Japan

So I actually typed this up the week after the Japan trip, but put off posting it till now cause I was hoping to maybe add some pics to this desperately long post first... but that never happened, and I doubt I'll find the time to sort through all of them AND post them in one go. I'm busy enough with other stuff as it is.

Instead, I'm leaving that job to the also somewhat-stuck-in-2013 photoblog and putting this up as is. 

Just arrived home on Sunday (11/9) and I already want to go baaaack.

Highlights and other thoughts. This is gonna be a long one.

1. FOOD. SO MUCH FOOD
2. Places
3. Memories
4. Anime/Manga/Video Game merchandise.
5. General notes on traveling:
6. What I'd hit up next time:


1. FOOD. SO MUCH FOOD.

- okonomiyaki (savory pancakes, often with seafood). I still can't decide how much I like it overall, but it's pretty unique. I liked both the egg and green onion based ones in particular.

- takoyaki (octopus balls). The best I ever had was found in Osaka. I didn't even like takoyaki that much the first time I had it in the States.

- Kobe beef. Not as fatty/melt in your mouth as it could've been, but still pretty good.

- onigiri (rice balls) filled with fish/spam/meat, and croquettes from the local supermarket.

- Hakata Nagahama Ramen Miyoshi in Kyoto. first real hole-in-the-wall ramen joint I've been to and favorite ramen ever had. kinda reminds me of the noodle soup they sell in Indonesia. and it came with rice krispies flakes you could sprinkle on top.

- regular sushi on par with the better places in the Bay.

- McDonald's tonkatsu burger. The black squid ink Burger King burger kinda tasted like a normal burger.

- matcha(finely milled green tea) mochi samples from all of the stands in Kyoto. as well as matcha odango (green tea rice dumplings).

- fruit honey! the samples tasted so good I bought some honey at both of the locations we ran into.

- kaiseki (multi-course) meal at the ryokan with a traditional breakfast the next morning. so much food I hadn't heard of before.

- hojicha (roasted green tea) ice cream. and the hojicha latte from Starbucks.

- Tonkatsu Maisen. I didn't realize how much variety you could find in pork tonkatsu (breaded deep-fried), from the brand name, to the type of meat (loin vs. the smaller fillet). Also, tonkatsu with Japanese curry at another restaurant.

- tsukumen-style (with dipping sauce) udon.

- omakase (chef's pick, except for the last roll here) sushi at Sushi Dai in the Tsukiji Fish Market. Waited 3.5 hours for this, and it didn't disappoint. I didn't have the sperm of cod ala carte that the other guys did, but eh, I don't regret not having it. The tuna in Japan is waaaaay better than the tuna here; I can see why it's one of the main fishes there over salmon.

- Beard Papa's cream puff with a cookie-based puff.

- tsukemen-style ramen with thick noodles.

- Hakata-style ramen from Ichiran with a unique one-stall per person dining experience. Part of a chain and not as good as Miyoshi but still beats most of the ramen I've had in the states personally. You get to specify everything from how spicy, how oily, how thick the noodles are, how much green onions and meet you want, and so on. The spicy range extends from 0 to half to whole to 2x to anywhere up to 20x.

- strawberry cheesecake crepe from Harajuku.

- unadon (unagi rice bowl), with eel that melts in your mouth.

- yakitori (skewered meat), horsemeat sashimi (tastes like... regular meat with sashimi texture) and donburi (rice bowl with chicken+egg).

Missed out on shabu shabu (hot pot) and ice cream filled melon pan. NEXT TIME.

2. Places

- The pachinko parlor we went to in Dotonbori. Way louder than any casino I've ever been to and rather chaotic looking. I don't think any of us knows what pachinko is still even after watching Wenting attempt to play one and getting help via broken communication with an attendant. Apparently the machines do crazy things (I saw a trophy emerge out of nowhere from inside the fighting-themed pachinko machine) if you do well enough.

- The bridge in Osaka that Sammy wanted to take us to and underwhelmed everyone. Well at least the lights looked flashy/how you might expect Japan to look like from the pictures.

