Better late than never

So, after a 4 1/2 month hiatus, I have finally returned to fill you all in on what we did that last month we were in Japan. Since we finally have high speed internet at home, it'll make it much easier to post all kinds of fun pictures for you to see. And I know the pictures are what you like the most (don't lie; you know it's true). Now, without further ado, let's get back to our vacation~

When we last left our heroes, we were in Kyoto, enjoying the festivities of the Gion Matsuri. With that little party over, the next day we decided to check out some of the historic sites, namely some of the temples, as well as a castle. We began the day relatively early and decided to first head up a lo~ng, steep hill to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, which means "pure water."

Even though it was early, it was already really hot out. Hot enough, even, to make Cinnamon break down and buy some "expensive" 130 yen water. ...Only to find 110 yen water at the next vending machine we passed. Oh well. But finally, we made it to the top of the hill!

That, obviously, is a 3-story pagoda just outside the temple itself. It's one of the first things you see when you're walking up to the temple grounds. The other thing you see is this:

You have to pass through this huge, bright vermilion gate to get to the temple itself. It looks pretty new, but that's just because they periodically repaint them. Still impressive, though.

Once we had paid our admission fee, we went up to the temple and checked out the building, as well as the spectacular view of the city below.

I guess it's a little hard to see here in the picture, but beyond the trees is the area around Kyoto Station. Almost in the middle of it is the (rather lackluster) Kyoto Tower, which is directly across from the station. Look at how high we climbed!

Right outside the main hall of the temple is a display with a ton of these "ema" wish boards. The idea is to buy (I think?) one of these boards, write a wish on it, and hang it up in the hopes that it will come true. It seems that most of the time, these wishes are anything from good health, to finding love, to being able to pass a big test in school. If you click on the picture to make it full sized, you can see that some of these wishes are even in English. However, neither Cinnamon nor I made one.

We walked away from the crowds a little to explore the rest of the area, and found a small shrine with a bunch of these little Jizo statues. Apparently, Jizo is the guardian of those who suffer, especially sick children and pregnant women (or so says my guidebook).

Here's the view of the temple from a little further away. You can see the main building on the right, and (obviously) the pagoda on the left. The temple itself is over 1,000 years old, and was built with no nails. How's that for excellent craftsmanship?

After taking a little walk around the woods, we came back and drank some holy water, just like these people are doing. You go through this line and grab one of these long-handled cups, catch some water, and drink it. When you're done, the cups go back into this little area, where they're sanitized by ultraviolet light. (You can sort of see it in the background there). The water was nice and cool and refreshing and comes straight from the mountain~

While walking back to the temple entrance, we spotted a geisha! Unfortunately, this was the best picture I could get of her, but it was interesting to see a little bit of "old" Japanese traditions mixed with the modernity of all the other temple patrons. She had some seriously high shoes on, too. I don't know how she managed to make it all the way up that hill!

After leaving the temple, we decided to get some lunch, and walked what felt like forever, until we finally made it to Coco's. Ahh~ familiar curry in a new city. I love that place. Once we had cooled down a bit and filled our tummies, it was back out into the 90-something degree heat and on to our next destination--Nijo Castle.

We took a train from Kyoto Station to Nijo, then proceeded to spend 15 minutes walking in the wrong direction before we finally found it. We came upon it on the wrong side and had to walk aaaaaaaall the way around the outside of the walls to get to the entrance. And it was a very long walk. With only about half an hour to spare until closing time, we hurried and paid our admission, took off our shoes, and toured the castle.

This is the castle with the famed nightingale floors, which kind of squeak and make sort of a chirping sound when you walk on them, to guard against possible intruders. Unlike some other castles in Japan, this one is all one story, and very long and winding. But they don't allow photography inside, so all we have are pictures from outside.

Here's one of the castle gates... pretty obvious. Naturally, the bridge goes over the moat.

The walls of the interior grounds are built with a "fan" shape, which purportedly makes them harder to climb. Cinnamon and I aren't buying that. They don't look so impenetrable to me.

Cinnamon took a bunch of pictures of the castle grounds and this very garden... but apparently set her camera mode to black and white unknowingly. So here's one of the few color pictures she took.

We climbed up one of the lookouts and snapped this fantastic shot of the castle. The sky looks incredibly blue here! And it was nice because you could really feel the breeze from the higher perch--a very nice, if still warm, change from the stifling 100 degree heat that day.

Before we had even finished making the loop around the castle grounds, the castle had closed and it was time to leave. So we went back to the hostel to chill out in the air conditioning. Of course, we first made a pit stop at the conbini for some ice cream, and Cinnamon discovered the joys of a little thing called a Coolish. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try one until the next day.

