Sapporo Snow Festival 2012

After seeing the Chocolate Factory, as I posted about last weekend, we got back on the train and went back to downtown Sapporo, Japan to see the 63rd annual Snow Festival. There are three sections to the festival: one parkway has huge ice sculptures with smaller snow sculptures in between that get judged at the end of the week, a boulevard of smaller ice sculptures that will get judged as well, and a park outside the city that had a huge slide for tubes, a maze, and other things designed to entice international travelers. This is my second time at the festival and I've yet to get to the third place but I'm not upset. I seem to have gotten less used to cold weather so I've never pushed to explore Sapporo. When I go out we usually stick to the plan and don't stay out too long. :)
Once we got to the festival, we walked as much as we could and took a lot of pictures, which are on my Flickr page, and tried to enjoy the afternoon. Unfortunately the air pressure, cold air, long work week, and long day of sightseeing got to us both and we both got headaches. Luckily mine was less than my friend's was so I still got a lot of pictures but we headed in as it got dark. We wound up eating supper at a German bar that had very little German food but the Japanese food was good and either being inside the mall or eating basically got rid of my headache while it was too late for my friend. She slept off her headache on the train and bus before we got ready for bed and she seemed better the next morning.
It was a fun visit to Sapporo, I just wish the weather was a little colder. As much as I was cold and my fingers were numb from taking pictures on my Ipod (that's what I get for forgetting my memory stick), it was rather annoying that we were there on the second day of the festival and the sculptures were already melting. A mermaid on a guy's back had lost her arm at the shoulder, we passed a freshly fallen bust of a girl the police were circling, and there was a sculpture labeled "Raising Dragon" that I would have loved to see but it was only a set of legs by the time we got around to it. However, the huge Disney scene, the animal scene, and the huge buildings were still lovely so I can't really complain.
All in all it was a fun trip and am not surprised the Snow Festival made it into my book on where to visit before you die. It is definitely an amazing place to be.

The Chocolate Factory: Sapporo, Japan

Last weekend my friend and I went up to the northern island of Hokkaido, Japan and visited the Shiroi Koibito Chocolate Factory in Sapporo, Japan and the 63 Snow Festival. To get there we took a twenty minute bus ride from where we’d slept to the train station and a seventy minute or more train ride up to Sapporo, passing Hiroshima on the way. By the time we got to the Sapporo train station it was lunchtime and we were hungry. I remembered from last time I was here that there was a shopping mall on the floor under the train station so we went hunting for lunch and found a pasta place. Neither of us spoke Japanese and they didn’t have an English menu so we went to the entrance and pointed to what we wanted to order. Now, try to picture this: there are about ten dishes of pasta and rice in three rows at the bottom of the display case, all on the same level with two shelves of drinks and desserts above them and two American women who don’t speak Japanese are trying to point at our dishes and drinks to two Japanese people that don’t know English? Are you laughing? We were by the time we were done ordering. Luckily we got the dishes we’d ordered but I got a lemon-ish soda instead of the blueberry shake-looking drink I’d tried to order. Oh well, the seafood pasta covered in slightly spicy ketchup with extra salt was rather good and there was miso soup and the complementary water to wash it down with.
After a little more navigating (the nice way of saying maps can only get us so far) we got to the Chocolate Factory. It turns out the factory is part factory, part museum. It seems they gathered a lot of collections from collectors, such as chocolate tins, hot chocolate tea kettles and cups, and Columbia themed things and arranged them in exhibits relating to the history of chocolate candies before showing how chocolate is refined from the cocoa beans to usable chocolate. Then they explain how their famous cookie, a thin square of white chocolate inside two thin butter cookies, is made and large windows show the actual production line in a large room beneath us. After that we went upstairs where we could have baked and decorated the butter cookies, bought sugar-craft items (such as a lady in a hoopskirt made of sugar), or had hot chocolate and cakes. The next floor held more exhibit rooms they didn’t bother to connect with chocolate such as the gramophone gallery and a few themed rooms full of toys from before the 1990’s or so.
After stopping at the store to pick up some of their famous cookies, we went outside in time to see the Chocolate Carnival. “A parade of jolly singing and dancing mechanical dolls,” as their brochure says, occurs every hour on the hour that the factory is open. The courtyard is a village of children’s houses and roses (covered for the winter when I went) and everywhere I looked something was moving to the music. A parade of mechanical animals circled the clock tower, chefs were singing and dancing on one all while other mechanical chefs across the courtyard played trumpets and birds swayed to the music. The three little pigs from the nursery rhyme peaked out of their houses and a dog stood up every few minutes.
After we toured the small village of play houses it was time to get back on the train for central Sapporo to see the Snow Festival, but that story and all those pictures will come out next weekend. If you want to see more pictures of my trip through the Chocolate Factory, check out my Flickr page.

