Advertisement
Published: September 29th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Super-fast Shinkansen
wizzing by at 180 MPH (300 KM/h). A great way to see the country, albeit blurred. I couldn't put it any better than the Vapors 'hit', what a marvelous place and what a mental trip this has been, three weeks have just flown in and we've enjoyed every fleeting moment of it. We wanted something completely different and by-heck-as-like we got it.
From the bustling city of Tokyo to the tranquil hills of Nikko, from the temple-tastic Kyoto to the river lounging Matsue and finally from the harsh realities of Hiroshima to the chilled out Buddha of Nara and everywhere in between. We've loved every minute of every place, amazingly different at each stop but surrounded by the same polite, yet curious locals, a great place to get lost.
Speaking of lost, lost in translation is the right phrase to use, so many times you see incoherent translations of English, some of it confusing, most of it hillarious. Take the Bastard Halibut for example, we later found another Sushi restaurant that offered the same dish under the slightly more acceptable ruse of Basted Halibut, tasted exactly the same too.
And what about those t-shirts that the girls love to wear here, with the nonsense printed on them in English, my personal favourite has to
on the road again
Fiona and our bags as we wait for a train to the airport, next stop; South Korea. be "Democratic, Unforget. Got Juicey". There are loads though, some words are just made up, you can sort of say them out loud but they make no sense, and as there is zero context you don't have a clue what it's meant to mean, they seem happy with it though, bless.
Jeeze and those bicycles, that's what Tokyo needs, more bikes. And why would they want to ride on the perfectly open, almost deserted, roads when they could ride on the pavements with all the millions of people scrambling about? And ankle biters, I swear there was one women, she must have been at least three hundred years old and she just about reached my waist, they build them small here I tell thee.
They love their sports too, football is popular and there's even dudes going about with Celtic strips on with some Japanese dude that I've never heard of but second only to the great Nakata in the eyes of the public but all that pails into insignificance when you come to baseball.
They're mad about baseball, every game is a sell-out and every ball watched live on TV, the home-grown players are bigger stars
An Asian toilet
for those of you who aren't familiar with them. You have to squat, some of them have handlebars, what a treat. than the football players but the most adulation goes towards the Japanese players in the the American MLB and in particular to the New York Yankees Hideki Matsui, the equivelant of David Beckham in Japan, although the Englishman is still popular himself, especially at endorsing things.......
One think I'll never forget about Japan, horse-radish, they cover everything in it man, what a treat, you go for a burger for a wee change, well you can only munch on so many noodles and raw fish huh? Well what dressing do you get on your burger? Horse-radish of course, why not, what were you expecting, ketchup or something? Doosh-bag.
The Japanese people are super polite, and they always do there best to chat to you most of the time in Japanese right enough but the intent is there. When they do speak in English it's real funny listening to the pronunciations, they use a 'll' for a 'v', "strawbelly", and even funnier than this is when you see the words written down, on menu's for example, it actually says "strawbelly ice cream", or "....curry, velly hot!" Brilliant.
Japan is a tip-top place, it's not cheap but you can do
A luxury toilet
a wee Japanese treat, this one only has 9 buttons so it's pretty easy to use! Notice that it's plugged it to get that seat warming up, nice touch. it on a budget, we have and it's not hit us as hard in the auld wallet as we had thought, we may just see out this whole year without the need to beg, borrow or steal after all.
Sayanora Nippon, domo arigato.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.286s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 16; qc: 85; dbt: 0.0983s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb