Sunday, October 12th, 2008
My favourite slice of Japanese culture so far has to be AnPanMan, who I learned about at the Manga museum in Kyoto. AnPanMan is a cartoon character aimed at young children. His head is made of bean-curd bread, and he flies around helping the poor and hungry. When he rescues someone he flies with them on his back, and lets them eat his head. Then he gets a new head made.
Monday, October 6th, 2008
Luggage arrived just as we were checking out of the Khao-san guest house to head for the train. Shit they’re heavy. What did we need all this stuff for anyway? We’ve actually been managing just fine for the past four days.
First thing to do was to validate the Japan Rail passes, then we could hop on the bullet train down towards Mount Fuji. In fact it wasn’t quite as exciting as that, it was two Metros, a regular local train and a regular long distance train to get to Kawaguchiko. Yes, for the record, this was my idea. Kawaguchiko is a quiet little town in the mountains - it’s basically the Aviemore of Japan. The weather was a bit drearier down this way as well, so it was a welcome change from the sweaty madness of Tokyo. Hostel was nice too, a bit more old skool - shoes off at the door, sushi breakfast, that sort of thing.
As it was quite apparent there wasn’t much else to do in Kawaguchiko, we headed out for dinner to a Japanese BBQ restaurant, about a mile up the road. Sitting on the floor around the hot coals, the waiter brings out a selection of meat, fish and veg for you to cook yourself. He gave us a quick rundown of how to do it - grill it, dip it in the Teryaki sauce, grill it some more, eat it. His last instruction, however, was most unexpected.
“For fish, wait until stop moving”
I looked down at the plate, sure enough the little bugger was still alive. An eight-inch rainbow trout skewered from head to tail - both head and tail still wagging in protest. Delicious with a bit of Soy Sauce in the end though.
The evening’s second installment of Japanese culture came courtesy of a traditional Onsen bath. Instead of having individual showers in the Ryokan, all they have is a large, communal, very hot bath, preceded by a quick shower. A bit like the showers at the swimming baths only you’re not allowed to keep your trunks on and you have to sit on a little stool while your getting washed.
In comparison to the hostel in Tokyo, the Kawaguchiko Station Inn was absolute luxury!
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
We didn’t really have a plan for Saturday night. We got home from exploring Asakusa in the afternoon and were still in Wednesday’s clothes. Luckily there was a note on the room door telling us that BA had called and would be delivering our bags in the morning. Result! Well more of a consolation result, ideally they wouldn’t have lost them in the first place but hey.
This meant we could stick to our original plan of leaving Tokyo tomorrow to head south, so we made a list of all the things we still wanted to do in Japan and tried to make a plan for the next 10 days. And so Saturday night was assigned to going up Tokyo Tower.
Tokyo Tower is basically like the Eiffel Tower but a bit smaller (I think). The elevator ride up to the observation area is smooth as a baby’s backside, not like that rickety piece of shit in Paris. The views once you’re up there are awesome! Tokyo looks more like Tokyo from up here than it does on the ground. I managed to get a couple of decent pictures I think but they still don’t really do it justice…
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
OK, I promise that’s the last post title to use parrot phrases of the local language, but it’s late and I’m tired and not feeling very imaginative. Fiona has already stolen all the good chat from today so this will either be brief or repetitive.
Tokyo is cool! We are staying in the Asakusa district, which isn’t the liveliest but is pretty nice, and still handy for getting places. We arrived at Narita airport only to be told that British Airways had lost our bags at Heathrow and they hadn’t been put on the plane. So we’re short of clean clothes and other essentials like camera cables for uploading photos - grr! But hey I suppose we’ll just get on with, hopefully the bags will arrive soon.
On the first night we headed over to Ginza. It’s mainly a high street with glamorous shops, a bit like the Champs Elysee but less snooty I guess. It was also very postcard Tokyo (or so I thought at the time), which I liked! The first thing I saw as I came out the Metro station was a 50ft poster of Shunsuke Nakamura above the Adidas store! We wandered for a bit and then found a little basement food court place for dinner - had a cracking beef teryaki dish cooked fresh right in front of me in about 2 minutes - it was exquisite and only cost 1000 yen (about a fiver). Wandered a bit more, decided we were knackered, and headed home!
15 hours of (badly needed) sleep later, we got up and made tracks for Shibuyu. Now this is postcard Tokyo! Think Piccadilly Circus but twice as busy, twice as many lights and screens, and the screens actually playing music out of them. As well as that, there’s advertising vans driving about also playing music out of them. And as if they knew I was here, a big truck drove by blaring out Oasis, with “Dig Out Your Soul - Out Now” emblazoned on the side. After years of buying Japanese imports on eBay, I thought I might as well indulge myself and go and buy it from the big fuck-off Tower Records in Tokyo! When I got there though they had some other Oasis stuff I didn’t have already, so I just bought that instead, seeing as i’ve already pre-ordered the new album back home, and would have no means of listening to it here anyway. When I got to the checkout I also got a free Oasis poster, which I suspect was only meant to be given away with the new album - “Present!” the little dude said as he handed it to me, all smiles.
Right I’m probably boring you now so I’ll just give a few observations of Japan so far:
Tomorrow we’re going to the fish market, so need to get up early doors. Night night!
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
First stop Tokyo! Well, first stop Heathrow so it’s a bit of a false start. But then it’s eleven and a half hours non-stop to the land of the Rising Sun. Am I prepared? Who knows. Probably not. But hey it’s the first time I’ve done anything like this so how prepared can you really be.
I’ve got a few pre-departure photos lurking on the camera at the moment, but I won’t get the chance to upload them before I go, so we’ll need to wait for the first installment proper from Japan.
JAPAN! Mental! One of those places I always thought would be cool to go to, but never thought I would. And yet for the last few months i’ve been talking about it so much (yes even I’m bored of listening to me) it’s as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
eboPod is all loaded up and ready to go. The plan for months has been to wipe it clean and load it up with all those albums I’ve never quite got around to listening to, because its so easy just to go back to the same old lazy stuff you’ve been listening to for years because it’s right there in your pocket. So what have I got lined up then? In no particular order (it’s tucked away in the hand luggage now so this is off the top of my head!): Bat Out of Hell, Never Mind The Bollocks, Dark Side Of The Moon, Thriller. Due to time and effort constraints I had to settle for a few ‘Best Of’s (Elvis, Bruce Springsteen), which I normally wouldn’t stand for. The Guitar Hero 3 playlist, courtesy of Alan’s time and effort. The odd curveball (3 Colours Red). I reckon I’ve got enough to keep me going til Christmas anyway.
Of course I won’t be relying on music all the time, I’ve got a few books packed. ‘Round Ireland With A Fridge’ I started a couple of months ago, then kind of forgot I was reading it - it was bloody hilarious so far though, so I’ll probably start by finishing that. ‘Bringing Down the House’ was recommended after I saw the film version (’21′ with Kevin Spacey), so looking forward to that one. Lastly I’ve got ‘iPod Therefore I Am’ which I also started reading ages ago, but found it a bit difficult and weird, but I’ll give it another bash!
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