My Birthday Weekend

Last weekend was my birthday weekend and I couldn’t figure out how to celebrate it. I finally decided that I would spend it trying various crafting techniques I’d wanted to learn for a while. I have about five main techniques I’ve picked up supplies for over the last few months that I have been putting off: Viking knit, kumihimo braiding, various clay projects, origami, and chain maille, as well as some necklaces for my sister that just seemed like such big projects I didn’t want to start since they would take so long to finish. What better way to celebrate my birthday than to stop the research, writing, and basically spinning my wheels on internet work and to just be creative for a few days? My plan for Saturday was to call home and talk to my parents before going out to Yokohama and the mega-store called Tokyu Hands. I had planned to let myself take out about a hundred fifty dollars for craft supplies or whatever really caught my eye and lunch out there. It was a good hour train ride from my place, or so I thought, and I figured I’d leave midmorning and get back to my train stop about supper time. The problem was that I forgot to get yen out the night before and for some reason my cash card wasn’t accepted at the ATMs around my place. As I was walking to a number of ATMs, I passed a store I went in once before. I had gone in and left with the feeling that it was kind of a boutique where cool Japanese things were sold for decoration and a few craft supplies were thrown in. Um, yeah. I had only been in one floor. This time I realized there were four floors. The street level was mostly kitchen goods, the lower level or basement had stamping, gel pens, and scrapbooking things. So far I was interested and had a few ideas but wanted to check out everything before deciding on anything. The second floor was basically school or office supplies. Again, I had some ideas but not much I needed at the moment. The third floor was all origami and paper with paintbrushes, paint, clay, and rows and rows of paper in all lengths, colors, textures, and styles. That got the ideas going but I still didn’t have yen. Finally I settled on about twenty dollars worth of paper goods and an extra bit of Japanese modeling clay to add to the bit I already owned. I had an idea in my head of creating a clay sculpture, maybe not that weekend but soon and needed some extra clay. I picked up a small lunch at the convenience store and was back in my room by 3 pm ready to start my projects. I hadn’t gotten to the mega store, which looks awesome in its multilevel floor-plan for do-it-yourself and souvenir items but it was bordering on rain outside, I wound up saving a lot of money, and I found myself an awesome craft store about ten minutes from my place. (It even sells metal clay I can practice with before spending lots of money online to get things shipped to me.) Tokyu Hands will wait awhile as I get a better idea of my preferred craft techniques and make money to spend at the mega-store.
The weekend definitely did not turn out the way I had hoped. I finally finished two necklaces that had been sitting around for a while. They were ones my sister had requested based on characters from her story and I really liked the design ideas but had never gotten around to actually finishing them and putting clasps on them. I got those two done and started on another simple design I decided to complicate some once I got the components in front of me. I also set up the kumihimo loom so I could start the next day. I also tried to work on Viking knit only to realize the wire I was using was too thick so I’ll have to find thinner wire in the stores around here.
All in all my birthday weekend was relaxing but not as productive as I had hoped. Oh well, that’s what weekends are for and I did manage to finish those two necklaces. (And it turned out my card problems were really just ATM problems. Apparently some Japanese ATMs don’t like foreign cards. Oh well, lesson learned.)

