TravelStream™ news feed for member tbassplayer on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/tbassplayer en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:44:28 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1251297360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1251297360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1251297360/tpod.html Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:44:28 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Tokyo, Kanto, Japan

1-18The Morning after Disneyland was Sunday, so we slept in. It felt good to sleep in, even though we were in a new city with tons of things to see, we couldn’t resist the temptation to just do nothing for one morning. After touring Europe, Karla and I are professionals and “Combat Vacationing”. We can pack in all top 10 things to do in a city within the first three days with time to spare. Sometimes I forget that Vacations are for relaxing and recharging your batteries. There’s no point in killing yourself seeing the sights, then needing a vacation from your vacation. So we hit snooze and killed the morning. …zzzzzzzzzWhen we finally got motivated, we found that it was another beautiful day, crisp and clear with high wispy clouds that promised no rain in our future. From the Shinigawa station we traveled East this time on the Yamanote line to the Harajuku station. Just out the door and over the bridge is a large park that includes the Meiji Shrine. The park and shrine was originally built in 1920, a few years after the Emperor Meiji died. The park covers some 175 acres and is heavily wooded. Some of the buildings were bombed in WWII but in 1953 the local communities came together to rebuild the shrine to it’s original state. Being that this was a Sunday the place was buzzing with people enjoying the day walking around. Crossing the parking lot, which was surprisingly empty compared to the number of people walking around. We entered through the main gate. In the parking lot were a number of large black Chevy Van’s with the Imperial of Japan flying from them. ‘That’s funny, I thought they stopped using that flag after WWII’, I said to myself. But after all, this was the Meiji Shrine, perhaps it had something to do with the old Emperor. At the entrance there was a large arch with an upward curved cross member, this is the standard entrance to all Shinto shrines and once you see one, you will begin spotting them all over the place in Japan. This entrance was just like the others, but HUGE. Just inside that, there was a large wall where the giant paper lanterns were hung. I was thinking, ‘Jeez is everything in this place giant?’ These lanterns represented the list of people who donated to build the shrine, or in this case, rebuild it. When we got closer I could see that they weren’t lanterns at all, they were decorated barrels, painted to look like the wall of lanterns you see at most shrines. Come to find out later they were barrels of Sake, Not sure if there was any Sake in them now, but they were symbolic, and there were a lot of them. There were many signs in Japanese and I could tell that this was a place that catered to all tourists, but mostly Japanese tourists.*side note:I’m not sure how Lonely Planet missed this, but somehow we went to this temple, dedicated to the Emperor Meiji, walked around it all morning, and never actually realized that the Emperor was entombed IN that very building. Perhaps that is just assumed in Japan when you talk about a shrine, it means also “tomb”. I suppose the person being honored has to show up to his own party. But I somehow missed that memo, anyway… I digress. This is the reason why this place has special meaning to Japanese people. And perhaps why there weren’t so many signs in English, which the Japanese are pretty good about placing everywhere else in Tokyo.We arrived in the main area just in time to see a wedding happening. I didn’t want to rubberneck, but after I saw several of the other Japanese tourists whip out their cameras and start standing around snapping pictures of the procession, I figured I could participate without feeling too awkward. Keep in mind, I am already white, and a foot taller than everyone around me, so It’s not like I was keeping a low profile to begin with. After the ceremony in the central square area, the procession moved through a little gate into a more private area to do some more of the ceremony. Karla was looking at me with dreamy eyes… I told her if I had a diamond in my pocket, I would have already given it to her by now. She took it in stride.   By the main entrance there were places where you could draw a random fortune for a 100 yen donation. There was an option for English so I gave it a go. All of the scrolls had poems or phrases written by the emperor Meiji. They were thoughtful and timeless words, it's amazing how the phrase that I got still held true today.On our way out of the shrine we passed back over the bridge where several young girls in dress up costumes were gathered, as if, preparing for some kind of dress up event. If I hadn’t read about this in the Lonely Planet guide, I would have thought that this was some kind of Asian flash mob. But this is actually a weekly happening, and these participants are commonly referred to as the “harajuku girls”. Some were dressed in short frilly dresses, others in combat boots and G.I. dress downs. Goth, Punk, Rave, Futuristic, and Retro were all represented. Many people who were not in a costume were standing around taking pictures. I had read that Harajuku