we bought a few to store our other loose leaf tea in. The lunch was hibachi style, and the beef was super tender. It was not a lot, but that is more of a cultural thing with meal sizes than it was with the place we chose. I could have done with probably twice the serving size, but when in Rome, ya know? In the afternoon, we went to visit the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. There we got to make our own cup noodles, mine has a curry stock with roast pork, shrimp, green onions, and garlic chips. Before dinner, we visited (what Kim claims) is the first cat cafe in Osaka, where we spent an hour amusing ourselves with the cats they had (there was one who looked very similar to Deedee and had her demeanor).

While we are in Japan, the annual spring high school baseball tournament has been going on. It is held at the Koshien stadium (home to the NPB Tigers), for which it is often referred to as. Kim has been amused by my annoyance with the Japanese style of baseball and my sarcastic predictions of what is about to happen (and usually it is correct). The pitching style is pure hard pitches with little control and variance in pitch style. Coaches/managers will play the same pitcher for a whole game, regardless of his condition (watched one play the same kid for 15 innings, even after getting knocked around a few times). The blind use of the sacrifice bunt (even having the 3 or 4 hole guys bunt a runner to second) is also particularly frustrating. But it is also baseball, and it is being played in a country that loves the game. So I have it on almost all the time.

We then went to Kyoto, the old capital of the country. It is very rich in tradition with a lot of temples and shrines (temples are usually Buddhist and the shrines are usually for Shinto). After arriving, we went and saw a nearby temple that is supposed to be the largest wooden structure and the center of a Japanese sect of Buddhism. It is a very impressive structure with the architecture that is very east Asian, much like the stuff we saw while in Seoul (albeit much less colorful). The wood struts are particularly awesome, along with the really nice tile roofing they use all over Kyoto. Due to the cold winter, it seems like the sakura will not be in full bloom while we are in Japan, which adds a sort of sourness to most of the scenery, as there are a lot of sakura trees with buds waiting to be released.

The first full day in Kyoto, we went Nishiki market, this long food oriented market street. We tried a bunch of different things, Kim really liked the pickled stuff in one shop, we will probably go back and get some before leaving Kyoto. After lunch, we went across the river into Gion, the district known for Geisha/Maiko. It was raining a lot, so we didn’t do too much exploring, but we did walk down the main road where the geisha houses are located. Many of the compounds are amazing looking with ornate front gates and small gardens inside that peak over the front fence. At the end of the road, there is a really awesome Zen Buddhist temple called Kenninji that we went into and explored. There was a nice meditation garden and a very beautiful grounds to walk around and see. The main hall has this amazing ceiling mural of twin dragons.

We went to Fushimi Inari on our second day. It is a very iconic temple, seen in many movies, and known for the many torii that are donated by businesses (the shrine is considered the main shrine for the patron of business in Shinto). This lends to some amazing places where you walk through a sort of red hallway in the middle of this lush green landscape on a mountain side in a southern Kyoto neighborhood. The issue with visiting it is how popular and crowded it is. But man is it something to behold. After visiting the shrine, we took a train up to Gion and visited the main shrine there. I then went up to see the Kiyomizu dera temple, which is known for this amazing visual along the main hall, overlooking Kyoto. There are many great shots of it and they work in just about any season. The view was amazing and there are some awesome shopping streets leading up to the temple. Sadly, Kim was feeling tired, so she stuck back and hung out in a coffeeshop in Gion.

Yesterday, we went to western Kyoto, an area called Arashiyama, which I wanted to visit to see this awesome bamboo grove. Like just about everywhere else we have gone in Kyoto, it is crowded as hell, but looked amazing as well. The grove is really a sight to behold with the almost pure green colors and tranquil path through the trees. Before (or after going through the grove) we visited this beautiful Zen Buddhist temple called Tenryuji that had some very amazing looking gardens and this really incredible looking Japanese garden. I am of the mind to eventually have a Japanese style garden whenever we have a house, but it is probably too much work and the mood will pass.

tagged with:
• vacations
• travel
• japan