Tokyo 2011, Day 2

The next day we again had trouble leaving the room on time and got to the restaurateurs’ street less than an hour before we had to be at the theater. This street, which I forget the name of, is full of ceramic dinnerwear, pots and pans, and fake food made to look like real food which people buy to use or display at their restaurants. In Japan most restaurants have a visual menu outside the main door as well as the written menu inside. The visual menu is plastic food created to tempt the taste buds of passersby and look very realistic. My sister really wanted to buy a few pieces but when they’d gone during the week things had been closed. This time we found one store open in the first block and she got something and I picked up a keychain of a small crepe. (Trust me, you should not come to Japan without trying one of their crepes. Hm, my favorite is the strawberries and banana slices with cream and chocolate sauce topped with whipped cream and wrapped in a thin French-style crepe. Delicious)
Our next stop was the Japanese National Theater to see a traditional kabuki play. Unfortunately I have no pictures of that as cameras weren't allowed. The traditional theater of Japan, it is based on the acting, not the story. Coming from the Western idea that the acting complements the story, it was hard to see a play where the story complemented the acting, which was the real art. It was also impressive to see a “Living National Treasure” on stage as one of the actors. It was also hard to follow the story as the day only showed three parts of a ten part story, which is typical. Counting two twenty minute breaks, we were in the theater from a few minutes before it started at noon to 4:15 when the third part ended. It was a good experience and was interesting to see a number of Japanese patrons wore the basic kimono to the traditional theater. I felt a little under-dressed in my good jeans and nice shirt but other people were in less formal wear and no one commented on my outfit so I guess I wasn’t doing anything wrong. After a trip to a Christian bookstore where I finally found The Screwtape Letters and a good trip to Mcdonalds, in which we each tried the local sandwiches not offered in the States, we went back to the ryokan. They were going to stay another night and fly down to Okinawa that Monday but I had work the next day and gathered my things before saying ‘bye and taking the train back to my place. As usual, got started later than hoped as we took a while to finish our conversations and I got back to my place at ten but it was a good weekend and I had a lot of fun with my sisters.