was a popular fashion and shopping district. So this was the place to show off your style on a Sunday afternoon. I had not considered it before, but all these Japanese kids wear uniforms to school, the only time they GET to show their style is after school or on the weekends. No wonder there were so many girls here. Aside form standing around in groups and talking, there was really not much going on, no demonstrations, no events, just dressed up girls, standing around.I took some pictures and got a free hug from a girl holding a sign saying “Hug Free” in English. I knew what she meant so I obliged. We hopped back on the subway and went back to have lunch at the hotel. On our way from the station to the hotel I saw some more of those black vans, this time with VERY LARGE imperial flags and loud speakers on top of them. As we crossed the street we saw a woman on the sidewalk preaching into a megaphone, she did not look very happy. Along the parameter of the action were several uniformed police officers standing and watching. Wondering if this was some sort of Anti-American demonstration, I asked a police officer if it was ok to walk down the sidewalk, he assured us that we were ok, and we passed by the woman without drawing too much attention to ourselves. I asked around, and to the best of my understanding, they were not necessarily Anit-American’s as the were Pro-Imperial Japanese. Demonstrating to protest the dissolution of the Royal family from the governmental seat. Which happened to be done by the Americans, well….Allies, but nobody blames Britain for anything. Oh yea, except that whole empire that THEY had back in the day.Again, I digress….Arriving back at the hotel had Lunch and rested for a spell, we had something special planned for this afternoon: A Tea Ceremony.Karla was about to start studying Cha-Do with an instructor in Portland. Cha-Do is the study of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, and also includes iki-bana flower arranging, kimono dressing, and calligraphy. Getting to see this first hand was a great start to understanding the traditions and functions of the Japanese tea ceremony. Even though we were sitting at a table in the hotel, and not in the traditional tea room, It was still very cool to see. The simple task of serving tea is stretched out into an elaborate performance, with each move delibrately thought out and carefully executed. Before seeing it I had no Idea that it was such an involved event that held so much importance to the Japanese and their culture. Back in the day, a woman who knew how to perform the tea ceremony were in high demand and was a good catch if you could marry her. The tea was called Matcha, finely ground green tea, not strained through a bag or strainer, it was ground so fine that it was simply added to the water and it dissolved fully when stirred. It was a little bitter if you're not used to is, but it was very good. We were also served sweets to go along with it. They were rich, but a nice contrast to the flavor of the tea.The Tea Ceremony is not just for Women, It was first developed by men. And the entire package of flower arranging and calligraphy was actually encouraged and taught to Samuri warriors. For what good is all that violent skill of a samuri if there isn't any balance with beauty. It's the Yin to the Yang.That evening we set out to dinner at a place called the Black Lion Pub, this was an English style bar for Ex-pat looking to get away from the noodles. This was a place recommended by my good friend Bill who's grandfather has a house near there. He had visited it before and it was great to be somewhere where you didn't have to feel obligated to ask if someone spoke english before breaking into conversation. I had nachos and watched Soccer, we played some darts and I got pretty saucy. While talking to one of the bartenders, we found out that she was moving to Seattle. We talked about the northwest for a while and then she invited us to come see sumo wrestling the next day, she worked at the stadium and could get us extra tickets in the nose bleed section if we showed up early! WOW Awesome! We took her information and the location of the stadium and I thanked her and the owner, perhaps a little too much thanks (I love you, *hiccup, man!) And then stumbled our way back to to the hotel. It had been quite a full and eventful day, even though we got a late start.1-19Our last full day in Tokyo and we had made it, the weather was again, going to be clear and I felt like we had totally beat the odds getting this many days in a row of good weather. Our Suica cards were also working out very nicely.  We found that the prepaid cards could be used to purchase a number of things around the city from vending machines to coffee houses to subway markets and magazine stands. I had become a pro at simply sliding my bum over the sensor and getting through the gate without even taking my wallet out of my pocket, I love technology! Our first stop of the morning was way up in the north of the city in Asakusa, Senso-Ji temple is Tokyo's oldest buddhist temple and probably the most important temple in the city. About a block or two before the actual temple is a gate and the biggest paper lantern I have ever seen, passing through the gate there was a long market area with shops on both sides, we walked slowly down the street looking at the neat little shops that were selling everything from samuri swords to kimono, to chocolate. On the other end of the long marketplace is the Hozomon gate, another large entry way with three very