FINALLY THIS POST SHALL BE COMPLETE!
2nd of January
Got in on the second and very grumpily stumbled around Tokyo. Went to Odaiba, apparently very popular with the Japanese because they have a lot of stores with foreign brands. Not very exciting for me, because those foreign brands happen to be domestic.
3rd
Wandered around Tokyo like mad people. Got to see the imperial palace. The gate opened and some car came out and we got all excited, thinking it would be someone from the family, turned out to be two guys in a taxi. My mom commented "They're probably the emperor's buds".
Here are the guards opening the gate for the taxi.
Went to the NHK tv station. They were having some big event for children. Felt really weird.
Went to Yasukuni Shrine 靖国神社 (Name literally means, "shrine to comfort the nation"). It's kind of like Japan's Arlington, except it's probably the most controversial religious site in East Asia. Reason being is that, the shrine houses the souls of Japan's war dead from the Meji Restoration onwards (late 19th century), which isn't a problem in itself but the shrine also houses the souls of Class A war criminals from WW2, including Hideki Tojo. Some have compared it to having a national graveyard in Germany holding the body of Hitler and paying tribute to it. The past 2 or 3 prime ministers of Japan have caused ire in Asia for visiting the shrine one too many times.
I honestly felt a little uncomfortable there, but if anything, the street vendors at the shrine sell damn good food.
While there, I got a phone call from my friend. When I told her where I was, her mom reacted "Why would they want to go there? Everyone hates the Japanese!"
haha
Realization of the day
Note: Seoul is to NY as Tokyo is to LA
I love subways.
If I understand almost nothing of what is said in this country, I at least have come to understand everything that is said over the subway intercom.
Went to a small sushi place next to a train station...everytime a train passed by, which was about ever 10-15 minutes, the whole place would shake and shiver like there was an earthquake going on.
Funny story. There's a neighborhood in Tokyo called Yoyogi 代々木, and it's where the shrine to the Meiji emperor is located. So we were very tired and my dad was like "We don't need to go to Yoyogi right? There's nothing to see there except the shrine."
Mom: "What is Yoyogi?"
Dad:
Explains about shrine.Mom:
Not listening..."OH! I know what that is. Yu-gi-oh! It's a game!"
Fashion is very interesting here. (I'm not talking about those crazy people who dress up as maids and other ridiculous crap.) According to the mother, trends tend to hit here before they hit the states, so I'm looking around for some pointers. There definitely are stores where I want to buy everything, but I haven't bought a single non-food item as of yet.
Went to the national museum and saw some amazing things, like Haniwa for the first time.
Couldn't take pictures inside, but this is an example of a Haniwa. Clay figure from the 3rd to 6th century which shed a lot of light on Japanese culture at the time. Also saw a lot of metal relics from the same period and saw a lot of similarities to pieces from Korea. Very interesting. I could go on about this, but I'll spare you. Ask me sometime about metal culture in early north east Asia.
Notes:
Crows are considered lucky in Japan. There are a lot of them. They are big.
You can't expect anyone to speak English here.
You can't expect to understand anyone who speaks English here.
You need to know 3 sets of characters to get around here, in this order: Kanji (Chinese Characters), Katakana (Characters generally used to denote foreign words, such as words from English), and Romaji (Or in general, English with the random French or German thrown in for flavor). Hiragana (The general syllabary used to write) seems to be generally moot in day to day life.
In general: I feel right at home.
Day 3:
Spent the day with H in Tokyo. Literally spent the whole day wandering around Akihabara and Shibuya looking for a specific electronic store: Bikku Kamera. Also looked for the elusive Mega Mac (WENT TO 7 Mc DONALDS!) but found none. Also joked about eating whale meat, but didn't know how to say that...so we went around joking about ordering (Niku = Meat in Japanese) "Shamu Niku". H and S played a horrible version of punch buggy where they hit each other for every white person they saw.
Fun Pictures from Tokyo
Busiest crosswalk in the world. Unfortunately, my picture makes it look quite tame.
The horrid little message that told me EVERYWHERE in Tokyo that they no longer sold the Mega Mac.
Day 4:
Went to the doctor's office. It was literally in the middle of nowhere...it stunk very much of cow dung. There's no appointment system in Japan, so we just had to go really early. Really really early, and wait in line. The doctor was very kind, he was a whopping 80 year's old, and we were blessed enough to have H's dad there to help translate. They left after that, and I was left to fumble through the medicine with the pharmacist.
He seems to think that it will work though, so we'll just have to see.