Tokyo 2011, Day 1

Last weekend both of my sisters came up to see me. They’d spent much of the week in Tokyo seeing the sights and on Friday afternoon we met in Kamakura and I took them to my new place where we would all sleep for the night before going up to Tokyo for the next two days. After I gave them the (rather short since there’s not a lot there) tour of my apartment, we tried to go to CoCo’s, a curry franchise (the food is the bottom picture and it tastes better than it looks), for supper. A favorite of the locals and the Americans around here, the place was full and the night was cold so we went to a ramen shop down the street. Honestly, I’d never had the ramen there, I’m not much for most soups, but I’d heard rave reviews from those I work with and my sister’s wanted to get the “Japanese experience”. I don’t blame them since one of them was only going to be in Japan for less than a month and I loved the shrimp fried rice the ramen shop sold so we went to eat there. I finally tried some of the ramen there, as we sampled each other’s meals, and it was good but we all agreed that the shrimp fried rice I ordered was the best choice of the three. After that I led them to a bar not far from my place and got us a chuhi to share. They didn’t feel much like drinking alcohol so I only ordered one and drank most of it (they were rather tired and didn’t want the alcohol to make it worse) but I wanted them to try it. The chuhi is a drink I have only found in Japan and can be bought like a soda in a can at any convenience store but around my place, it’s the favorite drink. A mix of club soda, flavored syrup, and a shot or two of strong liquor, depending on how strong it’s ordered, the drink seems like soda and sneaks up on a person. It tastes like a soda and a lot of people drink two or three before it starts to react with them and for some people that is too many. It’s not unusual for people to try it, decide the chuhi tastes good but is weak, and chug another one or two before the effects quickly overtake the person who’s never tried it before. A lot of Americans get very drunk their first night trying chuhis but I only ordered a regular which we each tried/shared so we didn’t really feel it. After they’d tried the chuhi it was time to get back to my warm room to catch up and get some sleep. The next morning we were planning to see my work and be on the train to Tokyo by ten in the morning.
Um, yeah, we left my place late, had breakfast at Cinnabon, and I gave them a tour of my workplace. We got lunch at a convenience store before boarding the train about noon for the two hour train ride up to Shinagawa Station where they had stored their suitcases for the night. On the way we went through a “learn your strengths” list my sister had found in a book and I realized how long it’s been since I had a good debate on psychology, especially about analyzing ourselves and each other. Each one of us has studied psychology with different aims in mind and it made for a very good conversation. My oldest sister is a drama teacher who works with children and young adults as well as doing some acting on the side so she’s studied psychology from a viewpoint of how people learn and how to teach children while my middle sister is in graduate school to be a Christian counselor to actually help people deal with any issues they may have. I just study psychology because it helps me understand people. (If you know me, you probably know I’m a very blunt person and like to know why people do what they do.) Psychology also helps me develop characters for the stories I write but I never intend to use psychology beyond that, except to play devil’s advocate with my friends. Three different perspectives on one topic and the ride just flew by.
After we (okay, my middle sister) navigated us through the Tokyo train system to the place we were staying, we dropped our stuff and went back on the train for the origami museum. We got there less than an hour before it closed at six p.m. and explored some. I’d never realized the intricate folding that could be done to make paper dolls that looked like the real ceramic court dolls sold in Japan or boats full of soldiers or full landscapes of places or crabs. We sat in front of a master folder who folded things like dragon heads and a traditional new years decoration and a puppy and a few other things before we got to pick one to keep and look around the store. I picked the dragon head and also bought some beginner origami books to add to my list of techniques I intend to learn but have yet to get around to before we left. After dark already, we decided to go to Ahkiabara, the area known as electric town. There we could buy just about anything with a current in it and we saw things like usb ports that looked like pieces of sushi, a screen that worked like an etch-a-sketch, antennas and gps gadgets for cars, and a shop that sold robots and parts to make them. By the time we left the neon town behind we were pretty hungry and finally found a sushi place to eat. In an area that didn’t see too many Americans, the patrons at the restaurant and the workers were very helpful. We finally ordered two plates of sushi to share and they brought out some pickled radish pieces for us to try for free. All was very good and we were ready to go back to the ryokan we were staying at. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese hotel with shared restrooms and the traditional shower/tub facilities. In Japan the tradition is that you shower outside the tub and then relax in the tub that is usually a one person Jacuzzi. Quite nice with the carefully manicured ground you could see through a small window by the tub after a long week at work.

Okinawa 2011

Last weekend I flew out of Haneda Airport to visit my sister and her husband in Okinawa, a large island on the Ryukyu island chain below mainland Japan. I left my place early as I wasn’t sure how long my route would take but the train system got me to the airport an hour before the plane took off. Taking the flight in the afternoon was an amazing idea as I got some awesome photos of clouds and the islands below surrounded by coral.

My sister picked me up in the airport and drove me back to her place. Once her husband got off work we went to a small restaurant down the street from them to talk over lunch. I had an awesome taco pizza appetizer, great curry fried rice, and tried pineapple wine. After that we went back to their place and laughed at their two playful cats while talking and catching up.

The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast before heading out to a local native town. Called Murasaki Mura it was a historical village designed to educate visitors on Okinawan culture years ago. As none of us were quite in a crafty mood that day, we just wandered the grounds and looked at all the crafts we could do. Scared that my batteries were low on my camera, I didn’t take too many pictures there, but I did get a picture of my sister with a green goya, which is considered a native vegetable and she was excited to see it still on the vine. (The green and yellow vegetable to the right is a riper goya.) I also got a picture of a karate studio of a practicing dojo. (Interesting fact is that karate originated in the Ryukan kingdom which became Okinawa Prefecture.)