large lanterns.There were so many people here, even on a monday morning, that it wasalmost impossible to take a picture of each other without peoplewalking in front of us. Inside the gate, there was a square area that had a large incense pit where people would gather around and waft the smoke toward themselves. Posted on a sign were instructions to waft the smoke toward the part of your body that ailed you and it's healing properties would assist your recovery. To the left as you entered the temple there was a towering five story pagoda, and directly ahead of the incense pit was the main shrine..To the right of the entrance, there was a hand washing station and a little shop that sold incense to add to the smoke pit. Within the temple itself, and also at many places on its approach, were small stalls with lined with droors. For a suggested donation of 100 yen, people may consult the oracle and divine answers to their questions. Youshake labeled sticks from enclosed metal containers and read thecorresponding answers they retrieve from one of 100 possible. This time there were no english options, so we bought some incense instead.The Sumo stadium was a short distance from Senso-Ji temple and only required a short subway ride. We arrived about two hours early for the event in order to meet our friend from the Black Lion Pub and get our tickets. The tickets were for general admission seating in the top 2 rows on the upper deck. Not the best seats, but it was cool to be at the event at all. Sumo wrestling is a big time event in Japan. The wrestlers are held with the same esteem as our Professional Sports Athletes in the States. We thanked the girl who got us the tickets and then left the stadium to have lunch and kill an hour or so before returning early for the event. On our way out of the stadium we passed some Sumo Wrestlers on their way in. Seeing how they were using the main entrance, and didn’t have a throng of people surrounding them, I assumed it was one of the Jr. wrestlers.  Unlike my mind’s image of a sumo wrestler, these guys are not fat, they’re BIG, but undernieth the cushy outer layer is a man of steel. Those guys are ripped and work out constantly but are kept on a vary strict diet of 200 cheeseburgers a day or something like that to make sure they keep their round look, because in sumo wrestling as in roman wrestling, the weight advantage is everything. We walked around the neighborhood for a while and finally had lunch at a local Pepper Lunch location. I love that place, and want to try to replicate some of the food dishes back in the states. After lunch we made our way back to the stadium, people were beginning to line up at the ticket window. Apparently this is the only sumo stadium in Tokyo and possibly in Japan, When I got inside I saw that it was the same arena I was watching on the TV while we were barhopping in Kagoshima (see Travel blog : A Tale of Two Surveys.) The arena was about the size of a Pro basketball arena, but only had two levels. It was almost perfectly square as opposed to other stadiums in the US which are mostly longer than they are wide. On the lower level there were boxed off areas with tatami mats and cushions. They spread out in all directions from a large earthen mound about 30 feet square and about 4 feet off the ground.  We saw price lists for these seats and they seemed a little ridiculous, Several hundered US dollars for a single seat ringside. That seemed like a lot to me, considering this was just one of many regular tournaments, nothing special. On the square mound in the middle was the ring, raised about six inches above the rest of the area, so when pushed to the edge a wrestler could use it as a brace to push back. Two lines in the middle of the ring mark the starting positions of the two wrestlers. Above the ring was suspended a temple roof in the classic Shinto style, and above that a large Japanese flag. The upper level was very similar to theatre seats in a concert hall. The lower areas had foldable tables that you could set your drinks on, the nose bleed section were just standard seats. Along the upper rafters were giant tapestries with the pictures of all the previous grand champions on them. Karla and I were told that if a seat was open below us when the event started, we could move to it, so we went ahead and guessed on a couple of seats in the upper level, I took my jacket up and draped it over a couple seats in the nose bleeds just in case. The show began and the parade of wrestlers started coming out of the wings and standing around the outskirts of the ring, each one with an elaborately decorated apron-like smock covering their legs. All of the wrestlers were of Japanese heritage with the exception of two, one from Hawaii, and one from Bulgaria…randomly. There was actually an article in the program about the Bulgarian, he was converted to Sumo from traditional wrestling and has been one of the fastest rising wrestlers and one of the highest ranked Gajin wrestlers in the history of sumo. After the parade of the wrestlers, one of them came out to do the opening sword ceremony. This is where one of the wrestlers comes out and lifts his leg high like the stereotypical sumo guy. When the opening ceremony was over the matches began. One tournament is about 24 matches long, It starts with the most junior wrestlers and works its way up to the two grand masters duking it out at the end.  