Here are the pics from the trip
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Day 7 - Back to Osaka and Home again home again jiggety jig
Posted by Chris
Well it's the final day in Japan and we have a long journey ahead of us today. Checking out of the hotel we grabbed the usual "am/pm" (7-eleven) breakfast and trekked to the train station. As has also become the trend, we visited Starbucks. Even though I hate them as an American company, it's about the only place that serves passable coffee in this country. We caught the train to Tokyo station (yes during the tail end of rush-hour and carrying bags and coffees - not sure a good idea in hindsight) and found a locker to stash our bags. For only 500 Yen for as long as you like it was a great deal! We walked down the road to the Imperial Palace grounds, still carrying the empty coffee cups - for a country so clean, they certainly don't believe in rubbish bins. Walking around the Imperial Palace grounds, we had a peek at the imperial bridge, before strolling through the imperial gardens. By this time it was getting on to midday, so we found the closest subway and caught the metro one stop back to Tokyo station. This whole trip has been made so much easier thanks to WikiTravel, my flashy new phone and the iTravel Android application . Almost everything we have done in Tokyo has been from following the two itineraries on here: <<<(?)>>>. The compass and GPS navigation has also been a godsend (when they work properly).
It was quite a mission to find our locker again (Tokyo station is huge), but we eventually did and we punched in our coupon number to retrieve our bags. We grabbed a few sushi bento boxes and boarded the Hikari train back to Shin-Osaka. This time we watched "Hot Tub Time Machine" on the laptop but unfortunately still didn't see Mt Fuji. I think because of clouds (or maybe the movie). In Shin-Osaka we had a quick bite of gyoza and transferred to another train for Osaka. We had anther minor train disaster here becuase it was a very long trip to the airport. We boarded a train that said "airport" on it, only to have it terminate at a station on the loop line. We found a new train that was really going to the airport and boarded that, only to find out it was going to two completely different destinations. I was very confused as to what was going on, but then the scrolling display said "at stop hanachi (?) cars 1-4 are going to the airport, and cars 5-8 are going to somewhere called Wanachi". Of course we were in the very end of car 8 and the train was too packed to move through. Very very slowly we were able to make our way to car 4 over the course of about 6 stations. Finally we arrived at the airport and we were right on time - almost exactly 2 hours before the flight was due to leave. I have no doubt there is an express train between the airport and Osaka which I will have to investigate for next time. So here we are back on povo JetStar bound for the Gold Coast and home again to see Kimba who Danae has been missing heaps. Japan was awesome and I think we spent a good amount of time everywhere we went. If we had more time and friends, it would have been great to get into the nightlife - however there is nothing else extra that I wish we had done.
Till next holiday! Love Danae and Chris xoxox
Well it's the final day in Japan and we have a long journey ahead of us today. Checking out of the hotel we grabbed the usual "am/pm" (7-eleven) breakfast and trekked to the train station. As has also become the trend, we visited Starbucks. Even though I hate them as an American company, it's about the only place that serves passable coffee in this country. We caught the train to Tokyo station (yes during the tail end of rush-hour and carrying bags and coffees - not sure a good idea in hindsight) and found a locker to stash our bags. For only 500 Yen for as long as you like it was a great deal! We walked down the road to the Imperial Palace grounds, still carrying the empty coffee cups - for a country so clean, they certainly don't believe in rubbish bins. Walking around the Imperial Palace grounds, we had a peek at the imperial bridge, before strolling through the imperial gardens. By this time it was getting on to midday, so we found the closest subway and caught the metro one stop back to Tokyo station. This whole trip has been made so much easier thanks to WikiTravel, my flashy new phone and the iTravel Android application . Almost everything we have done in Tokyo has been from following the two itineraries on here: <<<(?)>>>. The compass and GPS navigation has also been a godsend (when they work properly).
It was quite a mission to find our locker again (Tokyo station is huge), but we eventually did and we punched in our coupon number to retrieve our bags. We grabbed a few sushi bento boxes and boarded the Hikari train back to Shin-Osaka. This time we watched "Hot Tub Time Machine" on the laptop but unfortunately still didn't see Mt Fuji. I think because of clouds (or maybe the movie). In Shin-Osaka we had a quick bite of gyoza and transferred to another train for Osaka. We had anther minor train disaster here becuase it was a very long trip to the airport. We boarded a train that said "airport" on it, only to have it terminate at a station on the loop line. We found a new train that was really going to the airport and boarded that, only to find out it was going to two completely different destinations. I was very confused as to what was going on, but then the scrolling display said "at stop hanachi (?) cars 1-4 are going to the airport, and cars 5-8 are going to somewhere called Wanachi". Of course we were in the very end of car 8 and the train was too packed to move through. Very very slowly we were able to make our way to car 4 over the course of about 6 stations. Finally we arrived at the airport and we were right on time - almost exactly 2 hours before the flight was due to leave. I have no doubt there is an express train between the airport and Osaka which I will have to investigate for next time. So here we are back on povo JetStar bound for the Gold Coast and home again to see Kimba who Danae has been missing heaps. Japan was awesome and I think we spent a good amount of time everywhere we went. If we had more time and friends, it would have been great to get into the nightlife - however there is nothing else extra that I wish we had done.
Till next holiday! Love Danae and Chris xoxox
Day 6 - Whirlwind Tour of Tokyo
Posted by Danae
Today we walked so much I thought my legs were going to fall off! This morning we went to the Tsukiji fish markets which various people had told me were worth checking out. A guidebook I'd read said there wasn't much point getting there before 9am, unless you were going to the fish auctions which happen between 4 and 6amish and they only let 140 tourists in. I think the guidebook gave us a bumsteer, cause by the time we got there sometime after 9am a lot of the market-holders were packing up their produce for the day (I doubt I would have been able to wake up any earlier, though!). I felt quite awkward walking through the markets. Clearly it's not set up for tourists and we spent the whole time just trying to get out of the way of various people working there, trucks and machines. The whole place is very fish-stinky, as you woud expect, with lots of different types of fish and other seafood on display and plenty of opportunities for your feet to get splashed with smelly fish juices, errrrgh. This is the 'inner market' and the 'outer market' which circles around the fish area is filled with fruit and vegies, and various kitchen utensils for sale. There are also lots of sushi restaurants. It was interesting enough to see the fresh seafood, etc. before it makes its way into restaurants, but I couldn't help but feel it is not a good place for tourists/travellers to go as it probably just annoys the people that work there.
After this we went to the Yebisu Beer Museum at Ebisu, which was not particularly exciting but the good news is that they serve beer before 12pm. Oh, and they had a giant can of beer made out of lots of little cans of beers which was pretty nifty. We gave ourselves a self-guided tour of the Museum, because the tour given by their 'Yebisu experts' was only given in Japanese (saved ourselves 1000yen - so thrifty!) and then went and enjoyed some Yebisu beers in their tasting area. Unfortunately the beer experts weren't very good at pouring the beers (far too much head) but at least the beer was nice. It was a funny system they had there; you had to pay your money into a machine which then spat out a special Yebisu coin which you then had to give to the beer experts to get your beer. Not sure why the machine was needed at all; maybe the beer experts couldn't work out how to give change. We then bought an obligatory beer stein to add to our growing collection, and I got a commemorative stamp (because I like stamping things, even though Chris pays me out for trying to get the commemorative stamp at all the tourist attractions).