Basically, a Coolish is... like a milkshake in a Capri Sun-like pouch. They come pretty frozen, so by the time you thaw it out enough to drink it, you're feeling much cooler. Oh man, I miss those so much. Here's a quick little commercial for them:

Once we had sufficiently chilled, we decided to check out Fushimi Shrine, with its 4km path of torii gates. I had heard it's supposed to be pretty creepy at night, so this seemed like a great idea. And off we went!

Here we are (a rare full shot!) standing in front of the shrine. We chatted a little bit with a taxi driver who was there, and he was kind enough to take this picture for us. Don't we look happy~ (And me with my dorky tennis shoes, hahaha.)

There were a few of these dog statues around, and we don't know what they were for, but Cinnamon said they looked evil. ...So she made me take pictures of them.

Check it out, in all its bibbed, evil glory.

And here's the start of all the numerous torii gates. We made it through one little row of them, and it started sprinkling, and there was thunder and lightning. After taking shelter under a little canopy until the rain stopped, we started to head back toward the next path with bigger torii. ...Except there were spiders. Lots of spiders (a little bigger than a half dollar) that looked sort of like crabs. They were all over the torii and were really creeping us out, so we did what any logical person would've done... and turned around and left.

We decided we'd come back in the morning before leaving the city, so we headed home and somehow managed to NOT get caught in the rain (too badly). But that, my friends, is a story for another day~

Everyone's Invited

Continuing from where I left off before, after going back to our hostel to chill for a few hours (and so Cinnamon could watch the soccer match she found on TV), we headed back out to see what this matsuri thing would be like at night.

Very, very crowded. That's what it was like. There were probably about 10 side streets lined with food and game vendors, and each and every one of them were jam packed with people - most of them so congested you could barely shuffle along. And I mean barely.

The wonderful flute players were back on the hoko, only this time they were all lit up and everyone (as you can see) was stopping to take pictures or video.

Everybody was calling out, trying to get you to buy some beer, because let's face it - it's not a party without beer! Cinnamon told me that if I bought one, she'd have one too, but since I don't like beer, we didn't have any. (I know, we're just no fun at all!) Instead, we checked out all the vendors and had some yakisoba, which Cinnamon decided she doesn't really like. I think it's all right (except the pepper - blech!), but they put this pickled red ginger on the top and it totally ruins the taste for me. Without it, I'd like it better.

Now let's explore some of the vendors we came across~

This one was selling okonomiyaki. Wikipedia can tell you what it is, if you want to know. Cinnamon was considering getting some, but most all of them had shrimp in it or were topped with fish flakes, and that just kind of turned her off the idea.

Here we have three girls playing a goldfish catching game. If I understand it right, you get a little paper "net" and with it, you try to scoop as many fish as you can get into a little bowl before the paper breaks. I was very mad that this person here on the right got in the way of my picture, because it would've looked a lot better without them there. Hmph.

You could buy candied fruit on a stick here - apples, oranges, pineapple, strawberry, grapes - all kinds of sweet goodies!

A delicious-looking treat here - grilled squid on a stick! No matter how appetizing you think they look, we did not eat them. You could not have paid us to eat them. No thank you.

This vendor was selling fresh pineapple on a stick... on ice. Cinnamon bought some and she said it was delicious. I'll take her word for it.

And speak of the devil, here she is, staring me down as she enjoys a frozen chocolate covered banana. Now normally, I like bananas, but I wasn't impressed with this one. It wasn't very sweet.

By the time we finished up our little desserts-on-a-stick, it was getting close to 11pm and the festivities were beginning to wind down (considering it was a Wednesday night and all), so we headed back to the hostel. All in all, a very fun night!

The next day, we hit up a temple, a castle and a shrine, which are going to have to be broken into two posts, I think. We took a lot of pictures. Also, we just about melted under Kyoto's hot, July sun. But that's a story for next time. Stick around!

Let the Journey Begin

The day after our little excursion to the garden was my birthday! So Cinnamon and I headed to Ikebukuro and went to Namco Namjatown. It's like a little theme park inside Sunshine City, run by the video game developer Namco. There are some games you can play... which we declined, since we couldn't figure out what they were or how to play them. The place was not foreigner-friendly at all - almost no English anywhere.

But that's okay, because we didn't come for the games - we came for the food! In addition to the games, Namjatown has 3 special food "stadiums": Gyoza Stadium, Ice Cream City and Dessert Land - all dedicated to providing you with various incarnations of their namesakes. So of course we had to sample something from each place! We had delicious gyoza, gelato (cookies 'n cream for me, green tea for Cinnamon) and some cute little desserts that I forget the name of.

This was Cinnamon's banana thing. It was like a banana encased in mousse and wrapped in a crepe. It looks tiny, but was very filling.