A match begins with two wrestlers entering the ring, they stare each other down from a distance, grab some salt from a bin on the side and toss it into the ring and usually pat their stomachs, cock their necks, grunt, etc. Then they will square off standing in front of the white lines. The round officially begins when both the wrestlers fists touch the white line. This is a game within a game (for ease of description in this scenerio,I’ll call these two guys First wrestler and Second wrestler).[ It is often that the first wrestler will place one hand down, then stare down the other, the second wrestler may put one hand down, then stare back. Usually along the line, someone will not like the way things are starting, so they’ll stand up, causing both to go back to their corners, toss some more salt, slap their bellies and grunt. The second time around they’ll do this again, maybe the second wrestler will put one hand on the ground first, then the first wrestler will place both hands down at once in a statement saying “I’m ready, your move”.PHOTO_ID_L=sumo-wrestling.jpg] This freaks the second wrestler and they stand up, walk back to their corners, throw salt, grunt, pat their bellies, and come back to the center. Usually by this time the two of them have figured it out, and one of them will walk right up to the line and lay both fists down. He’s ready! The second will place one had on the line and with his other hand as the trigger, slowly move it toward the ground, it barely touches for a half instant and the two are embraced in a powerful pushing, slapping, twisting ball of fury until one of their hands or knees touch the ground, or one foot leaves the ring. The referee watches intently to make sure a foul is not committed, sometimes getting so close that he’s almost hit when the two start to move in a new direction. This entire process takes about 15 seconds, a fraction of the time they spent tossing salt and slapping their bellies.All the matches lead up to the final match between the two grand champions. The crowd was now very loud and excited. Of the 24 matches, most of them had ended within a matter of seconds, but you could tell as the fighters got better, so did the tactics, and the bouts began to get more exciting and the crown grew louder as the match neared the end.The final match had a very long stare down, each time the wrestlers would stand up after squaring off the crowd would go nuts, yelling and shouting for their favorite guy. When the two began the match lasted for almost a whole minute. If you've ever tried to push over a 300 lb man who was trying to attack you, a whole 60 seconds is a heck of a long time. After the last match there were closing ceremonies, a wrestler came out and did a ceremony similar to the opening ceremony, replacing the sword for a bow staff.After dinner we wandered around Akihabara agian on our last night. Karla wanted a truly authentic dinner so we searched around until we found a place that looked fitting. We walked in and immidiately I thought to myself "what the hell are we doing, we don't speak Japanese!!" This was going to be some experience because the only thing I could say besides thank you was : Please, can i have some ____ and then use the phrase book for the rest. Luckily I used this line to order some tea at first and the waiter came back with tea and a man who could speak English. I was horrified to find there was very little chicken and NO BEEF on the menu. NO BEEF!!! what the hell kind of place is this. We ordered a number of authentic Japanese dishes, Tempura was on the list, there were several things that would probably make me gag if I knew what was in them, but I tried them anyway. I was really going out on a cullinary limb eating at a place like this. At least there was good sake. Although it was a little on the scary side, it was totally authentic and exactly what Karla was looking for. We thanked the host profusely and made our way back to the subway. Strolling through the winter lights we walked hand in hand recalling all the great memories of the last 4 days, we really packed it all in a short amount of time. I feel like we got a great Japanese expericnce and I really want to bring Karla back so that she can see Kyoto some time. 1-20The next morning we woke up early and had breakfast, packed all our things and said goodbye to the fish in the garden pond. We had ordered a bus to take us to Narita and it arrived right on time. After more than a month and a half I was finally going back to the states. What a long strange trip it had been. I couldn't wait to get home so I wouldn't have to ask people if they spoke English before engaging in conversation or could buy an item without having to convert Yen to Dollars in my head. I bought a Tokyo Giants hat as a going away gift to myself and got some small souviners for people back home. My final review of Japan is that it is the friendliest palce I've ever traveled to. People are so nice and honest, and I feel safer there than I do in most places in the US. Anywhere where someone can leave a coin purse at a subway pay kiosk and nobody will take it is my kind of place. As usual the flight from Narita to Portland took 8 hours in time but because of the date line, we actually arrived before we took off, by about 7 hours. I went straight home and embraced my apartment with all it's little Americanisms. It's good to get to travel, but it's so nice to be home :-)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1251122032/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1251122032/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1251122032/tpod.html Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:03:34 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Tokyo, Kanto, Japan