At this point we decided to try to do a suggested itinerary on the Wiki-travel website for Tokyo. We'd already done step 1 - the fish markets. There were loads of other things to do so we had to get started asap. We took ourselves off to the Meiji Shrine located in a forest of tall cedar trees. This was a fine looking shrine and we had a nice wander about and a sit down in the peaceful ambience. There was a thing that you could hang little prayers on, if you like that sort of thing, and it was nice to read what people were asking for. There were only a few in English, and most were asking for their sick rellies to get better, but one was asking for a World Cup win for their country. We left just before several enormous busloads of tourists arrived and ruined the serenity - phew.
More train riding and off we went to Shibuya for some shopping and people-watching. We had a stroll down Harajuku, which is likened to the Champs-Elysees in Paris, due to its wide streets and exorbitantly priced shops. Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, Chris woudn't let me stop to check out the shops here. Then onto Takeshita Dora, which is a narrow little street with loads of cutesy shops aimed at the teen girl market, i.e. Hello Kitty, Miffy, other cartoon characters and all things pink (i.e. my type of shopping!) It wasn't long before we happened upon Chocolate Dog, a shop with all manner of things for spoiling your dog and dressing them up for public humiliation - how convenient! Clearly our trip to Japan would not have been complete without the purchase of a cute outfit for Kimba, so we bought a little pink kimono so she will be the belle of the ball. She got off lightly, really - there were plenty of other things that caught my eye. For example, a little bumblebee outfit! I think Chris really enjoyed looking for outfits for our baby, even though he pretended he didn't. Whilst I could have spent hours cruising these shops, clearly that wasn't going to happen so off we went for lunch at La Pausa, which is the Japanese take on italian cuisine. Interesting. The pizza we had with prawns and a mayonnaise type sauce was tastier than it sounds, but I won't be rushing back. Wandering back onto one of the main streets of Shibuya, we had dessert at one of the sidewalk shops. This was a yummy sundae-style concotion called something like a honey bee chocolate cream, which consisted of little honeypuff-like, deep fried balls, icecream, cream and chocolate. Mmmmmm. They do do good sweets here :) We walked down the street some more to get some Starbucks' coffees and sit in their primely-located coffee shop looking out over Hachiko, the world's busiest pedestrian crossing. The crossing looked pretty darn busy, but it is hard to believe it is the world's busiest. How is that even worked out?!
By this point we were both feeling pretty exhausted, but the tour had to go on. So more train navigating, and soon we were boarding the private railway train journeying to Odaiba island. This train was really cool; it reminded me of a monorail because it doesn't have a driver and one section of the track, on the lead-up to Odaiba, is a massive loop. We sat right at the front for the best view of the approaching track and landscape. The Rainbow Bridge on the leadup to Odaiba is apparently the longest suspension bridge in the world. On arrival we headed straight to the Decks beach boardwalk where we stopped for some draft beers overlooking a replica of the Statue of Liberty (just what you would expect in Japan). Then we checked out the other weird but wonderful architecture of the island - including Tokyo Sight (which is a skyscraper with enormous inverted pyramids on it - hard to explain but basically it is like looking at the Egypt Pyramids upside down, on a slightly smaller scale), and the Fuji TV building (which is like two towers with a giant ball in the middle). Then we walked for what seemed like ages to get to a shopping centre called Venus Fort, which inside has a ceiling which has different sky settings. When we were in there, the sky was blue and cloudy. We were a little disappointed that the "sky" didn't change whilst we were there. Apparently the gods (owners) of the Venus Fort will change it to storm clouds and rain and then back again to blue skies within minutes, just for fun. I managed to scrape in a superquick half hour of shopping whilst Chris checked out the Toyota showroom conveniently located right next door. I'm pretty sure that Toyota/Venus Fort joined forces on this one, figuring that the ladies need time to shop and meanwhile their husband/children can be entertained with the toys next door. I understand Chris had fun going for a ride in a test vehicle that drove itself, but when I met up with him again he still insisted on showing me through the showroom and some of the other gadgets on offer (soccer balls that suspend in mid air; soda bottles that create a whirlwind effect inside them when you shake them, and other strange things that I'm not too sure what the relevance was to Toyota, but who cares really if it keeps the big and small kids happy).
We travelled back on the monorail/train, again securing front-row seats and this time the outlook was even prettier with the lights on the bridge and island having just been lit up for the evening. We travelled to Roppongi, which is the nightlife area where supposedly all the ex-pats gather. We didn't really get into the nightlife, however, as we were both so tired by this time it was all we could do just to quickly have dinner (Japanese curry, Indian-style and more beers) and travel back to our hotel in Shinjuku. Doing the suggested itinerary was a marathon effort to get to this point - it is hard to believe that the itinerary said we should continue partying at Roppongi until 5am, ready to face the fish markets again. We are obviously getting old, but we gave it our best shot!
Today we walked so much I thought my legs were going to fall off! This morning we went to the Tsukiji fish markets which various people had told me were worth checking out. A guidebook I'd read said there wasn't much point getting there before 9am, unless you were going to the fish auctions which happen between 4 and 6amish and they only let 140 tourists in. I think the guidebook gave us a bumsteer, cause by the time we got there sometime after 9am a lot of the market-holders were packing up their produce for the day (I doubt I would have been able to wake up any earlier, though!). I felt quite awkward walking through the markets. Clearly it's not set up for tourists and we spent the whole time just trying to get out of the way of various people working there, trucks and machines. The whole place is very fish-stinky, as you woud expect, with lots of different types of fish and other seafood on display and plenty of opportunities for your feet to get splashed with smelly fish juices, errrrgh. This is the 'inner market' and the 'outer market' which circles around the fish area is filled with fruit and vegies, and various kitchen utensils for sale. There are also lots of sushi restaurants. It was interesting enough to see the fresh seafood, etc. before it makes its way into restaurants, but I couldn't help but feel it is not a good place for tourists/travellers to go as it probably just annoys the people that work there.
After this we went to the Yebisu Beer Museum at Ebisu, which was not particularly exciting but the good news is that they serve beer before 12pm. Oh, and they had a giant can of beer made out of lots of little cans of beers which was pretty nifty. We gave ourselves a self-guided tour of the Museum, because the tour given by their 'Yebisu experts' was only given in Japanese (saved ourselves 1000yen - so thrifty!) and then went and enjoyed some Yebisu beers in their tasting area. Unfortunately the beer experts weren't very good at pouring the beers (far too much head) but at least the beer was nice. It was a funny system they had there; you had to pay your money into a machine which then spat out a special Yebisu coin which you then had to give to the beer experts to get your beer. Not sure why the machine was needed at all; maybe the beer experts couldn't work out how to give change. We then bought an obligatory beer stein to add to our growing collection, and I got a commemorative stamp (because I like stamping things, even though Chris pays me out for trying to get the commemorative stamp at all the tourist attractions).
At this point we decided to try to do a suggested itinerary on the Wiki-travel website for Tokyo. We'd already done step 1 - the fish markets. There were loads of other things to do so we had to get started asap. We took ourselves off to the Meiji Shrine located in a forest of tall cedar trees. This was a fine looking shrine and we had a nice wander about and a sit down in the peaceful ambience. There was a thing that you could hang little prayers on, if you like that sort of thing, and it was nice to read what people were asking for. There were only a few in English, and most were asking for their sick rellies to get better, but one was asking for a World Cup win for their country. We left just before several enormous busloads of tourists arrived and ruined the serenity - phew.