- The Video Game Bar Space Station in Osaka that made us realize how much we sucked at Mario Kart 64. Mario Tennis was really fun to play again, although now that I know how to use an N64 controller properly (long story) it made me remember how much it hurt to use that controller for long periods of time.

- Himeji Castle. tagline: better than the bridge! The largest and I'm presuming best preserved castle in Japan from the old days. It originally was surrounded by a series of moats that extended up to the current location of Himeji Station, but only the innermost moat has survived to the present day. We had an nice elderly man as our volunteer tour guide who spoke pretty decent English and showed us around the parts of the castle that was open, as the main keep itself was closed for renovations. Our ticket also included admission to the neighboring gardens, which sort of turned into a photo shoot site for the others.

- Kinkakuji, the golden pavilion in Kyoto. Layered with thousands of sheets of gold worth only a few grams each, but at least it looked really pretty. Towards the end of the walking path there were a lot of stalls selling and offering samples of sweets like matcha mochi and rice odango, which I helped myself to a lot of.

- Fushimi Inari Taisha, the thousand torii gates layered in a row along the pathway up a mountain hike. We only got as far as the first 10% due to time constraints [because I wanted to hit up the manga museum before it closed.] This was the first place where I noticed the habitual routine people undergo when praying at these shrines: toss in a coin, ring the bell, bow twice, clap twice, and bow again while praying.

- Sanjusangendo, the hall with the thousand statues of the Buddhist goddess Kannon and named for having 33 spaces between columns along the length of the hall (hence san-ju-san, or 33 in Japanese). No pictures were allowed inside the hall itself, but there's plenty of those online anyway. The statues, including the giant one placed in the center, are guarded by an additional 28 statues modeled after Hindu deities + Fujin and Raijin, resulting in an odd mishmash of Hindu and Buddhist influences. Apparently the temple is also a popular site for archery competitions; we read about one such competition from the 1600's whose teenage winner shot over 13,000 arrows within 24 hours at an average rate of over 500 per hour.

- The route from Yasaka Shrine -> Higashiyama Streets/Kodaiji Temple -> Kiyomizudera, which made out to be quite a decent walk/hike. Higashiyama is a series of pebbled streets that I believe are meant to be preserved from the days when Kyoto used to be one of the capitals of Japan, so it comes across as feeling very traditional. Kiyomizudera itself was under renovations, so it didn't look as impressive as it did on our ticket stub (Wenting: Ohhh that's what it's supposed to look like!). The view of Kyoto at sunset from the top of the temple grounds was great though. Also, school kids EVERYWHERE.

- Shibuya Crossing, which was pretty underwhelming until we went to the Starbucks there at night and saw it swarmed with people from every direction. Shibuya itself was also pretty great, filled with malls and clothing stores with contemporary street-wear. The airbnb we stayed at was a few minutes away from the station, so we were in this area (mainly for eating) a lot over the course of our stay. I'd probably look for a place near here again next time I come back.

- Kabukicho (the Red Light District), probably the shadiest part of Japan we encountered on our trip (well, by Japan standards as the country overall is pretty safe; I feel safer walking around most of Japan at night than I would San Francisco or Oakland). Lots of random people standing around and observing passerbys. If you stand out as a foreigner they'll come after you asking to take you out to a bar or strip club and start following you if you try to ignore them ("Why are you ignoring me?"), oftentimes with the end goal of swiping your passport/credit cards if you have them on you. When we went there we were looking to check out the Robot Restaurant, but we decided to pass on it when we got there and found that admission costed 6000 yen.

- Omoide Yokocho, a red lantern lit alley neighboring Shinjuku station full of stalls upon stalls upon stalls of yakitori and other outdoor Japanese eateries serving around 8-15 people per stall. We stopped at one near the end of the alley, although apparently the yakitori wasn't that great. Wes recognized that the owners were actually Chinese from the way they spoke, which naturally explains everything.

