I'm going to wrap this little blog up for now - it's 2.30 am on the day that we fly home and we've just got in from a night of drinking at a bar on the 52nd floor at Roppongi Hills with great views over Tokyo. The last couple of days in Japan have been spent shopping for little things we wanted to take back with us. I've managed to collect together a pile of manga books, weird toys and cheap electronics and Gemma's picked up some traditional sweets.
The only sightseeing we've done was a trip to Tsukiji fish market - the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. The auctions are closed to the public nowadays but we showed up around 7.30am and got to see the buyers and wholesalers setting up stalls and preparing the fish for shipping.
So thats it for now! We're back in the UK over the weekend but I'll probably tidy up and complete the writing sometime after we get back to Holland and stick all of the photos up on Flickr.
Today we headed back to Tokyo to meet up with Kimiko and Anthony. It was a public holiday in Japan so Anthony had the day off work. We arrived early afternoon, grabbed a quick lunch in an Italian, and then spent most of the afternoon hanging out at their flat. In the evening we were still sick of raw fish so we went out to eat at a great Californian restuarant.
We were served the Japanese equivalent of a fry-up: raw fish, rice and several bowls of an unrecognisable gelatinous goo. I had a go at most of the dishes, but Gemma couldn't stomach Sushimi that early in the day so a lot of it went back uneaten.
After breakfast and an early visit to the bathes we headed out to see the mountains. We spent most of the morning at Hakone's open air art museum and then grabbed lunch at a restuarant called the Gyoza centre. Gyoza are one of my favourite foods and here they made them in 19 different ways!
Next we took a cable car up over to the sulphur mine at Owakudani. There are supposed to be good views of Mount Fuji from this area but the weather was so bad we couldn't spot it at all. We came back down the other side of the mountain and then took a boat trip across Lake Ashi, supposedly another good viewing point, but there was just too much cloud today.
We took a bus back to the Ryokan where we had another huge meal (this time of Shabu Shabu with tasty Wagyu beef) and then hired out a private bath over the river.
We've been in the mountains without internet for the last few days, so I'm posting Days 9 - 12 all at once...
Every day since we left Tokyo we've been travelling further and further to the west. Today we were going to travel most of the way back again. Unfortunately the bullet train was heavily delayed, perhaps due to the bad weather, so we spent most of the day sitting on the train.
We were staying in a traditional Japanese Ryokan high up in the mountains at Hakone, and we finally arrived by cable car just after the sun had gone down. On the first night they were serving us an 11 course (!) Kaiseki meal, so we just had time to change into our robes before the eating started.
After dinner a guy came in to take away the dining table and lay out the matresses for bed so we went to try the baths which are heated by a natural hot spring. Unfortunately they're completely segregated, so we couldn't help each other with the long list of bathing rules. When you enter you have to sit on one of the little wooden stools are wash yourself thoroughly using 3 soap dispensors and a little wooden bucket. Once you're clean you can climb into one of the rock pools, where the water is so hot you start cooking pretty much immediately, though they give you a little wash towel to soak in cold water and put on your forehead.
Most of the morning was spent travelling on the bullet train to our next stop, Hiroshima. We found the hotel and then headed to the Peace Memorial Park where there are a couple of very good museums and some monuments to the nuclear attack. Here's a picture of the children's memorial statue:
We found a boat on the river that took us on all the way to Miyajima, the Shrine Island. It's famous for the floating Torii, which is one of the most photographed sights in Japan.
The sea was shallow so I took a walk out to the foot of the Torii:
We used our Japan Rail passes to make a day trip to Nara. It's famous for it's beautiful park filled with tame Sika deer.
The deer are regarded as sacred by the Japanese and they're no longer scared of humans.
There are a total of about 1200 deer in the park.
Also in the park we saw the world's largest Buddha statue housed inside the world's largest wooden building. Here's a photo that has absolutely no sense of scale!
One of the pillars in the temple has a hole cut in it and it's supposed to bring you good luck if you crawl through it. It's exactly the same size as the Buddha's nostril in the statue pictured above (not sure why exactly). I had a go at getting through, but it's a tight fit and I could only get through with my arms above my head and several Australian tourists and Japanese children pulling me. Unfortunately Gemma was so worried I'd got wedged in the hole she rushed forward to try and pull me through and forgot to take a picure. So here's one of a Japanese school kid instead:
We spent the morning at the Kyoto's Manga Museum which is just around the corner from the hotel we're staying at (The Hotel Monteray Kyoto). It has a huge library of manga books in Japanese and smaller collections in some other languages. The best part was the history of manga room but there wasn't a huge amount else to see for a non-Japanese speaker. Luckily it was only cost a few hundred yen to look round.
In the afternoon we took a short train ride to Inari to see the Fushimi-Inari Taisha temple. This was one of the places I'd most wanted to see. It has thousands of bright orange Torii (the distinctive Shinto gates) forming a 5km path up the mountainside. I don't remember it, but apparently it was used in the filming of Memoirs of a Geisha. The heat was too high to get all the way up the mountain but we spent an hour or so walking around.
It was pretty dark and overcast whilst we were there and I could only get handheld pictures with the ISO1600 setting, so there's a lot of noise in the photos taken inside the Torii. There were also plenty of these creepy fox statues all over the hillside:
There were several temples on the hills with pools for the cleansing ceremony:
Sticking to the rules when you don't speak Japanese isn't always easy...
In the afternoon we went to see the Golden Pavilion. I really like this photo of Gemma, but then I expect everyone looks better with a giant golden temple behind them.
