Japan: Thursday through Sunday

---

Okay...im sorry that i have been slacking on my blog, but ive been too god damn busy. in the last few days i have sailed the high seas on a pirate ship, ridden a gondola over a sulfer mine, got lost in a train station, fell ill to bullet train sickness (more on that later), found someones passport in tokyo then later ran into him in kyoto, explored castles, stumbled into a japanese wedding, went out with locals to dinner, and explored hakome, himeji, and kyoto

i first would like to take the time to mythbust this place just in case any of you are thinking of travelling to japan in the future.

1. sushi...its the exactly the same as it is in america.
2. money. i had always heard that japan would be very expensive. if you are willing to stay in hostels it is not. i eat a huge meal for about 7 US dollars. I bugeted 100 dollars a day and have had a very hard time spending it all
3. everyone in japan speaks english. that is the biggest bullshit lie i have ever heard. expect to have to speak japanese
4. the tokyo merto is extremely crowded. it seemed fine to me
5. you can get what ever you want in japan out of a vending machine....i have only seen, for the most part, drinks and ice cream
6. hostels are not gross, disgusting, or dangerous. they are awesome. period.
5. jet lag. everyone told me that i would be up all night upon arriving in japan. i was soooooooo tired it was not even funny.


side notes....

tokyo seemed very sinster at times, almost like gotham city in a way. example...we went exploring in roppongi one night and because the metro closed at 12am we had to walk back about 20 blocks or so. we were walking through small alley ways which were no bigger than a car. At 1 am the city was very very quiet and dimmly lit and we would walk awhile without hearing anything.Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a 90 year old lady would appear out of the shadows and zip by on a bike...it was very vey weird.

tokyo was strangely quiet at times we would walk down a street in a busy area of town and hear only moving traffic.

i never heard a car horn honk or a cell phone ring while in japan

while in tokyo i can count on my hand the amount of tourists that i ran into...however kyoto is flooded with them.

i have ridden the bullet train 4 times and have gotten sick (varrying degrees) 4 times. the bullet train moves at 300km an hour and pretty much fries your brain if you look out the window...

if travelling to japan in july..expect to take a bajillion showers a day. it is godforsaken hot and the humidity is about 2 million percent.

gas is about 200 yen a liter. or about 8 dollars a gallon. for all you people in the U.S. that complain about gas shutup. it could be worse

japan is built for small people. matt and i have bumped our heads on all sorts of stuff.


thrusday...

with the feeling that we had already explored tokyo enough, we decided to head down south to the mountain region of hakome. hakome is a mountain getaway with beautiful lakes, hotsprings, amazing scenery, and sleepy towns. I would compare the region to perhaps lake tahoe. the first big challenge of this trip was exchanging our day pass in tokyo station. like i mentioned above, most people in japan do not know english. becasue of this we spent 45 minutes or so asking multiple ticket agents where we could getour rail passes. after recieving different directions and stumbling around we eventually found the english speaking exchange desk....what a　relief. getting to hakome took a little effort with a bullet train ride to odawara (about 30 minutes from tokyo). once we departed the station at odawara, we jumped on a two car trolley which winded up a narrow canyon towards the town of gora. For the first time i felt as if i was in a foreign country. perhaps it was the people, the scenery, and the odd little trolley that we were travelling in. After about an hour of this we arrived in gora and boared a cable car which took us further up the mountian and then on to a gondola which gave us amazing views of the region. the gondola ride was very nice and took about 45 minutes. we passed over what appeared to be a sulfer mine along the way. I had expected to do many different things while in japan, but i never thought that i would have ridden a pirate ship. and that my friends, was exactly what i did after i stepped out of the gondola. the pirate ship was awesome and as i was busy wagging war on the green pirate ship opposite of us (we were in the red one), we travelled across a mountain lake. while sailing across this lake i got a sudden case of deja vu. i felt as if i had been there before.... perhaps in a past life. or maybe it was the fact that it looked like upstate new york. we ate lunch in a sleepy little town on the other side and then decided to turn around and do the whole thing over again, electing not to take a 2 hour bus ride back to odwara. the daytrip to hakome was a great success, but i was much to sick from the shinkansen to enjoy it. we arrived back into tokyo around 6 or so and went back to the hostel to shower and get ready for a night on the town. our night exploration took us to a karaoke bar in asakusa where i rocked out with sylvia to hungry like a wolf. however, i was pretty bad with kissed by a rose. that night i think i went to sleep around 1 or 2 in the morning.

Friday.....

we all checked out of the hostel around 10am and headed down to kyoto...we all suffered from shinkansen sickness (bullet train) and pretty much slept it off. after sleeping pretty much the entire day we got reday for a night out on the town. before heading out we met up with a couple of other people. one person was from the netherlands and the other was from tokyo. we were all going to go to downtown kyoto but instead ran into some older japanese women who wanted to take us out to dinner. this was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. while my friends and family were back in the U.S. i was eating dinner with locals in kyoto. the dinner was awesome, and i learned alot about japanese culture, how they see americans, religion, and the basic way of the japanese lifestyle. before the dinner started, slyvia became sick again fron the shinkansen so she and matt went back to the hostel...leaving me to chat it up with the locals. i had a very interesting dinner which consisted of many different items like soup, fish, tofu, eggs, miso and jello. after dinner i decided to go back to the hostel and go to bed.

saturday......

saturday was the first day in japan that was sunny and clear. because of this, saturday was the first day that we sweated like pigs. in the morning all of us rented bikes from the hostel and spent about two hours riding through the city. during this trip, we did not see everything but we did see a few shrines and had a nice ride through a city park. the shrines in kyoto are interesting, but it seems as if they are all the same. if you see one you have pretty much seen them all. we stumbled across a japanese wedding (i think) and then continued through our tour of the city. eventually we gave into the heat and went back to the hostel. matt and slyvia went to the bar while i took a nap. Saturday night was spent looking for a bars downtown with our new friend marc from the netherlands. as far as finding a good bar the trip was a disaster however, it was nice to see the city at night and the thai food for dinner was really great.

sunday....
we left kyoto on sunday for a day trip to himeji. himeji is a town about an hour south of kyoto that has an exceptional japanese style castle. the castle is siutated on a hill top in what appeared to be the middle of town, and is much bigger than european castles. the castle is around 600 years old and for 7 dollars you can pretty much tour the entire thing. one weird aspect about the trip is the shoe situation. they ask you to take off your shoes while in the castle..so you are exploring the inside while wearing slippers. while in the castle, matt and i had to watch our heads...some of the ceilings were quite low and this task proved quite amusing to some of the locals.

monday will be our last full day in japan before we head back to the U.S. this country is amazing and i wish i could stay longer...perhaps forever if i could find a job.

the time is 5:39 pm sunday. or 2:41 am denver time.

it is just too hard to upload photos while in japan...i will take care of that when i get back.

talk to you later,

jason

---