After making our way through the village we went to a place called Sea Seed where they get coral seeds and grow coral to plant in the sea when it’s big enough to survive. They use a number of aquariums to educate the public while growing the coral and I got a lot of pictures a well as being able to hold a live starfish. After that we walked out on a stone bridge to a stone platform before going to the nearby sea salt factory.

With my time in Okinawa coming to a close, we ate at Freshness Burger before going to a Halloween picnic at my sister’s church. There we met up with a Japanese friend of my sister’s who brought us some kimonos to try on and we got pictures

Okinawa is an awesome place and I'm hoping to return there soon. For those of you interested in visiting there, here is a travel guide. I you want to see more pictures from my trip, visit my Flickr page and enjoy. I hope you enjoy the pictures as I had a blast taking them!

Renting in Japan

Moving, moving, moving. It’s all I’ve been doing for over a month now. Renting a place in Japan while working for my company a rather long process. Once I reached a certain position and had been in a certain amount of time, I’m allowed to move out of the housing provided for me and into my own place. The usual process for a Japanese person getting a place is that they go to a few housing agents to look at places, since most agencies rent different places and very few listings are held by more than one agency. Once they found a place they like, they negotiate on price and appliances, such as if the tenant wants an oven or larger refrigerator or a washer, and sign a tentative contract to sign at a later day. They need to sign at a later date because the tenant has to pay what equates to five month’s rent in cash when they sign the lease. The tenant pays the first month’s rent, a security deposit, the agent’s fee, and renter’s insurance. Together with taxes, that comes to about five month’s rent in cash. Youch, that can take a few days to gather. My company adds some paperwork that took nearly a week to get back to me and a few meetings with American housing specialists. All in all my moving process took about a month and then another week to finally move all my things into my new place. These are pictures of my new place. The first one is my small hallway between the guest room and my bedroom, the next is the guestroom before I put all my craft things in it, and the third picture is of the loft above the guest bedroom. My kitchen/livingroom area is also a rather large room but already a mess from moving in when I took these pictures. Now I just have to slowly furnish and organize all my things. Umm, yeah… that could take a while. :)