More train riding and off we went to Shibuya for some shopping and people-watching. We had a stroll down Harajuku, which is likened to the Champs-Elysees in Paris, due to its wide streets and exorbitantly priced shops. Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, Chris woudn't let me stop to check out the shops here. Then onto Takeshita Dora, which is a narrow little street with loads of cutesy shops aimed at the teen girl market, i.e. Hello Kitty, Miffy, other cartoon characters and all things pink (i.e. my type of shopping!) It wasn't long before we happened upon Chocolate Dog, a shop with all manner of things for spoiling your dog and dressing them up for public humiliation - how convenient! Clearly our trip to Japan would not have been complete without the purchase of a cute outfit for Kimba, so we bought a little pink kimono so she will be the belle of the ball. She got off lightly, really - there were plenty of other things that caught my eye. For example, a little bumblebee outfit! I think Chris really enjoyed looking for outfits for our baby, even though he pretended he didn't. Whilst I could have spent hours cruising these shops, clearly that wasn't going to happen so off we went for lunch at La Pausa, which is the Japanese take on italian cuisine. Interesting. The pizza we had with prawns and a mayonnaise type sauce was tastier than it sounds, but I won't be rushing back. Wandering back onto one of the main streets of Shibuya, we had dessert at one of the sidewalk shops. This was a yummy sundae-style concotion called something like a honey bee chocolate cream, which consisted of little honeypuff-like, deep fried balls, icecream, cream and chocolate. Mmmmmm. They do do good sweets here :) We walked down the street some more to get some Starbucks' coffees and sit in their primely-located coffee shop looking out over Hachiko, the world's busiest pedestrian crossing. The crossing looked pretty darn busy, but it is hard to believe it is the world's busiest. How is that even worked out?!
By this point we were both feeling pretty exhausted, but the tour had to go on. So more train navigating, and soon we were boarding the private railway train journeying to Odaiba island. This train was really cool; it reminded me of a monorail because it doesn't have a driver and one section of the track, on the lead-up to Odaiba, is a massive loop. We sat right at the front for the best view of the approaching track and landscape. The Rainbow Bridge on the leadup to Odaiba is apparently the longest suspension bridge in the world. On arrival we headed straight to the Decks beach boardwalk where we stopped for some draft beers overlooking a replica of the Statue of Liberty (just what you would expect in Japan). Then we checked out the other weird but wonderful architecture of the island - including Tokyo Sight (which is a skyscraper with enormous inverted pyramids on it - hard to explain but basically it is like looking at the Egypt Pyramids upside down, on a slightly smaller scale), and the Fuji TV building (which is like two towers with a giant ball in the middle). Then we walked for what seemed like ages to get to a shopping centre called Venus Fort, which inside has a ceiling which has different sky settings. When we were in there, the sky was blue and cloudy. We were a little disappointed that the "sky" didn't change whilst we were there. Apparently the gods (owners) of the Venus Fort will change it to storm clouds and rain and then back again to blue skies within minutes, just for fun. I managed to scrape in a superquick half hour of shopping whilst Chris checked out the Toyota showroom conveniently located right next door. I'm pretty sure that Toyota/Venus Fort joined forces on this one, figuring that the ladies need time to shop and meanwhile their husband/children can be entertained with the toys next door. I understand Chris had fun going for a ride in a test vehicle that drove itself, but when I met up with him again he still insisted on showing me through the showroom and some of the other gadgets on offer (soccer balls that suspend in mid air; soda bottles that create a whirlwind effect inside them when you shake them, and other strange things that I'm not too sure what the relevance was to Toyota, but who cares really if it keeps the big and small kids happy).
We travelled back on the monorail/train, again securing front-row seats and this time the outlook was even prettier with the lights on the bridge and island having just been lit up for the evening. We travelled to Roppongi, which is the nightlife area where supposedly all the ex-pats gather. We didn't really get into the nightlife, however, as we were both so tired by this time it was all we could do just to quickly have dinner (Japanese curry, Indian-style and more beers) and travel back to our hotel in Shinjuku. Doing the suggested itinerary was a marathon effort to get to this point - it is hard to believe that the itinerary said we should continue partying at Roppongi until 5am, ready to face the fish markets again. We are obviously getting old, but we gave it our best shot!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Day 5 - Travelling to Tokyo
By Chris
We checked out of the beatutiful Sheraton and headed to the mall next door for our usual breakfast of bakery treats. As per usual I sampled some pastries that contained pork sausage (I think) and Danae had things filled with chocolate or cream. Since we had bags, we figured it would be easier to catch the non-JR train (we would have to buy a ticket being non-JR operated) one station and then get on the JR loop line like normal to Osaka station. Easy enough, but upon arriving at Tsuruhashi station I got a bit disoriented, and when swapping to the JR train, we accidentally got on a train heading in the wrong direction. Not a huge problem as trains come every 5 mins or less in both directions. So we got off and swapped to the other side of the platform. After heading about 5 stops in the correct direction, our train stopped and everyone had to get off becuase the train was terminating. Grrr. Finally we arrived at Osaka station and from there we caught a train to Shin-Osaka, and finally (almost) we boarded the Hikari Rail Star to Tokyo. The total number of trains we ended up boarding to get to Tokyo was 7! The 3 hour journey to Tokyo was very pleasant as we watched a movie "She is out of my league" - a movie that has a lot of parallels to Danae and my relationship. The heart-shaped headphone splitter thing that we bought in the gold coast airport has already payed for itself. Unfortunatley we couldn't see Mt Fuji out of the window of the train becuase it was too cloudy, but there were heaps of other interesting things to see moving very quickly out the window. Arriving in Tokyo we had to very quickly figure out the new train and subway system. The Tokyo train system is as complicated as the Osaka subway system, and the Tokyo subway system is as complicated as a bowl of multicoloured spaghetti. I am pretty sure it is the most complicated I have ever seen. So with the help of the information lady, we boarded a Chuo line train to Shinjuku. After about half-an-hour of wandering around aimlessly, we found our new hotel and checked in at about 3 o'clock. Phew! what a journey.
Dumping our bags we went in search of food for a late lunch. We found a nice looking sushi-train (kaiten sushi-ya) type of place and stuffed ourselves with lots of nice raw fish and rice. Not really sure what to do in Tokyo, we walked 20 mins to some government building that has a free viewing platform at the top for a good view over most of Tokyo. Walking home Danae tried a weird deep-fried, red-bean fish thing that I can't even explain. We also stopped to have a crepe filled with cream, icecream, chocolate and other norty things. We refreshed a bit at home, and got dressed for dinner. I had my heart set on trying some Kobe beef (a form of Wagyu beef that is fed beef and given massages with Sake daily), but after a bit of research I found that it wasn't so easy and would likely require a reservation and a lot of money, like $170+ AUD. Instead there is a steak place a block away that we went to. Sitting at our table, we realised that it was another cook-yourself yakiniku place. It was much better this time becuase they had a hilariously-translated menu with pictures so we could actually tell what was going on. We had very yummy plum Whiskey, peach sake, plum sake and we ate a few different kinds of Japanese Wagyu beef which was melt in your mouth awesome along with other things. A funny moment was when the lady brought out salad dressing at the same time as our drinks. We thought the salad dressing in the interestingly-shaped vessel was a part of the plum Sake and we were about to pour it into Danae's glass before the waitress luckily stopped us. After dinner we wandered the extremely bright streets of Shinjuku which I think is the red-light district of Tokyo.