Ok, so the last Tokyo entry was getting too long, so I'm breaking it up into three parts, The next day we rose with the sun, Karla suffered no Jet lag today, for she was going to Disneyland Tokyo, the "Happiest Prace on Earf". We wrangled up some breakfast and left Shinigawa station with plenty enough time to make it to the park before opening, even if we missed a train. Karla double and triple checked that she had the tickets this time. We wanted no repeats of Paris. After switching in Tokyo station, we took a second train East to the Disneyland resort, arriving about a half hour before the gates opened. People were already lining up so I held our spot while Karla traded our digital tickets for gate passes. I don't know what I was expecting in Tokyo, but there wasn't a single white person in sight. I had thought that Disneyland was truely an American enjoyment, or at least based around English, because when we were at EuroDisney, avast majority of the people seemed to be from America or the UK. But Nobody embraces westernism like the Japanese, and Disneyland should be no exception.Finally the bell sounded and the gates opened, the buzz in the crowd grew as the people began to march forward.When we got to the front of the line, we saw that people were running, no SPRINTING into the park to get in line for their favorite rides. Not knowing why, Karla and I started running too, first things first, Fast Passes for Space Mountain!While in line for Space Mountain we planned out our attack plan for the rest of the day, the Fast Pass system worked a little differently at the Tokyo Disney and you could only hold one fast pass at a time, this threw a monkey wrench in the works and had us changing our schedule from our original plan. Going to Disneyland will always be fun, no matter how old I get. Though Tokyo Disney is the only Disney park NOT actually owned by the Disney Corp. But you can’t tell one bit, it has all the flair of the original, and is even laid very similar to it’s Orange County counterpart. There were even some attractions that have been retired from the LA Disneyland that were still here, like Capt. Nemo’s ship and the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. Similar to Euro Disney, There was no Matterhorn ride, which made us wonder if only Americans liked the ride, or if it was so old and unsafe that it just couldn’t be replicated safely enough to meet other countries safety standards… As always, there was at least ONE ride that was closed for repair, this time it was the haunted mansion, Booooooooo.While I waited in line for the next fast pass, Karla saw a girl walk by in a fuzzy Minnie mouse hat, Pink with a little bow on the top. I saw the gears turning in her head…. Impulse buy in 3…2…1… “I want one of THOSE!” So within minutes she was the cutest little furry Minnie Mouse around. I’m glad she got the gray one instead of pink though. I must admit, it made for some of the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen from Disneyland. The highlights that stand out included the trip to the island of the lost boys in the middle of Frontier Land. That was something that I’d never honestly never done before, as was the stern-wheeler ride around the island. We drove the F-1 Race cars, which go much slower than I remember them going when I was a kid, but have not lost their magic. They had installed radar sensors that automatically slow the car down so you can’t ram the person in front of you. Technology is killing all the REAL fun in the world. Aside from the massive amount of Asian people walking around, it was easy to forget that you weren’t actually IN Los Angeles. I was Jerked back into reality for instance when the Animals from Splash Mountain or the Pirates from the Caribbean started talking in Japanese. Weird! For lunch we ate again at the Blue Bayou restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride. Sitting around watching the rides go by we reminisced about our trip to Europe and the lovely time we had, and what a great idea it was to top it off with a trip to Euro Disney. Unlike that experience though, the weather was playing along this time and it was a crisp, but beautiful day.That afternoon we rushed around hitting all the rides that were too busy in the morning, and went one more time on Space Mountain. You just can’t ride Space Mountain enough: it never gets old. Our dogs were tired so we rested and did some shopping in “main st.” which now that I think about it, wasn’t called Main St. It was called something strange, yet universal, like “World Bazaar” or “International Market” or something like that. But it looked just like Main St., USA in Los Angeles, minus the US Presidents show.In the Arcade I won Kalra some fuzzy little baby chick dolls from the quarter…uhh… I mean fifty-yen machine. I had no Idea what these were doing in Disneyland, other than they satisfied the Japanese obsessions of loving anything that was really small, fuzzy, and/or painfully cute. After one more trip around the park to hit our favorite rides once more (One more time on space mountain? Why not!). After that our feet were absolutely on FIRE and we decided to leave before closing time, with just enough time to beat the rush back into the city. That night we felt kind of bad about not going out, but neither of us felt like even walking across the room, let alone going out. I did wander across the street to see if Pachinko would treat me any differently, It didn’t, so I went back and called it a night.