- The Golden Gai, which we didn't get very far through coming from Kabukicho. Wound up at an open air bar (with some rather drunk Japanese patrons) that served us food when we didn't ask for it but apparently we weren't charged extra for it anyway. Wenting's friend actually managed to haggle down the cover price by 100 yen for all of us, which was nice.

- Tsukiji Fish Market, famously known for its 5 am fish auctions and neighboring sushi restaurants that people line up at for hours in order to get super fresh sushi. We got there around 6 after missing the 5 am Ginza train by a matter of seconds and then getting lost trying to find Sushi Dai, as there aren't really any clear indications of where the market is actually located when you get there. Google Maps actually had the right map location but pointed us in the wrong walking direction.

- Akihabara, the electronics district. I went out for a day excursion here after the fish market that pretty much lasted most of the day because every store in the area consisted of 6-7 floors, and being in exploration mode, I felt compelled to check out every single one. The Yodobashi Camera building felt like a Best Buy crammed with enough content (including suitcases/luggage) to stretch across 7 floors. I particularly liked looking around Animate (anime/manga merch), Super Potato (the retro video games store), and Kotobukiya (more general anime/game/comics stuff), but there were way more places to choose from than I had time for.

One building whose name I couldn't remember had an interesting setup where the first floor had regular anime/manga goods, then figurines on the next floor, then gundam models on the next floor, then planes and tanks, then military gear and guns until you finally reached a shooting range on the last floor. There were also random girls in maid costumes around a lot of the street corners handing out ads presumably for the maid cafes in the area. I didn't check those out though.

- Roppongi, where we went clubbing at Feria for the night. The goal was to stay up till 5 AM, but we wound up leaving around 3. Cue discussion about why Japanese nightclubs start so late (12:30 AM, more people show up around 1-3ish), possibly because they work so long during the day and need naps or something. The club itself was split across 5 floors, about 3 of which each had different music playing although we wound up in the basement most of the time as it played more contemporary/familiar stuff. It actually felt really tailored well towards westerners, which makes sense considering Roppongi is where you tend to find more of the expatriate/foreigner community.

Some of the others went to check out a club in Shibuya called Womb the following night that attracted a more local Japanese crowd. Apparently it wasn't as enjoyable as it was even more hipster than hipster with underground music they hadn't heard before and less talkative people. Maybe if I were more awake that night I'd have been interested.

- Harajuku, home of hip clothes shopping stores and colorful wares. Most of the stores along Takeshita Dorii seemed to be aimed towards females, whereas a larger general selection of stores could be found on the twice-long neighboring street, Omotesando. On Sundays the area is known for the cosplaying youths that flock the area, particularly on the side of the train station towards Yoyogi Park I believe, but I didn't get a chance to see it that day. Ellie captured a few pics of some people in interesting outfits like fishmen, but since the others got there later in the day there didn't seem to be as many of them around then either.

- the Edo Tokyo Museum, a huge and towering structure housing a series of exhibits about the development of Tokyo from the Edo period (when it was actually called Edo; the name Tokyo came about during the Meiji Restoration) to the present. I didn't have as much time as I'd have liked to read all of the exhibits, but what I did manage to see was pretty cool, with lifesize building models as well as smaller models of the city and its buildings from the old days, some of which even opened up mechanically when triggered by a tour guide. A good number of the exhibits had Japanese-only text so I felt like I was missing a bit there too.

- Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower in the world. Admission was around 2000 yen and you had to pay about the same ticket price to go from floor 350->450, but we opted for staying on the former floor instead as the view was good enough there. It was too foggy/dark to see Mt. Fuji but the panoramic view of the rest of the city was still impressive. There were touch screen stations staggered around the floor allowing you to interact with an image of the view you were looking at and zoom in on specific locations, change the view between day and night, and highlight historical events/times involving whatever city portion you were looking at.

- Odaiba, a man-made island sitting off the south-east coast of Tokyo that was originally constructed in the 1850's to ward off sea invaders like the US fleet. Currently it houses a number of shopping malls and other buildings I didn't get a chance to visit like the Fuji TV building and the Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation... I heard it's not that up to date by today's standards though, especially for Japan). We came here mainly to see the giant Gundam standing outside of the DiverCity Mall (see later in this post). Behind AquaCity Odaiba you get a good view of the Rainbow Bridge connecting Odaiba to the mainland, as well as an odd-looking fake Statue of Liberty in a park.

3. Memories

i. Wes: I feel like the iconic image of this trip is Vansen suffering.
to give some examples:
- falling sick for a week and a half. Wes's impression of Vansen sickly asking to be passed water from his bed in Thailand sounded pretty miserable.

- wearing a face mask and fitting in with the locals in Japan because so many other locals also wore face masks.

- luggage falling apart one handle at a time until it had to be carried around everywhere. There was one moment at the bus stop where it looked like duct tape would work, until the luggage toppled over on the sidewalk and the handles fell off again right as the bus came.

- traveling around with a replacement luggage for a day, which kinda cemented the image of always seeing him with a luggage somewhere. and the random moments like when it rolled away from him down the bus aisle and he had to chase after it, and then when it blocked us from entering random places like the Skytree tower.

- I wasn't there for this, but falling asleep standing in a nightclub and then believing Ellie was missing when she didn't even come with them.

ii. Wenting randomly posing at opportune moments for pictures when there weren't even any cameras out.

I also took enough pictures of Sammy taking pictures of Wenting that I could start an album. #AdventuresWithSamting

iii. Our embarrassing half-powered attempt at doing a "go team!" huddle cheer the second time. I don't think it happened again after that.

iv. Everytime Stephen would ask me about the history of the place we were visiting and I didn't know, which practically was everywhere. "Useless." -__-

v. Reuniting with Lani in Tokyo!! And then losing track of her for a couple of hours when we went clubbing at Feria and finally finding her asleep at McDonald's haha.

vi. Vansen's habit of going into a fighting stance and air punching/kicking Sammy that gradually infected everyone else on the trip because Sammy is such a fool (okay, that saying also infected us) and kept taking us to restaurants that happened to be closed... and is otherwise a rather obvious walking target. Although Wes did it to me in a hallway once too.

vii. Nomi-houdai (all-you-can-drink) for 600 yen for 45 minutes at Watami in Kyoto. I discovered that plum wine is the only drink that doesn't give me a hangover headache within two hours. I also got really drunk off of plum wine. -__-

viii. Wes: No offense Wenting, but I might've mistaken you for a guy too.
(context: reluctance with nightclub girls after coming from Thailand)

ix. I wasn't present for this, but the girl at the second club who apparently wouldn't talk to Wes because she thought he was Indian because of his beard, until Wenting corrected her and then she thought he was hot... because changing races changes everything.

x. Ellie and I panicking over the random KitKat flavors we discovered at the airport shop right as it was closing (and then Ellie last minute changing her mind over them at each subsequent store we came across because all of them sold the same freaking KitKats). Matcha, Sakura Blossom Matcha, Azuki Bean, Strawberry Cheesecake, Wasabi, so many to choose from.

xi. That talk about Sammy being the glue that held us together. Also the opportunity to vent about living with him and why we left, hehe.

4. Anime/Manga/Video Game merchandise.

- The Kyoto International Manga Museum. Biggest collection of manga I've ever seen, and functions simultaneously as an art museum and a library so there were people everywhere just sitting down and reading manga. I didn't have time to read anything myself, but the artwork and overall decor was pretty cool for a place converted from an old elementary school. Considering how much I love exploring new libraries, it was pretty much right up my alley.

They had a large life-size sculpture of the Phoenix from Tezuka's magnum opus, as well as another exhibition dedicated to the lifetime's work of a shoujo author I hadn't heard of before, Yasuko Oike. A lot of the guys in her artwork looked similar to me, but I was more impressed by the vast range and length of her work itself, from contemporary spy action to historically based series. The main exhibit of the museum itself covered the history and making of manga in the 20th century, and lined along the walls were bookshelves with each wall section dedicated to a year (1969, 1970, 1971... etc. up till mid 2000's) of manga.

- Speaking of which, manga in Japan is so cheap! Particularly at Book-Off (a popular local used book store chain) where individual volumes could average around 200 yen each. I found a boxed set of the complete Monster, 18 volumes, for 1800 yen at Mandarake, which I felt tempted to buy except for the fact that I'd already read the series, the box was rather bulky, and being a seinen (adult-demographic) series I wouldn't have been able to read it anyway without furigana. I wound up buying a 4-volume set of ,Magic Kaito which apparently had a re-release possibly to celebrate Detective Conan hitting 20 years this year.

- The Pokemon Centers were a bit underwhelming; the others were expecting something more like a life-sized version of the ones you see in the games, but instead they looked more like regular mall stores that happen to have Pokemon merchandise. The plushie selection was limited mainly to the most recent XY games, most of which the others hadn't heard of before so I was getting questions like what mega evolution were (see article), what the relationship was between Plusle/Minun and Pikachu (nothing) and why the Squirtle plushie was so blue (it was just really blue).

Ryan actually sent me a list of plushies he'd have wanted in order of preference (...typical Ryan) and the only thing they had on his list was a tiny Inkay... well there was a giant one too but there was no way in hell I'd transport something that big and stupid looking for him, sorry Ryan. The Mega plushies were pretty cool though. Mega Ampharos! Mega Gengar!

- The giant Gundam in Odaiba. Apparently it looks more impressive at nighttime (actually... so does everything else in Tokyo) and the Gundam lights up to the point where it looks like it'd fit in at an EDM festival. The video even showed a DJ next to it at night. At least during the day, it spewed out mist-smoke from its back and turned its head when we saw it.

I didn't get a chance to actually go inside the main part of the Gundam mini-theme park at the top of the DiverCity mall, but I saw the giant model of A Baoa Qu from afar near the entrance and almost had a nerd-gasm. Partly because they actually had a model of something from the series that wasn't a Gundam for once. AHHH SO COOL.

- One Piece was practically everywhere, and the One Piece store was pretty cool, if not a little overpriced, although not as comprehensive as it could've been considering all of the other merchandise I managed to find outside of the store. I managed to find a poster from the most recent arc, Dressrosa, for 100 yen at another store in Akihabara and wound up caving in and buying figurines of both Trafalgar Law and Luffy in his Film Z outfit.

- Right next to the One Piece store was a ministore dedicated to Dangan Ronpa, whose sequel I just played about a month ago. I didn't realize it was that popular. I wound up buying a small Monokuma plushie from the Animate in Akihabara later on (along with a Durarara!! folder showcasing the cover illustrations from the light novels).

- The Yodobashi Camera Building in Akihabara had life sized versions of Sailor Moon's scepter and moon wand. Since Crystal premiered this fall there's been quite a few ads and merchandise for it around too.

That store also kept playing this annoying rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic... commercialized into a jingle. It was enough to almost drive me crazy combined with the mass screens and noises coming from everywhere.

5. General notes on traveling:

- Knowing even a little bit of Japanese is really helpful in getting around. You may possibly come across people in the streets who happen to know English (Wenting ran up to a guy who slipped in the subway station and he thanked her with decent English), but you can't really count on it and a lot of restaurants and serving establishments will still have trouble communicating with you otherwise. Taxi drivers generally don't know much English at all, so I'd generally only rely on them if other methods of public transportation are infeasible (like 12-5 AM when the buses/subway/trains are usually closed).

- Phrases that got confused on the trip:
arigatou - thanks
ohayou - good morning
(add gozaimasu to the end of above for more politeness)
konnichiwa - hello
konbanwa - good evening

sumimasen - excuse me
gomenasai - sorry

kawaii - cute
kowai - scary

otearai / toire - washroom/toilet.
latter is more casual; most public signs will show the former, お手洗い.

- You generally don't need to tip at eating establishments/in general, and it might be seen as insulting if you try to tip someone.

- Foreigners are technically supposed to carry ID on them at all times - passports specifically, but when we went clubbing a regular ID (driver's license etc.) sufficed for entry.