We checked out of the beatutiful Sheraton and headed to the mall next door for our usual breakfast of bakery treats. As per usual I sampled some pastries that contained pork sausage (I think) and Danae had things filled with chocolate or cream. Since we had bags, we figured it would be easier to catch the non-JR train (we would have to buy a ticket being non-JR operated) one station and then get on the JR loop line like normal to Osaka station. Easy enough, but upon arriving at Tsuruhashi station I got a bit disoriented, and when swapping to the JR train, we accidentally got on a train heading in the wrong direction. Not a huge problem as trains come every 5 mins or less in both directions. So we got off and swapped to the other side of the platform. After heading about 5 stops in the correct direction, our train stopped and everyone had to get off becuase the train was terminating. Grrr. Finally we arrived at Osaka station and from there we caught a train to Shin-Osaka, and finally (almost) we boarded the Hikari Rail Star to Tokyo. The total number of trains we ended up boarding to get to Tokyo was 7! The 3 hour journey to Tokyo was very pleasant as we watched a movie "She is out of my league" - a movie that has a lot of parallels to Danae and my relationship. The heart-shaped headphone splitter thing that we bought in the gold coast airport has already payed for itself. Unfortunatley we couldn't see Mt Fuji out of the window of the train becuase it was too cloudy, but there were heaps of other interesting things to see moving very quickly out the window. Arriving in Tokyo we had to very quickly figure out the new train and subway system. The Tokyo train system is as complicated as the Osaka subway system, and the Tokyo subway system is as complicated as a bowl of multicoloured spaghetti. I am pretty sure it is the most complicated I have ever seen. So with the help of the information lady, we boarded a Chuo line train to Shinjuku. After about half-an-hour of wandering around aimlessly, we found our new hotel and checked in at about 3 o'clock. Phew! what a journey.
Dumping our bags we went in search of food for a late lunch. We found a nice looking sushi-train (kaiten sushi-ya) type of place and stuffed ourselves with lots of nice raw fish and rice. Not really sure what to do in Tokyo, we walked 20 mins to some government building that has a free viewing platform at the top for a good view over most of Tokyo. Walking home Danae tried a weird deep-fried, red-bean fish thing that I can't even explain. We also stopped to have a crepe filled with cream, icecream, chocolate and other norty things. We refreshed a bit at home, and got dressed for dinner. I had my heart set on trying some Kobe beef (a form of Wagyu beef that is fed beef and given massages with Sake daily), but after a bit of research I found that it wasn't so easy and would likely require a reservation and a lot of money, like $170+ AUD. Instead there is a steak place a block away that we went to. Sitting at our table, we realised that it was another cook-yourself yakiniku place. It was much better this time becuase they had a hilariously-translated menu with pictures so we could actually tell what was going on. We had very yummy plum Whiskey, peach sake, plum sake and we ate a few different kinds of Japanese Wagyu beef which was melt in your mouth awesome along with other things. A funny moment was when the lady brought out salad dressing at the same time as our drinks. We thought the salad dressing in the interestingly-shaped vessel was a part of the plum Sake and we were about to pour it into Danae's glass before the waitress luckily stopped us. After dinner we wandered the extremely bright streets of Shinjuku which I think is the red-light district of Tokyo.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Day 4 - Japanese Love Hotel
By Chris
Today we set our own schedule so we could take our time with seeing Osaka. First thing for Danae to do was sleep in of course. When we finally hit the streets, we decided it would make for a good blog entry to check out a "love hotel" (hotels specififally designed for 1 hour or more sexual rendevous). It wasn't long before Danae spotted a sign for one of thee, not-as-dubious-as-you-would-think, hotels. The easiest way to tell a love hotel is a sign with prices on a board for "rest" or "stay". Rest means you are going to have sex for an hour or so; stay means you want to stay overnight (only available after 10pm usually). So, after working up a bit of courage, we walked into the lobby of a love hotel. We checked out the display board, listing all the available rooms, however none really struck our fancy. It was also clearly not the best time being a Sunday morning, as almost all rooms were taken. So we left in search of more extravagantly themed rooms.
Further down the road we found a cluster of three more love hotels, so again we went inside a dodgy looking one. This place had some funny themed rooms, like one with a basketball hoop, or with walls all set as Tahiti background. I was in the mood for naked basketball, so I pushed the button for that room. We went to the counter to get the room key, however, we had an extremely painful conversation with an anonymous lady's hand. We still have no clue what she was asking us; we tried to give her money but she wouldn't accept it. It didn't seem to be a problem with underpayment, or even a case of gaijin racism. Whatever she wanted, we couldn't understand, so we just left. We went next door but no available room could compare to the coolness of the basketball room. Dejected, we decided instead to head to Osaka Castle.
Jumping on the immediately arriving JR loop train, we went only three stops to the Castle. While the Castle is Osaka's best known sight, it isn't historically impressive, as Japan's turbulent past has seen this destroyed and rebuilt not too long ago. It is best described as a museum in castle form, rather than an actual castle. We climbed the 8 painful floors of steps to the top (pro-tip: take the lift up) stopping to see the exhibits. I found it hard to become interested in the exhibits as it was mostly just pieces of ancient cloth. The best part was the view from the top, oh, and getting out of Japan summer rain. We descended the 8 floors and journeyed to the subway. Like seasoned pros we bought some tickets and caught the subway across the city to the Aquarium which is at Osaka Bay.
Arriving at Osakako station, we decided to have some Japanese McDonalds for lunch. A pretty good chicken teriyaki burger, and a pretty bad lemon chicken burger was about the most interesting thing we coud find to eat on the menu. We eventually arrived at the Kaiyukan (the aquarium) and wow we were both very amazed. There were penguins, dolphins, otters, stingrays and jellyfish, but by far the most incredible were the two enormous whale sharks. My IT nerd legs were so tired after trekking around the aquarium, so it was very nice to relax on the gigantic ferris wheel outside the aquarium. So big, in fact, that it is the largest in the world. We took the subway home but before going back to the Sheraton, we had one last-ditch effort to find a love hotel.
We headed for Gang Snowman, one of the most well known (for being silly) love hotels, but alas, we still couldn't find it (apparently these places close all the time). It wasn't a lost cause as we came across a tacky place called "Love". Steping into the empy lobby we perused the available rooms on the board. Unfortunatly it was still a busy weekend, so the VIP room with the pool was unavailable. We only had a choice of two fairly plain rooms so we pushed the button for room 219. A swipe card slid out of the display so we headed strait for the room. What a treat we were in for; the room had a jacuzzi (that lit up with different colours), a huge shower room, free Japanese porn, a chair with bondage straps, and a sex-toy vending machine. About a minute after arriving Danae received a phone call in Japanese. We thought our cover was blown, however on reflection I can only assume it was to organise welcome drinks or something similar. Not to go into details, but we made full use of our new temporary hotel. So well over an hour later we were trying to figure out how to leave the hotel (I had read that in some places they lock you in your room until you pay). Luckily, we weren't locked in, so we paid at the front desk and left out the secret back exit. The love hotel industry try to put a lot of emphasis on being discreet, but all that was thrown out the window when the receptionist lady came running 100 metres down the road to catch us because apparently they undercharged us by 300 yen (5 bucks). It was so funny, and very typical Japan.
For dinner I had my heart set on Japanese cook-it-yourself BBQ, aka yakiniku. We headed a few blocks south to a local place listed on a map supplied by the Sheraton. This hole in the wall place only had enough room for about 20 people, with shared tables and coals that you cook your meal over in the centre of the table. Once we settled down, we realised that the menu had no pictures (and of course no English) at all! As such we were completely screwed. Luckily one of the waitresses was Singaporean and spoke a small amount of English. The whole thing was very strange and difficult. The funniest part was when I said, "Please just bring us some normal/common things" and she came back with and I quote: "This is heart, this is stomach lining, and this, ummm, I don't know what this is." WTF! The great thing was that even if it was bad, we could cook the hell out of it at our own table. It turned out the heart was just like any other meat. The stomach lining wasn't great, but it was carried by the most amzing home-made wasabi I have ever had. The final item of this round was also very tasty - prhaps because it was so very fatty. The only problem was that as it was pure fat, it was extremely flammable. The waitress even had to squirt something on our fire to suppress the flames. It was our weirdest meal to date, but in the end still very nice. On the way back to the hotel we bought some yummy desserts and beers from the local convenience store.