Anthony had to head off to work early to deal with the fallout from all the world's banks collapsing and we were leaving Tokyo to head on to our second destination, Kyoto. Kimiko helped us get through to the Bullet Train on time but after that we were on our own in Japan for the first time!
Having figured out how to order food for ourselves (points lots, look apologetic) we spent most of the afternoon hanging around the Gion district looking for Geisha amongst the old teahouses. Lonely Planet reckons there are now only about 100 Geisha left in Kyoto today so the odds weren't good but we did get to see several ladies in traditional Kimonos.
Kyoto has loads of incredible shrines, gardens and temples in this area, so we took a long walk round to see a few of them. It was a nice change of pace from the craziness of Tokyo.
We didn't really think we'd get to see any Geisha on our trip, but luck (and a creepy old rich perv) was on our side!
Also: Japan gets incredible internet speeds. I'm currently getting 100mbps down from our hotel connection..!
Anthony and Kimiko take us to a Buddhist temple called Senso-ji. People try to cover themselves in the incense smoke to heal themselves, and there are hundreds of drawers with fortune telling sheets. Once you've read them you tie them to trees or metal bars nearby.
There is also a big covered shopping street there, Nakamise-dori, which is popular with tourists. We picked up a nice woodprint of Mount Fuji in red and a few other little bits and pieces. Gemma finally relented and let me get a (tiny) lucky cat figurine.
For lunch we went to a conveyor-belt sushi place. Each plate has a distinctive design which tells you have much it costs. You pile up the dishes as you eat them and then they have a cool little machine that totals up your final bill.
In the afternoon we went to the biggest electronics store in Tokyo, Yodabashi, nine levels and spent about 3 hours going through each one.
By the time we got out it was dark so we headed to a manga bookshop and then into the electronics district Akihabara. One store had a famicon with SF2 out on the street so Anthony and I had a best-of-3 challenge on our old favourite game.
In the evening we headed to Rappongi Hills - the tower where Anthony works - to eat and then went to the 52nd floor to the viewing platform and to see the yearly Sky Aquarium display.
I don't have any time to write much at the moment so I'll just jot down the highlights and upload a few photos and then come back and fill in the details later on.
We started off the day at the bridge in Harajuku as I really wanted to see some Japanese cosplayers. Unfortunately there weren't any around so we headed into the Shinto shrine next to it. Although Kimiko knew it was an unlucky day to get married there were two weddings taking place.
Had a go at the Buddhist cleansing ritual!
Some cosplayers turned up on the bridge by the time we were done.
We went to the first day of a huge sumo tournament. I was stopped on the way in by a tv crew and interviewed. There's been a big scandal in sumo wrestling as two of the top wrestlers were caught smoking marijuana and were thrown out. That's literally all the details I knew but somehow I ended up spouting my insane opinions on the subject for a good 5 minutes on Japanese TV.
The business class upgrade on the flight meant better food, real cutlery and a seat that magically transformed into a bed. But even after taking some sleeping pills we only managed to grab a couple of hours sleep on the plane. The entire flight was in sunlight and we landed at 9am local time so Friday and Saturday were merged into one really long day.
Anthony and Kimiko met us at the airport which is about an hour's travel outside Tokyo on the train. Buying tickets gave us our first go at dealing with the money here so Anthony taught us a simple rule for converting between yen and pounds: knock off the last two zeroes and then divide in half. So the train tickets that cost about 1500 yen worked out at roughly £7.50.
We saw a nice idea on the train - all seats on the train are forward facing but if you're in a group of four you can just push a pedal and swing a pair round so you can all sit together.
Their flat was on the otherside of Tokyo but luckily subway travel is cheap (100 yen / 50p) and not very busy at this time. There are so many people crushed together during the rush hour that were even signs on the platform for women only trains. Vending machines are everywhere in the station and on the streets selling cheaps drinks (100 yen / 50p) and cigarettes (300 yen / £1.50).
We were so jetlagged that we didn't want to do anything too adventurous today so we spent the afternoon looking around the Imperial Garden's before heading into the Ginza district. Shops stay open all night and we had a look at all the new tech toys in the Sony building.
We ate in a Japanese restuarant run by an Australian guy which was completely packed. We ordered a huge amount of food - Sashimi, Ginzo nuts, buttered scallops, Tempura, fried chicken and a tomato salads plus 2 huge beers and the girl's got a mix of rice-vodka and lemonade. I thought we'd spend a small fortune but when the bill came it worked out at just £12.50 a head which must be the best value meal I've ever eaten. Plus they don't even tip here!
As we're taking a laptop with us on this trip and we'll probably end up seeing some interesting stuff over there I though I'd make a little blog of the trip. Right now I'm sitting in the loungue in Heathrow's new Terminal 5 - Gemma's card let's her take a guest in so I get to benefit from all the free food, drink and - more importantly for this - internet access. It's pretty interesting to see how the other side lives. Right now I'm looking over at a bar serving free champaigne and premium spirits and a guy is screaming at some poor guy in a bank because he isn't transferring his 250,000 euros between accounts quick enough. I think we're the only people here not wearing suits. We're definitely the only people wearing Birkies.
They have two huge horse statues draping with the Union Jack at the entrance. They're giant lamps. You can tell because the horses have lampshades on their heads.
It's 12.45am here and the flight to Japan is boarding in about 30 minutes. Gemma's just coming back and told me we've been upgraded to business class! My first (and probably only) business class trip!
Tried taking a picture on the built-in camera. You can see some of the free wine on the shelves over my shoulder. Sorry about the expression, haven't got the hang of the timer yet...