And this was mine - chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Very rich and very filling for something that was probably the size of a large muffin.

After playing around in the house of mirrors for a little while, we decided to call it a day and headed home.
The next day, neither of us were feeling 100%, so we didn't do much but go to Shinagawa to get our Rail Passes and made a mad dash to Shinjuku to try for a demachi. (It was a semi-success). On Tuesday, we intended to get up bright and early to head to Kyoto, but we both ended up sleeping in after our day of blah-ness. After packing our bags and saying "sayonara" to our happy little Tokyo room, we headed to Shinagawa and grabbed a shinkansen to Kyoto~

Three hours later, we were there. Our first night was uneventful. We checked into our (very, very nice) hostel, waited an hour for the sudden rain shower to end, then got a bite to eat before returning. Here are a couple random shots from our room.

This is Cinnamon and her Crunky. It's chocolate with... malt puffs or something. She said it could've been better. Over her shoulder, you can see the lovely flat panel TV we had in our room. It wasn't very big, but it looked brand new. The hostel had just been remodeled in April, so I suspect it was.

I uploaded this horrible shot of me (you can thank Cinnamon for that) so you could see the other side of our room. We had bunk beds and even a little couch! Not bad for something like $30 a night.

After some rest and a strange buffet breakfast, we made our way out to explore the city. Kyoto is a city that could benefit from some more trains. The main means of getting around is by bus and the train stations are generally not very close to any of the main tourist attractions. So we just sort of wandered.

I honestly thought this place was a church when I passed the entrance, but it turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. Very strange.

This is what's across the river from the restaurant - Cinnamon! And that, my friends, is the lovely Kamo River. I'm sure you're impressed by the sheer size of it, yes?

This picture was taken from one of the bridges crossing the river, looking north. As you can see, there are mountains there! Kind of hazy mountains, but still pretty.

We eventually wandered our way to the south end of Gion and walked down a lot of little shopping streets full of all kinds of things - from traditional items like fans and yukata to trendy clothing, shoes, and about 3 First Kitchen restaurants. When we finally emerged from the maze of covered streets, we came upon this:

It is a giant "hoko" float that's used in the Gion Matsuri. (Matsuri being a festival, and the Gion Matsuri being one of the 3 biggest festivals in Japan). We didn't quite know what was going on at the time, though we were vaguely aware that we had landed in Kyoto during the Matsuri period. There were a ton of people crowding the sidewalk, trying to get pictures of this thing. And there are actually close to 30 of them, if memory serves me right.

A little later on, some of the hoko had guys playing music on them (flutes and some sort of chimes, I think). I'm pretty sure they only ever played one song, so it got pretty repetitive.

For... no reason I could discern, there was some little procession of the Shinsengumi. It was really hard to get this picture, since the guys were always walking and the people on the sidewalk were just inching along, not allowing me to get ahead of them.

We ended up walking down a street where all these little food vendors were setting up,  so we got some shaved ice! Cinnamon got strawberry and I got ramune and they were delicious - and very refreshing, since it was so hot.

After finishing those off, we decided to head back to the hostel to rest for a bit, since we wanted to go out later and check out the real matsuri activities, since they seemed to just be getting set up. I'll post more about that next time, since there are quite a few pictures involved. Stay tuned!

Partytown

Just an advance warning - there are going to be a lot of pictures in this post. So let's start with where we were. Thursday, we decided to hop across Tokyo Bay to Odaiba because it sounded like the thing to do at the time.

Everybody wants to go to a manmade island, right?

We got there around 3-ish, so obviously this picture is from much later in the day. However, it illustrates where we were, so that's why it's first.

Yep, we were at a place called Palette Town! We went to a big shopping area called Venusfort, which is designed to look like an Italian village or something. Very interesting.

You can't see from this picture, but the building's ceiling is designed to look like the sky and the lighting on it changes colors so that every hour, on the hour, it looks like the sun is setting. There were a lot of tourists here, mostly Chinese it seemed. Lots of families.

So after shopping for a while, we went across the way toward Mega Web so we could ride the world's 8th tallest ferris wheel, the Odaiba Great Sky Wheel. It cost about $9 to ride, but one rotation takes nearly 20 minutes, and the view is fantastic, so it was worth it. (And just so you can get a feel for how tall this thing was, you board it from the 3rd floor). Here's some pictures of it from the ground.

This is actually from outside of the Palette Town area - basically one of the first things you see when you exit the Tokyo Teleport station.

This picture (one of my favorites, actually) is from right by the ticket gates for the ferris wheel. Very tall (115 meters, to be exact)!

Now on to the pictures from inside~

This lovely picture accurately depicts our reactions to being on the ferris wheel, heading to the top. It was a little scary at first, since neither of us had been on a ferris wheel in at least 5 years.

Here's a view looking back across the bay toward Tokyo proper. Everything's starting to look teeny tiny.

Here you can see Tokyo Tower (again). It's unfortunate it looks so hazy, but that's what happens when it's hot out.

Random shot of me (looking awful) with the Fuji TV building just to my left.

Jugochi Wharf - very exciting, yes? But all the big boats look pretty small from this high.

Now a shot of Cinnamon with the wharf behind her. She looks pretty happy!

The building that looks like a cluster of upside down pyramids is Tokyo Big Site which is a big exhibition center. It is also where I'd be going to Comiket if it didn't start two days after we leave. Bummer.

And that concludes the view from the ferris wheel. We actually took a ton more pictures, but most of them are essentially the same things - various buildings in and around Tokyo.

On the way back, we wandered through the Toyota Mega Web to check out all the crazy cars they make over here.

Of course, they've got the Prius here, too, only their steering wheels are all on the right. It feels weird when you're sitting in it.

Here's the Toyota Crown. I think it's the biggest sedan Toyota makes here. Most all of the taxis around Tokyo are older models of this car. What do you think, mom? Big enough for you?

Here's a picture of the interior of the Crown. I think all Japanese cars come with a navigation system or else no one would ever figure out where they're supposed to be going. It is seriously extremely confusing. And this fancy little package will only set you back about $55,000. Luxury (and hybrids) don't come cheap!

Next to their little corral of hybrid cars, they had a bunch of displays on being "green" and eco-friendly, so we wandered through there for a while.

This guy wants you to reduce your CO2 emissions. I just thought the picture was funny.

So after that thrilling experience, we decided to go catch a bite to eat and ended up back in Venusfort at a quaint little establishment called Fish Dance. Naturally, it's an Italian restaurant. (You didn't see that one coming?) Cinnamon and I both had pizza and salad and dessert (otherwise known as the "Fish Dance set")

Cinnamon helping herself to our delicious Caesar salad.

My pizza, the "margherita", and Cinnamon's 4 cheese pizza. The thing she's holding (if you can't tell) is honey, which the waitress told us was the "best match" for cheese pizza. Cinnamon agreed it was very good.

Here's my (slightly blurry) dessert - the square choco cake (that's what the menu read). The presentation was very pretty and the cake was delicious.

Cinnamon's dessert, the Oreo cheesecake. She said it could've used more Oreo flavor, but she liked the treble clef of chocolate syrup.

Looks like we're sitting outside, doesn't it? We're not. That's the beauty of Venusfort. We even felt like we were outside, sometimes.

When we left, it was dark out, so you know what that means - lights! And they were very cool.

I highly recommend you look at this picture full size, because the colors look a lot better.

We walked across the highway and over to Aqua City, which seemed to be another smaller shopping complex (not of the Italian variety), but most of the places were closing up. So we walked through and came out to a spectacular view of the Tokyo skyline. And you better believe I took plenty of pictures (though most of them could've used the aid of a tripod).

Oh, did I forget to mention Tokyo has its very own (miniature) Statue of Liberty? Because it does. You an also see the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower. You can never have too many pictures of Tokyo Tower, apparently.

Here's a closer up picture without Lady Liberty. You can even see some of the boats on the bay all lit up. I'm pretty sure they were dinner cruises or some sort of tour boats. One of them sounded like a bunch of people having a good time, listening to music and cheering.

Tokyo as taken with the actual "night mode" of my camera. What a difference that makes! I had to set the camera down on the step, so you end up getting the underside of the walkway above us and part of the step it was sitting on, but I think it really frames the skyline nicely. Definitely one of my favorite pictures.

Since it was getting late and everything was closing up, we just walked down by Decks Tokyo Beach (which is actually a "beach" of sorts, but you can't swim there), passed the Fuji TV building, though all my pictures of it came out pretty blurry, and then headed back home. All in all, a very full day! We plan on going back one more time so we can ride the ferris wheel at night and get an even more spectacular view of Tokyo from the air.

Friday, we headed to Kameido to go to a little place called Sun Street. It turned out to be mostly geared toward kids, but had a few shops and quite a few little eateries - including a Sizzler!

We never did figure out just what a "rambling market" was. (For those curious, Tsutaya is a store that sells DVDs, CDs and books).

Here's the inside of Sun Street (and the Sizzler). As you can see, quite a few kids around. The place had a Toys R Us, two arcades and a variety of stores selling children's clothing. However, Cinnamon and I both walked away with some new shirts from a store called Honeys. Surprisingly affordable, too!

Next up, you'll get to see all the pictures (together, we took a total of 200) we snapped at Koishikawa Korakuen Garden. I'm sure you're all excited.