Today we set our own schedule so we could take our time with seeing Osaka. First thing for Danae to do was sleep in of course. When we finally hit the streets, we decided it would make for a good blog entry to check out a "love hotel" (hotels specififally designed for 1 hour or more sexual rendevous). It wasn't long before Danae spotted a sign for one of thee, not-as-dubious-as-you-would-think, hotels. The easiest way to tell a love hotel is a sign with prices on a board for "rest" or "stay". Rest means you are going to have sex for an hour or so; stay means you want to stay overnight (only available after 10pm usually). So, after working up a bit of courage, we walked into the lobby of a love hotel. We checked out the display board, listing all the available rooms, however none really struck our fancy. It was also clearly not the best time being a Sunday morning, as almost all rooms were taken. So we left in search of more extravagantly themed rooms.
Further down the road we found a cluster of three more love hotels, so again we went inside a dodgy looking one. This place had some funny themed rooms, like one with a basketball hoop, or with walls all set as Tahiti background. I was in the mood for naked basketball, so I pushed the button for that room. We went to the counter to get the room key, however, we had an extremely painful conversation with an anonymous lady's hand. We still have no clue what she was asking us; we tried to give her money but she wouldn't accept it. It didn't seem to be a problem with underpayment, or even a case of gaijin racism. Whatever she wanted, we couldn't understand, so we just left. We went next door but no available room could compare to the coolness of the basketball room. Dejected, we decided instead to head to Osaka Castle.
Jumping on the immediately arriving JR loop train, we went only three stops to the Castle. While the Castle is Osaka's best known sight, it isn't historically impressive, as Japan's turbulent past has seen this destroyed and rebuilt not too long ago. It is best described as a museum in castle form, rather than an actual castle. We climbed the 8 painful floors of steps to the top (pro-tip: take the lift up) stopping to see the exhibits. I found it hard to become interested in the exhibits as it was mostly just pieces of ancient cloth. The best part was the view from the top, oh, and getting out of Japan summer rain. We descended the 8 floors and journeyed to the subway. Like seasoned pros we bought some tickets and caught the subway across the city to the Aquarium which is at Osaka Bay.
Arriving at Osakako station, we decided to have some Japanese McDonalds for lunch. A pretty good chicken teriyaki burger, and a pretty bad lemon chicken burger was about the most interesting thing we coud find to eat on the menu. We eventually arrived at the Kaiyukan (the aquarium) and wow we were both very amazed. There were penguins, dolphins, otters, stingrays and jellyfish, but by far the most incredible were the two enormous whale sharks. My IT nerd legs were so tired after trekking around the aquarium, so it was very nice to relax on the gigantic ferris wheel outside the aquarium. So big, in fact, that it is the largest in the world. We took the subway home but before going back to the Sheraton, we had one last-ditch effort to find a love hotel.
We headed for Gang Snowman, one of the most well known (for being silly) love hotels, but alas, we still couldn't find it (apparently these places close all the time). It wasn't a lost cause as we came across a tacky place called "Love". Steping into the empy lobby we perused the available rooms on the board. Unfortunatly it was still a busy weekend, so the VIP room with the pool was unavailable. We only had a choice of two fairly plain rooms so we pushed the button for room 219. A swipe card slid out of the display so we headed strait for the room. What a treat we were in for; the room had a jacuzzi (that lit up with different colours), a huge shower room, free Japanese porn, a chair with bondage straps, and a sex-toy vending machine. About a minute after arriving Danae received a phone call in Japanese. We thought our cover was blown, however on reflection I can only assume it was to organise welcome drinks or something similar. Not to go into details, but we made full use of our new temporary hotel. So well over an hour later we were trying to figure out how to leave the hotel (I had read that in some places they lock you in your room until you pay). Luckily, we weren't locked in, so we paid at the front desk and left out the secret back exit. The love hotel industry try to put a lot of emphasis on being discreet, but all that was thrown out the window when the receptionist lady came running 100 metres down the road to catch us because apparently they undercharged us by 300 yen (5 bucks). It was so funny, and very typical Japan.
For dinner I had my heart set on Japanese cook-it-yourself BBQ, aka yakiniku. We headed a few blocks south to a local place listed on a map supplied by the Sheraton. This hole in the wall place only had enough room for about 20 people, with shared tables and coals that you cook your meal over in the centre of the table. Once we settled down, we realised that the menu had no pictures (and of course no English) at all! As such we were completely screwed. Luckily one of the waitresses was Singaporean and spoke a small amount of English. The whole thing was very strange and difficult. The funniest part was when I said, "Please just bring us some normal/common things" and she came back with and I quote: "This is heart, this is stomach lining, and this, ummm, I don't know what this is." WTF! The great thing was that even if it was bad, we could cook the hell out of it at our own table. It turned out the heart was just like any other meat. The stomach lining wasn't great, but it was carried by the most amzing home-made wasabi I have ever had. The final item of this round was also very tasty - prhaps because it was so very fatty. The only problem was that as it was pure fat, it was extremely flammable. The waitress even had to squirt something on our fire to suppress the flames. It was our weirdest meal to date, but in the end still very nice. On the way back to the hotel we bought some yummy desserts and beers from the local convenience store.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Day 3 - Hiroshima (10 July)
By Danae
Do itashimashite. (Don't touch my moustache, is how you remember it). This is what I learnt from the Japanese tour guide today, as to how to say 'you're welcome'. Also, I learnt that the Japanese address people by their titles, and that the title for lawyer is sensai (along with teachers and politicians - god only knows why politicians are teachers, but anyway). And they address people by their last names. So I am Younger-san, a sensai. Well at least I retained something. I think I might have been having a snooze on the bus during important parts of his tour of Hiroshima and Miyajima today; unfortunately, this is a side effect of me hopping on any bus. I just CANNOT keep my eyes open! Oh wait, this is also a side effect of me having flash photography. Oh well. Let's just say the Japanese tour guide was full of useful information, if only I could keep my eyes open!
Miyajima is very beautiful - http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3401.html. Lots of mountains and it is famous for the shrine gate which is featured on many postcards. The region is also famous for its oysters and eel. I tried eel with udon noodles for lunch, which was pretty tasty. We also had maple leaf shaped cookie things, which were pretty crap.
Hiroshima was a very interesting place. I remembered more than I thought I did from school. It was extremely sad to read about the people, especially the children, that died due to the Atomic bomb being dropped. The museum and monument failed to mention that Japan were actually pretty blameworthy in the scheme of things, though. Damn war. At the peace museum we watched a short movie about the effect of the A-bomb on Hiroshima, and after that there was barey a dry eye left in the place. The A-bomb certainly flattened things like there was no tomorrow, and lots of people ended up dead/very sick from it. I remember making paper cranes at school to send over to the children's monument, dedicated to the children who died from Hiroshima. Many people were diagnosed with leukaemia after the bomb due to the radiation, including a girl name Sadako who made 1500 paper cranes before she died.
There were some Aussie bogans on our tour - why is there always at least one Aussie bogan on tours overseas? There is no hope for our country really. These ones were from Townsville and were carrying on about how 'Abos' were good for nothing. Mega cringe. On Miyajima we had been warned by our tour guide about the wild deer, and about how they favour paper and cloth products so to keep our maps well away from them. One of the bogans failed to listen to these words of wisdom and lost his map to a deer, much to the amusement of the rest of the tour.