Day 5:
Took the bullet train over to Kyoto, and checked into our hotel. AND HERE IT WAS THAT I DISCOVERED AND TOOK PART IN THE FABLED MEGA MAC!
FOUR PATTIES OF ABSOLUTE LOVE!
We then headed over to Himeji for my absolute favorite part of the trip: Himeji Castle. The castle is designed perfectly with Japan's style of warfare, circa the 1500's, with multiple maze like winding paths that are narrow so as to allow only a couple of soldiers at a time, surrounded by gunports to blast away at the invaders with musket fire. The castle was never put to the test though, so it's up to anyone's guess if it would have actually worked. Also, if someone had utilized heavy cannons in Japan (Which they never really attained until the 19th century, which probably explains why they were able to build their castles so high up), the castle most definitely would have been toast.
Day 6:
Day six was a ramshackle tour of everything that we could fit in from Japan's old capital city of Kyoto.
Nijo Castle (Seem's more aptly described as a palace rather than a castle to me but the name in Japanese (Nijojo) literally can be translated into Nijo castle so...): Tokugawa Ieyasu's old haunt.
He was the founder of the last shogunate before the Meiji restoration and Japan's "modernization".
The roof, if you'll notice, is markedly different from mainland architectural styles, particularly in the type of material used for the actual roofing itself. Rather than use tiles, the Japanese seem to prefer bark as a roofing material. They layer layers upon layers of the stuff on and pin it down with bamboo nails. Supposedly, it's good for circulation, but the stuff is so fragile, it has to be replaced every 10-20 years. You'll often see a mixture of different styles of architecture in one compound though as often when buildings were lost to fire or some other disaster, they were often rebuilt in the style of the current era.
Imperial Palace
The tour of the old imperial palace was one of the most boring things I've ever been on...and it's hard to bore me with anything of historical value.
Some gate..
My mother and I being exceptionally bored.
Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavillion)
Ginkakuji (The Silver Pavillion): This one wasn't (to my dissapointment) actually silver, but rather got its name because of the Zen gardens surrounding it, which apparently glitter in the moonlight. The thing closed at 4:30, so there wasn't a chance to see this supposed beauty.
Kiyomizudera: THIS TEMPLE WAS BEATIFUL. Unfortunately, I went at night, and this was the only picture that came out remotely clear.
Day 7
Went to Nara and visited the AMAZING Todaiji Temple. It's name literally translates to the Great Temple of the East and by all means it deserves that name. It's absolutely HUGE and is supposedly the largest wooden building in the world.
It's also famous for its deer:
Which apparently can be quite ornery:
Then hopped on a train to Osaka.
Visited Osaka Castle, the old lair of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the shogun that came before Tokugawa Ieyasu and famous for launching an invasion into Korea with plans to conquer all of Asia. He was eventually defeated by Korean/Chinese forces but the exhaustion of the war contributed to the fall of his Shogunate, China's Ming Dynasty, and the virtual destruction of Joseon Korea as a viable state, although it managed to limp along for another 300 years or so.
The people of Osaka castle are said to be very proud of their castle. It's the only one in Japan with an elevator:
Indeed, unlike its counterpart in Himeji, the internal integrity of the structure hadn't been respected at all and was turned into a very modern museum.
Day 8
Went to Hiroshima and visited the Peace Museum. VERY DEPRESSING
A clock stopped at the exact moment the atomic bomb struck Hiroshima.
The Atomic Dome: One of the few structures that survived the bomb and I believe the only one that has been preserved up to this time.
Went to Miyajima visit it the Tori Gate, one of the 3 definitive views of Japan. Usually at hightide, the whole gate and accompanying temple is designed to look like it is floating out at sea. This is what it is supposed to look like:
I unfortunately go there during low tide, and the whole place just looked like it was stuck in mud. It was still pretty nice though...for being stuck in mud.
The people on the right were surprised I owned a Polaroid camera.
Day 9
Fly home :]
Overall, I really loved Japan. The food kind of inhibited my bathroom time, meals unfortunately did not automatically come with a lot of vegetables aka fiber, but the people and the sights were really very enjoyable. I hope someday I'll have a chance to go back.
I wish everyone abroad right now all the best luck and love. Go get'em!
Edit: I don't know why all the horizontal pictures are being cut off. For now, if you click on'em you should be able to see them, but if anyone knows how to fix this, pleasssee let me know.
A Boston hat might actually be chill too...maybe if the Lakers cream the Celtics this year (which, if their first match has anything to say about it, they will), I'll pick up one of these.
And well...I really have nothing to say about this one...