- You can use credit cards (watch for international exchange fees on your card), but having physical money is handy as a lot of places will only take cash. 7-Elevens with ATMs are all over the place in the cities. If you have a Charles Schwab checking account in particular it's really easy to withdraw, as it reimburses all ATM fees and doesn't have an international exchange fee like other banks do.

- 100 yen = $0.87, so it's not exactly a 1 to 1 ratio. Someone on our trip made the mistake of Venmo charging the others literally at 100 yen to $1, not gonna name who :P. Also it'd be a good idea to budget how much you actually intend to spend ahead of time as you lose money when you exchange yen back to dollars.

- A lot of the ticket machines at the subway/train stations have an English option. For intercity travel (for us it was Osaka -> Himeji -> Kobe -> Kyoto -> Tokyo and between the districts in Tokyo itself) you generally take the JR trains, and you can buy a 1 week pass that provides for unlimited rides on all JR based lines including the shinkansen/bullet train between Tokyo/Kyoto. They don't sell the pass to foreigners within the country, so you need to preorder the pass in advance before traveling and then pick it up at the JR station ticket office. To enter any station you just show your pass to the guard at the gate.

- For general subways/metros within the city you can buy a PASMO/Suica card at the ticket machine. It requires a 500 yen deposit that you can reimburse upon returning the card, plus however much money you want to store on it; it's functionally the same as a Clipper card in the Bay Area. The Suica card is more generally useable on JR lines whereas PASMO works more with private lines from what I hear, but oftentimes the two are interchangeable at most stations that accept IC (integrated circuit cards) with few exceptions that take one over the other. As Suica is owned by JR East I think it has more application outside of the Tokyo area though.

- Both metro and JR stations in the cities will contain locker stations you can use to store your luggage while in transit between locations. The bigger lockers are often harder to find unoccupied however, and all the lockers we came across only took 100 yen coins with price ranging from 100-500 yen.

6. What I'd hit up next time:

- Meiji Shrine and Yoyogi Park when it isn't infested with dengue fever mosquitos. I also missed Harajuku on Sunday so I didn't get to see any of the cosplayers when the others went there, although I think they'd show up more in the morning anyway.

- Asakusa and Sensoji Temple. Only got a view of it from the Skytree Tower sadly.

- Ikebukuro. I realize a lot of the merch here is targeted towards females, but I kinda just want to explore the area... I'll admit partly because of Durarara!! lol.

- Shimokitazawa, another neighborhood I didn't get a chance to check out that's supposed to be similar to Harajuku except less crowded and more laid back.

- Nakano Broadway just to check out how it's different from Akihabara.

- Ueno Park (especially if during the spring) and all of the museums there.

- Speaking of museums, there's also the Suginami and Toei animation museums, the Doraemon museum, the Ishinomori museum, the Tezuka museum, and the Studio Ghibli Museum, which happened to be closed for the time period we were there... :/

- Spring/Summer festivals! and Tokyo Game Show or Comiket? It kinda depends when I go.

- Check out a concert if I can find a band I like that's touring in the area. The extent of the Japanese underground music I've listened to mainly consists Boredoms and Boris (+ a little of euphoria, Acid Mothers Temple, and OOIOO) but I feel like there's probably a lot more out there I'd be into.

- Tokyo Disneysea, for being the only Disney theme park I can think of that doesn't already have an analogue in the States.

- an onsen [with a view of Mt. Fuji?].  The ryokan's bath was nice, but an outdoor hot spring would be even better. Higher altitudes and I don't mix very well (asthma) so I dunno how well I'd be able to handle hiking Fuji-san itself.

- Ginkakuji and the Philosopher's Walk. I know the silver pavilion isn't as impressive as the gold one, but this entire area sounds like my kind of solo exploration adventure.

- revisit Himeji Castle and Kiyomizudera when they aren't partially closed off for renovations. And maybe finish off the Fushimi Inari hike.

- other cities like Hiroshima and Miyajima.

All of this would probably take much longer than the trip I just went on lol.