That night I went for a massage at a quick-massage place around the corner from our hotel. Sensational. I didn't realise how sore my legs were until they were massaged. I think I will be needing one of these every night!
Do itashimashite. (Don't touch my moustache, is how you remember it). This is what I learnt from the Japanese tour guide today, as to how to say 'you're welcome'. Also, I learnt that the Japanese address people by their titles, and that the title for lawyer is sensai (along with teachers and politicians - god only knows why politicians are teachers, but anyway). And they address people by their last names. So I am Younger-san, a sensai. Well at least I retained something. I think I might have been having a snooze on the bus during important parts of his tour of Hiroshima and Miyajima today; unfortunately, this is a side effect of me hopping on any bus. I just CANNOT keep my eyes open! Oh wait, this is also a side effect of me having flash photography. Oh well. Let's just say the Japanese tour guide was full of useful information, if only I could keep my eyes open!
Miyajima is very beautiful - http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3401.html. Lots of mountains and it is famous for the shrine gate which is featured on many postcards. The region is also famous for its oysters and eel. I tried eel with udon noodles for lunch, which was pretty tasty. We also had maple leaf shaped cookie things, which were pretty crap.
Hiroshima was a very interesting place. I remembered more than I thought I did from school. It was extremely sad to read about the people, especially the children, that died due to the Atomic bomb being dropped. The museum and monument failed to mention that Japan were actually pretty blameworthy in the scheme of things, though. Damn war. At the peace museum we watched a short movie about the effect of the A-bomb on Hiroshima, and after that there was barey a dry eye left in the place. The A-bomb certainly flattened things like there was no tomorrow, and lots of people ended up dead/very sick from it. I remember making paper cranes at school to send over to the children's monument, dedicated to the children who died from Hiroshima. Many people were diagnosed with leukaemia after the bomb due to the radiation, including a girl name Sadako who made 1500 paper cranes before she died.
There were some Aussie bogans on our tour - why is there always at least one Aussie bogan on tours overseas? There is no hope for our country really. These ones were from Townsville and were carrying on about how 'Abos' were good for nothing. Mega cringe. On Miyajima we had been warned by our tour guide about the wild deer, and about how they favour paper and cloth products so to keep our maps well away from them. One of the bogans failed to listen to these words of wisdom and lost his map to a deer, much to the amusement of the rest of the tour.
That night I went for a massage at a quick-massage place around the corner from our hotel. Sensational. I didn't realise how sore my legs were until they were massaged. I think I will be needing one of these every night!
Day 2 - Osaka
By Danae
I was expecting it to be really busy out and about in Osaka, but it really wasn't. Even the trains/subways weren't packed, and unfortunately I didn't experience 'the grope' on the subway (people have warned us that when the trains get really packed, then you end up squeezed next to someone and people freely grope and act as though it's all cool).
First up, we visited the local grocery store for some breaky supplies - sweet buns with various concoctions on them. I'm not too sure about these buns as they taste quite artificial and full of sugar, and I'm never too sure what I'm eating. Chris loves them, on the other hand, especially the 'mystery sausage' ones. I then attempted to buy a hot coffee but ended up with an iced one (no picture menu!) and then we came across a place with English translations so got two hot coffees there. The milk is really weird; it is those little sachet things that I'm pretty sure is non dairy. errrrrgh, non dairy creamer, whose bright idea was that? Must be something to do with a lack of cows here. Oh wait, isn't Japan famous for waygyu beef? so surely they must have cows somewhere. . . perhaps non-milking variety. Anyhoo - as I write this it is now Day 3 and I'm yet to come across a decent coffee with real milk. Oh, and juice. Where the heck is the juice? You can buy sparkling orange drink or orange flavoured water instead.
Fortunately Osaka redeemed itself to me in terms of it's other food that day - the food is sensational and we certainly ate a lot of it! I think as long as you stick to the things Japan does best - fresh food including seafood, sushi, sashimi, deep fried deliciousness - it's all good really. I wasn't really sure what I was eating half the time but it all tasted damn good to me.
We were meeting up with Mika (who is a friend of Sonali's from when she lived in Japan - over 10 years ago now) and had arranged to meet at the Umeda Sky Tower at 12pm. We had the time wrong and thought it was 12pm when it was actually 11am, so killed an hour by going up in the tower - supposedly to see something called 'the floating garden'. We went up to level 35 or thereabouts, a pretty cool experience as you go up in a reallly quick lift with a view out of the city. This level seemed to be somewhat of a hang-out zone for locals, to sit in airconditioned comfort in little 'love seats', whilst looking out on the view. From there you travel up in escalators to the rooftop viewing area, which was not all that pleasant cause it was raining that day and there was no roof, so we quickly scooted around the viewing platform. There seemed to be a distinct lack of tourists in the building, perhaps unsurprising given the rain, and we were the only ones there apart from what seemed to be a few couples hanging out on level 35.
We didn't see any floating garden, or any garden at all. It is possibly something to do with astrology. Or something. It seems the real action of this building happens at night, which we could of course only guess at. There is a mechanical loveseat up on the rooftop area, which apparently the two lovers sit on and it lights up according to their levels of love - a big heart for really in love, non-existent for not in love, etc. Young loves go here for a night outing, and the other thing they do is get a heart-shaped lock engraved with their names. You can even get married in the Sky Chapel. It looks just a little bit tackyorama.
Then off we went to meet Mika, who turned out to be absolutely lovely and it was fantastic to spend the day with her. Mika has been living in Osaka for some years now, she is from Kobe originally but moved to Osaka when she met her husband (Takashi), who we met that night and he is also really nice. We spent the large majority of the day with Mika sampling the food delights of Japan - including soba noodles with egg and pork, udon noodles with tempura vegetables and prawns, takoyaki (which are little balls of deep fried octopus served from street vendors - sooooo good!), and ice-cream (I had the 'greedy cake party', which was a yummy mixture of summer berries, cake and icecream. Kind of like Cold Rock but better. And I've gotta say, with a name like Greedy Cake Party, what's not to love).
That night we met up with Takashi and went for dinner at izakaya, which according to my guidebook, is a traditional Japanese pub. But when I told Mika about this description, she found it very strange and didn't think it was like a pub at all. But I think it's the closest thing Japan has to a pub, really. When we suggested to Mika getting some beers that afternoon, she was quite surprised, as she said that the Japanese don't normally drink unless it's with a meal. Not wanting to seem like complete Australian bogans, we managed to restrain ourselves from drinking until dinner time, but let me tell you, it was really hard. After all, I AM on holidays!
Dinner was tasty and interesting - lots of little dishes of various types of meat and other snack type food. I even ate horse sashimi! The first bit I ate was very chewy, it was quite thick and I had to try not to be sick when I thought about what I was eating, that would have been very embarrassing. Somehow I managed to chew through it and swallow it down. The next bit was much nicer; a thinner bit of meat which tasted a lot like beef. There was deep fried cheese as well (yummm) and gyoza.
Mika and Takashi thought it was very funny when we ordered large bottles of beer each (they would get such a shock if they knew this was barely anything by Australian standards) - the two tallies arrived, and nothing has ever tasted better after a big day of walking around. We cained them in no time at all. We later had sake the 'traditional' way, which involves the waitress pouring it into a shot glass until overflowing into a little saucer. Fortunately nothing is wasted, as it is perfectly acceptable to drink from both the shot glass and saucer. I also really rated the plum wine - delicious.