Tokyo Trip, Day 1

A few months ago I went to see my middle sister and her husband in Tokyo for the weekend. She was visiting and I’m only a few hours away by train so it worked out well. I rode out after work to meet them at Starbucks in Kamakura, Japan. True, I’d already visited there nearly a year before but that was at someone else’s planning and it’s just such a lovely place I had no problem visiting there again. Since it was the beginning of December and rather chilly we decided not to go to the beach there. They had visited the main temple while they waited for me to get done with work so we decided to go to eat first. My sister, B, had a guide book of the best places to visit in Japan that she borrowed from the place they had been staying so she looked in there and found a great Japanese curry place known for its cheesy chicken curry. It was only a few blocks away from the Starbucks so we walked it and it wasn’t long before both me and my brother-in-law, G, were wondering aloud about her map reading skills. She took it as the mostly joking that it was and we made it to the restaurant to eat their amazing curry. She ordered the cheesy chicken curry, G ordered the beef curry, and I decided to be exotic and try the scallop curry. Yeah, my mistake. The plates came out with a pile of rice next to a gravy bowl of curry so it was easy to try each other’s sauce on our rice. I must admit that while the scallop curry wasn’t amazing, it wasn’t horrible and B and G’s food was amazing. I will definitely have to go back there for more than a little taste of the good curry. They served our tea in a way I hadn’t seen before which intrigued me. They had a glass bottom with one of those round candles that you can pick up at almost any home decoration place in the States lit and they put the hot tea on top in a glass teapot. The effect was to keep the tea hot and you can see the color of the tea with the fire reflected through the tea.
After we had eaten we got some ice cream and decided to go to Hase which was two train stations over and was known for a number of temples. We found it, despite my bad directions, and got to the temple B really wanted to see seven minutes after it had closed. Supposedly the temple was known for hundreds of statues and its gorgeous garden so we stood looking through the slits in the fence for a few minutes before B sadly agreed to move on and we walked a few blocks to the Great Buddha. This was another place I had gone already but it was as a quick day trip to prove I could navigate the train system and I had been on a time limit so it was nice to slowly wander the grounds at night and take night pictures. Even though it was after dark, B wanted us to go for a multi-mile hike from one part of the city to the other but G and I managed to talk her out of it. Much as I love the outdoors and walking at night I wasn’t willing to go on a hiking path that likely didn’t have many lights. Besides, I was kind of tired and still had my backpack on with all my stuff for the weekend. Unfortunately her way of compromising was to walk back to the other train station by a main road. Yeah, that took another hour but gave us more time to talk.
We got on the train and managed to find seats. I noticed and tried to hide that I was falling asleep in the hot train talking to them. I managed to stay awake through the trip and made it to the train station we got off. Unfortunately the station was Ikeburo Station, one of the busiest train stations in Tokyo, especially after dark. I hate crowds and tried to keep close to B and G as they led me where we needed to go before I hyperventilated. I got out on the street and calmed myself down while we walked to the hostel they had gotten rooms in. Yep, I can now say I’ve slept in a hostel. Now, when you think of a hostel you are probably like me and think of everyone sleeping in one room and sharing a single bathroom. Well, that may have been another floor but they got a three person room so the three of us shared a room and everyone in the floor shared two shower stalls, a female bathroom, and a male bathroom. It really was rather cool. Being in Japan we slept on the floor on separate mats maybe two inches thick under blankets about an inch and a half. The blankets and mats were wrapped snuggly in sheets so they were easy to launder and we were given small towels to use and return so they could launder and replace if needed. The towels, though not bigger than a hand towel, dried me all the way off, even with my long hair, and the beds were surprisingly comfortable.
By now it had been many hours since the curry meal so we tried a nearby restaurant that was part of a chain similar to Denny’s in the States. However, it was closed so I introduced them to the cheap way travelers eat in Japan: convenience stores. We found a 7/11 or the like and picked up some food (I picked up a rice cake with meat inside and a large meat dumpling, B picked up something she thought was interesting, and G picked up a plate of spaghetti they heated behind the counter for him) and picked up a few cans from the local liquor store since the convenience store didn’t have a very good selection. We took our meal and ate in the lobby of the hostel we were staying at. I’ve never understood the fun of sitting at a bar drinking and talking all night but we finally headed up to bed about midnight. I don’t know if the alcohol mattered much since none of us were even tipsy going upstairs but it sure was fun to just sit and talk to them for a few hours, even if we did need to get up late to accommodate the late night. It was the weekend and sleeping in is what the weekend is for.

