Vista Kamata Tokyo

... stop before Tokyo and we were at a huge bus terminal were all the buses of Japan sort of stopped in between their routes. What they had was almost for every possible food or drink item a machine! Okay we know the soft drink machines and the candy bar machines. Here they had french fries machines that give you Hot french fries. Or a mix drink machine....push the buttons and you have a Bacardi and coke if you like.?? ( did not see a Pina Colada machine ...

... means everyone is there at around 3 am in the morning loading produce into the dock. Can anyone really cope with doing that every day of their life? Apparently I could never be a fisherman.<br><br>If anyone ever wishes to visit the fish market, make sure you do it with someone who has a quick eye for things. I'm sure that if it weren't for Tom, I'd mostly like have been flattened by a truck carrying dead fish. There are even signs up warning people to not get injured. Its truly a ...

... literally translates to 'The Pure Water Temple'. The ascent was surprisingly pleasant, weaving our way through an atmospheric, but inherently poorly designed market district, in which each shop and stall seemed to have climbed atop one another to avoid the hoards of people. I exaggerate not when I refer to it as a literal sea of people. I could not see my feet. It was here, taking in the local merchandise and bizarre shops embodying the twisted-beyond-recognition perception of ...

... choices. This wasn't even water. It was some kind of syrup that tried to taste like water...but didn't. But at the same time<br>did. ANYHOW we bought Sumo tickets and headed to Tokyo's futuristic capital, Odaiba.<br><br>I'll leave Tom to explain the rest in incredible, fanciful, lengthy detail for you because, again there is a line and we must check out of our hostel, leave Tokyo and head for Nagoya - which is only really three hours away.<br><br>Rachael Out.

... far up into the balconies surrounding a tiny Sumo arena in which men in fancy dresses - cause lets face it, I don't care what you want to call it, a dress is a dress - dance about and sing with fat guys in their underwear. Ridiculous as it sounds, the entire getup is quite hypnotic and the tradition-soaked sumo matches strangely awe inspiring. Not to mention intense. Nothing is cooler than watching two half-naked, simply gargantuan Japanese engaging in a sissy ...

... do celebrate it, in a way, so shops, and especially the larger department stores, are decorated and have seasonally-appropriate music playing. It seems Christmas is seen as more of a romantic holiday, so it's a big deal to go out on a date on Christmas Eve. The other tradition is Christmas cake, which is strawberry shortcake. I'm not sure when and why this ...

... the trip down there (and Mina--one of my housemates--was kind enough to play tour guide for the day, which was quite necessary as I would have more than likely just fallen asleep on the train down there and who knows where I might have ended up). There was just something about this buddha that was different from all of the others I had seen...and although I cannot pinpoint exactly what it was, I believe it was in the face. Though nearly 8 centuries old, the ...

Tokyo is not a very pretty city; it is spotlessly clean but there are no interesting or beautiful buildings-just gray, faceless rectangles of varying heights. I suppose that is why our tour this morning included the orange Tokyo Tower which is really just an ugly television antenna and the plainest Imperial Palace you can imagine. The highlight of the tour, for me, was a trip to the oldest Buddhist temple and the nearby ...

... is all you get in expensive Tokyo. The best thing about the 'Mansion' is its insulation. The place was always warm surrounding by concrete walls. I read somewhere that the Japanese government has an unofficial policy of keeping housing prices high. High prices has the desired effect of keeping Japanese workers working as long as possible to pay off their horrendous mortgages. As you walk around, you will notice very few high rises. Just one of ...

... picked us up and took us to his apartment in Chiba. After a quick dinner, we put our jetlagged bodies to bed and called it a day. We were standing in Shoji's living room when we felt the building begin to shake! An earthquake after we had only been in Japan for 3 hours!! We didn:t get to see Chikako, Shoji's wife and another of my Saipan co-workers, that night since she got home from work late and we were already sacked out ...