After dinner, we retired to the games parlour for some communal games of Mario race car driving and some silly game involving bongos. I was terrible at the drumming game, but improved out of sight when Mika told me what the directions were in English. Stilll lost badly though! Surprisingly I came third in the driving game and Chris came last! I actually had fun playing a boy game! The games arcades are huge here. The one we went to was about 5 levels and had all manner of games. The sound of the place is deafening. You would go insane if you worked there. And so many games; they certainly take it seriously here.
Takashi then kindly took us to his office to show us the set-up of a modern house in Japan. Takashi is a real estate agent, and his office is set up in the style of the various features of the houses for sale. It was very cool to be able to see the style of modern Japanese houses. They even have a special panel in the wall especially for earthquakes, which allows the house to move if there is an earthquake. The toilet was also super cool; when you open the door it makes the toilet seat spring up. Plenty of other features on offer too - background sounds, bidet features. Japan has the coolest toilets I have ever been acquainted with. Takashi even gave me a 'goody bag' from his company. His company is sponsored by the 'Miffy' rabbit character, so it was this awesome bag full of cute Miffy products. I was very happy.
I was expecting it to be really busy out and about in Osaka, but it really wasn't. Even the trains/subways weren't packed, and unfortunately I didn't experience 'the grope' on the subway (people have warned us that when the trains get really packed, then you end up squeezed next to someone and people freely grope and act as though it's all cool).
First up, we visited the local grocery store for some breaky supplies - sweet buns with various concoctions on them. I'm not too sure about these buns as they taste quite artificial and full of sugar, and I'm never too sure what I'm eating. Chris loves them, on the other hand, especially the 'mystery sausage' ones. I then attempted to buy a hot coffee but ended up with an iced one (no picture menu!) and then we came across a place with English translations so got two hot coffees there. The milk is really weird; it is those little sachet things that I'm pretty sure is non dairy. errrrrgh, non dairy creamer, whose bright idea was that? Must be something to do with a lack of cows here. Oh wait, isn't Japan famous for waygyu beef? so surely they must have cows somewhere. . . perhaps non-milking variety. Anyhoo - as I write this it is now Day 3 and I'm yet to come across a decent coffee with real milk. Oh, and juice. Where the heck is the juice? You can buy sparkling orange drink or orange flavoured water instead.
Fortunately Osaka redeemed itself to me in terms of it's other food that day - the food is sensational and we certainly ate a lot of it! I think as long as you stick to the things Japan does best - fresh food including seafood, sushi, sashimi, deep fried deliciousness - it's all good really. I wasn't really sure what I was eating half the time but it all tasted damn good to me.
We were meeting up with Mika (who is a friend of Sonali's from when she lived in Japan - over 10 years ago now) and had arranged to meet at the Umeda Sky Tower at 12pm. We had the time wrong and thought it was 12pm when it was actually 11am, so killed an hour by going up in the tower - supposedly to see something called 'the floating garden'. We went up to level 35 or thereabouts, a pretty cool experience as you go up in a reallly quick lift with a view out of the city. This level seemed to be somewhat of a hang-out zone for locals, to sit in airconditioned comfort in little 'love seats', whilst looking out on the view. From there you travel up in escalators to the rooftop viewing area, which was not all that pleasant cause it was raining that day and there was no roof, so we quickly scooted around the viewing platform. There seemed to be a distinct lack of tourists in the building, perhaps unsurprising given the rain, and we were the only ones there apart from what seemed to be a few couples hanging out on level 35.
We didn't see any floating garden, or any garden at all. It is possibly something to do with astrology. Or something. It seems the real action of this building happens at night, which we could of course only guess at. There is a mechanical loveseat up on the rooftop area, which apparently the two lovers sit on and it lights up according to their levels of love - a big heart for really in love, non-existent for not in love, etc. Young loves go here for a night outing, and the other thing they do is get a heart-shaped lock engraved with their names. You can even get married in the Sky Chapel. It looks just a little bit tackyorama.
Then off we went to meet Mika, who turned out to be absolutely lovely and it was fantastic to spend the day with her. Mika has been living in Osaka for some years now, she is from Kobe originally but moved to Osaka when she met her husband (Takashi), who we met that night and he is also really nice. We spent the large majority of the day with Mika sampling the food delights of Japan - including soba noodles with egg and pork, udon noodles with tempura vegetables and prawns, takoyaki (which are little balls of deep fried octopus served from street vendors - sooooo good!), and ice-cream (I had the 'greedy cake party', which was a yummy mixture of summer berries, cake and icecream. Kind of like Cold Rock but better. And I've gotta say, with a name like Greedy Cake Party, what's not to love).
That night we met up with Takashi and went for dinner at izakaya, which according to my guidebook, is a traditional Japanese pub. But when I told Mika about this description, she found it very strange and didn't think it was like a pub at all. But I think it's the closest thing Japan has to a pub, really. When we suggested to Mika getting some beers that afternoon, she was quite surprised, as she said that the Japanese don't normally drink unless it's with a meal. Not wanting to seem like complete Australian bogans, we managed to restrain ourselves from drinking until dinner time, but let me tell you, it was really hard. After all, I AM on holidays!
Dinner was tasty and interesting - lots of little dishes of various types of meat and other snack type food. I even ate horse sashimi! The first bit I ate was very chewy, it was quite thick and I had to try not to be sick when I thought about what I was eating, that would have been very embarrassing. Somehow I managed to chew through it and swallow it down. The next bit was much nicer; a thinner bit of meat which tasted a lot like beef. There was deep fried cheese as well (yummm) and gyoza.
Mika and Takashi thought it was very funny when we ordered large bottles of beer each (they would get such a shock if they knew this was barely anything by Australian standards) - the two tallies arrived, and nothing has ever tasted better after a big day of walking around. We cained them in no time at all. We later had sake the 'traditional' way, which involves the waitress pouring it into a shot glass until overflowing into a little saucer. Fortunately nothing is wasted, as it is perfectly acceptable to drink from both the shot glass and saucer. I also really rated the plum wine - delicious.
After dinner, we retired to the games parlour for some communal games of Mario race car driving and some silly game involving bongos. I was terrible at the drumming game, but improved out of sight when Mika told me what the directions were in English. Stilll lost badly though! Surprisingly I came third in the driving game and Chris came last! I actually had fun playing a boy game! The games arcades are huge here. The one we went to was about 5 levels and had all manner of games. The sound of the place is deafening. You would go insane if you worked there. And so many games; they certainly take it seriously here.
Takashi then kindly took us to his office to show us the set-up of a modern house in Japan. Takashi is a real estate agent, and his office is set up in the style of the various features of the houses for sale. It was very cool to be able to see the style of modern Japanese houses. They even have a special panel in the wall especially for earthquakes, which allows the house to move if there is an earthquake. The toilet was also super cool; when you open the door it makes the toilet seat spring up. Plenty of other features on offer too - background sounds, bidet features. Japan has the coolest toilets I have ever been acquainted with. Takashi even gave me a 'goody bag' from his company. His company is sponsored by the 'Miffy' rabbit character, so it was this awesome bag full of cute Miffy products. I was very happy.
Day 1 - Osaka
By Danae
Yay, touchdown in Japan! And it's summertime, what a welcome respite from Brisbane winter.
Tonight we arrived in Osaka international airport (Kansai) after about a 9 1/2 hour flight. Jetstar is pretty fail, but at two for one tickets you can't really go wrong. They attempt to sting their customers with all manner of extra charges so they can make up for the cheap fares - you even have to pay extra if you want a 'comfort pack' which consists of a pillow, eyemask and blanket (from what I could gather; we were too cheap to purchase one and resorted to using my jacket as a pillow. The buttons were all cold and metallic, not the best pillow). We paid extra to get one entertainment system between us, but they didn't give it to us until well into the flight, and then took it away well before it was necessary to do so (in my opinion - very annoying as I was nearing the end of a movie). The people behind us complained about having to pay extra for beverages. I don't know why they bothered, cause Jetstar certainly don't care! I was even told I had to pay for water, which I did, before discovering their was a fountain on board - just a little hard to fill up the water bottle from but I still gave it a shot.