Tokyo Trip, Day 2

As stated in the post for day one of my expedition through Tokyo, Japan with my sister (B) and her husband (G), we stayed up late talking the first night so we woke up late Saturday and started our travels about 1230 in the afternoon. Hungry, we tried a place nearby that is called Jonathans but is similar to Denny’s back in the States. Unfortunately it was full and we’d have at least a half hour wait before even getting seated so we decided to go to the next location on our trip to eat. The location was heralded as a nice little street full of cafes near a lovely little park locals gathered in to relax away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. The street started out as a street of cafes and we picked a café that served Japanese style Italian food. I got a delicious cheesy spaghetti and I forget what the others got but we all loved our brunches and ate in the patio watching the people passing on the street. Eventually we had to get up though and we followed the street until it turned into a shopping street where I found a kind of funky native Australian store. Eventually the street ended in the park which turned out to be a large public park developed around a small lake. In the lake were paddle boats you could rent for a few hours, some shaped like normal paddle boats with no roof while others were shaped like larger than life swans and held two people. Instead of renting a paddle boat we decided to follow the lake and see what else the oases of nature had to offer before returning to the busy streets again. Turned out that the park was a cultural focal point on the weekends when artists of every type set up to create their art, sell it at a makeshift art faire, or earn a little money for entertaining like the jugglers or the violinist. A popular place to walk dogs, I was impressed with the artist who had the idea to sell hats for dogs as well as a few jewelry makers selling their wares on tables or carefully organized tablecloths on the ground along the sidewalks. After an hour or more we reached the end of the park and had to head back to the busy streets of Tokyo. However, before we got back on the train we each got a Japanese version of the crepe. Usually fruit and cream or ice cream wrapped in a thin but sweet pancake, the Japanese crepe is an excellent dessert or mid-afternoon snack and I was quite happy with my strawberry/banana/cream version before getting on the busy train.
Our next stop of the day was supposed to be a train station close to four large shrines. We walked around a lot looking for those shrines but never found them. Eventually we gave up and walked down a well lighted outdoor mall looking for food only to find a small temple surrounded by family graves. In the States a family grave likely brings to mind a tomb or building where the urns of family members are kept. In Japan a family grave means a single monument with wooden plaques (similar to human sized tongue dispensers) with the person’s name written elegantly in kanji down the plaque. I’m not sure if the urns were in the monument but my guess is that the graves were more of a place to remember the dead than visit them as many Americans like to do. We wandered around the temple for a few minutes and took pictures of the statues but we were hungry. We didn’t find food in that mall/street (or as the guide books call it: an “arcade”) so we headed back to our hostel, got food at a convenience store again and went to our room to watch a few episodes of Castle, one of my favorite television shows that they hadn’t tried yet.

Tokyo Trip, Day 3

On our third and final day together in Tokyo, Japan, my sister (B), her husband (G), and I had to be out of our hostel by 11 in the morning so we woke up early, Skyped home to our parents, our oldest brother, and his wife before packing our stuff and checking out. Used to travelers, the hostel had a place we could store our bags during the day as long as we got them that night. We did that and head out to Shinjuku Station to look for a bookstore, grabbing breakfast on the way. B wanted to find a copy of the travel guide we had borrowed from the hostel all weekend and had been told about a huge bookstore near Shinjuku Station. Unfortunately we can’t read Japanese and wound up getting lost until we asked a few people for directions and found the store whose fourth floor had English books, including travel guides to Japan. They decided to buy another travel guide than what we had been using and we walked on, and on, and on,… After a few hours and when our feet were starting to complain my sister’s map finally said we were nearly to the shrine she had set for the day’s expedition. G and I decided it was lunchtime (beyond that really since it was early afternoon by then but we finally saw restaurants after about two hours of walking residential streets). We compromised by getting fast food so we’d have more time to explore her shrine. We wound up trying Freshness Burger, which being Japanese meant it had really small portions, and the burgers were great. Finally refreshed from a half hour of sitting and full stomachs, the three of us set out to explore Meiji Jingu, a shrine dedicated to an emperor and his wife who helped bring the western ideas of the late 1800s into Japan when it needed a quick modernization. We didn’t realize we went to the shrine on the weekend of the Shichi-Go-San Festival, or the 7-5-3 Festival, where girls aged three and seven as well as boys aged five are dressed up in traditional outfits and taken to shrines or temples to pray for good luck on the children. It was fascinating seeing all the traditional outfits (the parents are often in traditional dress as well or just suits and semiformal dresses) as well as the shrine itself.
After we left the shrine, we walked a down the street (I believe it was Harajuku street but am not sure as I didn’t write the name down in my notes) that was full of brand name western stores like American Eagle, just to say we’d gone down a famous street. That done we headed back to our hostel to pick up our backpacks and go our separate ways again. First we decided to get supper and chose a pizza place. Unfortunately it didn’t have an English menu so we had fun pointing at Japanese kanji and hoping we got something good. It worked out and we each managed to get good pizza, even if the pizzas were small, and we had a fun hour before separating at the train station, me on my way back to work and them off to a few days in Kyoto, Japan before heading home.