The main thing was, we got to Osaka all in one piece and navigating the airport was fine. We had to have our fingerprints & photographs taken at the Customs counter because of terrorism measures, quite interesting process. I wasn't looking my best in my photo, unsurprisingly, but they wouldn't listen when I asked for a glamour shot. There was also a swine flu checkup area, but the staff didn't seem to be doing much of a roaring trade. I guess noone wanted to admit if they had any swine flu symptoms. Pretty embarrassing when I started sneezing in the Customs line; I kept waiting for the guys in white coats to come for me - but the staff must have been on their tea break.
The first thing we had to do was to get our Japan Railway pass vouchers exchanged for tickets. Not sure why we coudn't just get the tickets in Australia, but you have to go through this silly process of trying to find the JR desk (which wasn't in the location it was supposed to be, according to my Internet directions) and changing one bit of paper over for another. The main problem was trying to find the counter, which we finally tracked down after some meandering about. The staff spoke next to no English and we speak no Japanese, but it was all good and soon we were leaving with our shiny silver JR passes. Pretty much the 'golden ticket' of railway tickets, they are issued only to foreigners for a set number of days (we got ours for 7 days, but I understand you can also get them for 14, 30 days etc) and allow you to travel on any JR train - except Nozomi or bullet trains - for the period. It is a bit of a bummer that we can't go on bullet trains, but the second fastest train - the Hikari express - is still pretty bloody fast and comes along all the time. You also can't go on the subway system bu t it's pretty cheap to buy day passes. The benefit of the rail pass is that you woud spend more on a trip between say, Osaka and Tokyo - as we plan to do later this week - then you do in the pass. So even if you use it a couple of times it pays for itself really.
We decided not to negotiate the railway/subway system that night as we had arrived at peak hour of 6.30pm, so instead caught an airport limousine (really just a nice bus, despite it's flashy name) for the 50 minute journey to the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, which is in Osaka near the Uchenmachi(?) station. 1500 yen each; this was the quickest and easiest way to get there, otherwise we would have had to catch possibly two JR trains and a couple of subways which sounded difficult with bags and heaps of people about. The hotel is very nice; we got an awesome 4 night deal online so it was surprisingly affordable.
Absolutely buggered, we decided just to go to one of the hotel restaurants for dinner - they have a few different ones including a European, Chinese and Japanese one. It seemed only fitting to go to the Japanese one, and we just scraped in before they closed the doors at 9.30pm. The food was delicious (various sushi and sashimi, miso soup and a weird dessert thing that was nevertheless nice enough - hard to describe, but basically a concoction of jelly type cubes, fruit and red bean paste.) but extremely expensive. We didn't really care at that point given the hour and our tiredness. We accidentally over-ordered on the sake and ended up with two big jugs each. Very tasty. The initial mouthful was a bit full-on, but I quickly adjusted and soon it was going down an absolute treat! The Japanese certainly must love washing up. It was getting ridiculous with the amount of jugs, bowls, plates, cups, etc that we had on the table and at one point I was trying to drink about four different drinks / dishes at once including green tea, sake, hot and cold miso soup (or some sort of soup, not really sure what it was!).
Yay, touchdown in Japan! And it's summertime, what a welcome respite from Brisbane winter.
Tonight we arrived in Osaka international airport (Kansai) after about a 9 1/2 hour flight. Jetstar is pretty fail, but at two for one tickets you can't really go wrong. They attempt to sting their customers with all manner of extra charges so they can make up for the cheap fares - you even have to pay extra if you want a 'comfort pack' which consists of a pillow, eyemask and blanket (from what I could gather; we were too cheap to purchase one and resorted to using my jacket as a pillow. The buttons were all cold and metallic, not the best pillow). We paid extra to get one entertainment system between us, but they didn't give it to us until well into the flight, and then took it away well before it was necessary to do so (in my opinion - very annoying as I was nearing the end of a movie). The people behind us complained about having to pay extra for beverages. I don't know why they bothered, cause Jetstar certainly don't care! I was even told I had to pay for water, which I did, before discovering their was a fountain on board - just a little hard to fill up the water bottle from but I still gave it a shot.
The main thing was, we got to Osaka all in one piece and navigating the airport was fine. We had to have our fingerprints & photographs taken at the Customs counter because of terrorism measures, quite interesting process. I wasn't looking my best in my photo, unsurprisingly, but they wouldn't listen when I asked for a glamour shot. There was also a swine flu checkup area, but the staff didn't seem to be doing much of a roaring trade. I guess noone wanted to admit if they had any swine flu symptoms. Pretty embarrassing when I started sneezing in the Customs line; I kept waiting for the guys in white coats to come for me - but the staff must have been on their tea break.
The first thing we had to do was to get our Japan Railway pass vouchers exchanged for tickets. Not sure why we coudn't just get the tickets in Australia, but you have to go through this silly process of trying to find the JR desk (which wasn't in the location it was supposed to be, according to my Internet directions) and changing one bit of paper over for another. The main problem was trying to find the counter, which we finally tracked down after some meandering about. The staff spoke next to no English and we speak no Japanese, but it was all good and soon we were leaving with our shiny silver JR passes. Pretty much the 'golden ticket' of railway tickets, they are issued only to foreigners for a set number of days (we got ours for 7 days, but I understand you can also get them for 14, 30 days etc) and allow you to travel on any JR train - except Nozomi or bullet trains - for the period. It is a bit of a bummer that we can't go on bullet trains, but the second fastest train - the Hikari express - is still pretty bloody fast and comes along all the time. You also can't go on the subway system bu t it's pretty cheap to buy day passes. The benefit of the rail pass is that you woud spend more on a trip between say, Osaka and Tokyo - as we plan to do later this week - then you do in the pass. So even if you use it a couple of times it pays for itself really.
We decided not to negotiate the railway/subway system that night as we had arrived at peak hour of 6.30pm, so instead caught an airport limousine (really just a nice bus, despite it's flashy name) for the 50 minute journey to the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, which is in Osaka near the Uchenmachi(?) station. 1500 yen each; this was the quickest and easiest way to get there, otherwise we would have had to catch possibly two JR trains and a couple of subways which sounded difficult with bags and heaps of people about. The hotel is very nice; we got an awesome 4 night deal online so it was surprisingly affordable.
Absolutely buggered, we decided just to go to one of the hotel restaurants for dinner - they have a few different ones including a European, Chinese and Japanese one. It seemed only fitting to go to the Japanese one, and we just scraped in before they closed the doors at 9.30pm. The food was delicious (various sushi and sashimi, miso soup and a weird dessert thing that was nevertheless nice enough - hard to describe, but basically a concoction of jelly type cubes, fruit and red bean paste.) but extremely expensive. We didn't really care at that point given the hour and our tiredness. We accidentally over-ordered on the sake and ended up with two big jugs each. Very tasty. The initial mouthful was a bit full-on, but I quickly adjusted and soon it was going down an absolute treat! The Japanese certainly must love washing up. It was getting ridiculous with the amount of jugs, bowls, plates, cups, etc that we had on the table and at one point I was trying to drink about four different drinks / dishes at once including green tea, sake, hot and cold miso soup (or some sort of soup, not really sure what it was!).
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