Osaka, Japan

Not too long ago I took a trip with some friends, M and G, to Osaka, Japan. Osaka has been a center for trade for centuries and that meant a large population grew up in the area and merchants became rich and settled in the area. Lots of money in the area and a large Asian population means the area is full of historical buildings, especially temples and shrines. Named the country’s capital many times since the fifth century, Osaka is known for its castles, though not as well known as nearby Kyoto with its rich history and gorgeous landscape. The three of us set out that day planning to see some of the historic sites as well as the famous street with massive billboards.
We started out by taking the bus into town and had lunch at McDonalds. (I know, I know, eating McDonalds in Japan, so adventurous, but give us a break. It was after 1230 and none of us had eaten anything since supper the night before. It was next to the bus stop and we were hungry, so we stopped there for food.) Next we crossed the street to the subway station and went to Tennoji area looking for Shitennoji Temple. Built in 593 by Prince Shotoku, Shitennoji Temple was Japan’s first governmental temple. Seemed like a good place to go on our only day in Osaka so we went hunting. We followed directions and circled the train station to the main street. We got excited because we saw old Japanese looking buildings from the train station, but no, they were just decorations on roofs of restaurants meant to draw the eyes. We asked directions again and were told to follow the main street until we passed the temple so our journey down the main street began. It turned out to be quite a walk and along the way we saw two Japanese buildings hidden down an alley. Thinking those might be the beginnings of the temple we checked them out. Finding them to merely be bars, we took pictures and continued down the main street. Next we found a small shrine we explored. I rather liked it, it felt like a quiet place to worship and there were a few people praying there as we wandered and prayers hung up in places, either on wooden plaques hung near the prayer bell or on papers tied around string reserved for the worshipers. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that this peaceful shrine was partially made of plastic and it no longer seemed so restful. Maybe it’s just me but if you’re going to build a place of worship, go all the way. Don’t make everything look old and significant but have it made of cheap, modern materials. The others were still enjoying the shrine so I sat down to let them wander and not ruin their experience. Eventually we left the little shrine and saw an amazingly realistic mural of African savannah animals, including a male and female lion on a rock with a flaming sunset behind them. It was very impressive and life sized.
We wandered down the street some more and eventually found the Shitennoji Temple. The temple, “featuring a middle gate, a five story pagoda, a main hall, and an auditorium arranged in a straight line surrounded by corridors” (as the tourist guide explained), was awesome. Rebuilt after World War 2, the buildings were impressive and well maintained. The five story pagoda towered above the other buildings in the temple and the view of the modern buildings standing just outside the fence of the temple was slightly amusing. One thing I noticed was that although the statues were of Japanese monks, the artwork seemed to be in the Indian style. After a little more wandering I realized the art was Indian because the temple was a Buddhist temple. Yeah, that made sense then. We spent well over an hour at the temple but there is only so much silent respect a person can take before getting restless so we moved on to Dotombori Street.
After the walk back up the main street, the subway ride to Namba area, and a fifteen minute walk, we found the street known for its many restaurants and huge billboards. The original billboard, a massive runner crossing the finish line, seems to have been taken down, or I didn’t look hard enough, but I got a picture of the life size runner, a few bigger than life size crabs that had moving legs, a huge octopus wrapped around a sign with steam coming out its eye, and a dragon going in and out of a wall above a restaurant. We ate some amazing Korean barbeque with cucumber kimchee as well as squid rolls from a vender. After that it got dark and I got a picture of the neon lights on the street and we went back. We all had to work early the next morning and were pretty full so sleep sounded pretty good.
Although I was kind of disappointed by the reality of Dotombori Street, compared to the hype in the guide book, I had good company all day. It wound up being a really fun day and I’m looking forward to going on vacation there sometime soon.