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Tokyo, Kanto, Japan

 I made it to Narita and checked into the hotel with about an hour before Karla landed. The Kyoto vacation had been great, but being without any way to get cash was a real pain.I picked up Karla at the airport and we went back to the Hotel on the shuttle to settle in. This first night we were staying in Narita because it took almost an hour on the train to get to Tokyo and I figured that Karla had already traveled enough. We stayed at the Narita Hilton, a nice place shaped like a doughnut with windows facing inward and a waterfall and a nature area in the center.After changing we took the town bus down to the Local AEon Mall, where we looked around at all the Japanese stores and ate at the food court. I showed Karla one of my Favorite Japanese fast food's Pepper Lunch. I ate it so much while I was in Japan that I actually got a Pepper Lunch Punch card.That night was pretty low key, I made sure that my new debit card worked, and then we settled back at the hotel to get ready for the day ahead of us.The next day we took the train into tokyo and got checked into our new hotel. The Grand Prince New Takinawa. The Prince line of hotels are very nice hotels, for some reason in the business district of Shinigawa, they felt like the 4300 room shinigawa prince wasn't enough so they built the Prince Takinawa, and the Grand Prince New Takinawa literally right down the street. I guess that they have enough visitors to keep the rooms full, that's all that counts. Our hotel had a Japanese garden in the front with a large Koi pond, a tea room, walking paths and many benches to sit and enjoy the scenery. The place was all decorated for the season with flashing lights, silver balls and ambient music outdoors. I could tell by walking in that this was going to be a magical stay in the big city. We got a complimentary room upgrade (somehow) and landed ourselves on the 15th floor in an awesome room with a great view. Things were starting to look up! we dropped our bags off and went right to sightseeing. First Stop, Imperial Palace. The imperial palace is a large area with grounds in the center of Tokyo. This large plot of land about 4 square kilometers in size was once valued in the late 80's (during the Japanese housing boom) to have a property value equal to the entire state of California.The palace itself doesn't look very lavish from the outside, I'm sure it's much nicer on the inside, but tours are only given once a week or so by appointment only. We walked through the grounds and around the East Gardens, The areas were wide and sprawling with the tall business buildings towering all around it. It really gave me the feeling of Central Park, the beauty in the middle of the metropolis. The Subway was our main form of transportation around the city. We bought a prepaid Suica card to ride the subway. Unlike other big cities like New York that just charge a flat rate (2.00) to enter the system and then you can go anywhere in the city. Tokyo Prorates their fares based on distance. There is a large circle about 2 miles in diameter that runs around the city, then there are cris-crossing lines that run into the eastern and northern suburbs and cross throught the center of the city.  When you enter the subway you scan your prepaid card, and it removes the maximum amount for a subway fare. when you leave the subway, you scan your card again and it calculates your fare and credits your card. The cards are all IR sensors so they work through a thin purse or wallet, by the end of the trip I found that I could sort of  "slide/rub" my ass against the sensor, I could swipe my card without taking it out of my pocket.We returned to the hotel and rested for a spell, We walked around Shinagawa for the afternoon, staying close to the hotel. Karla took a nap to catch up from the jet lag and I bit the bullet and paid however many thousand yen to get the internet for 24 hours. I believe I've already told people on the blog how I feel about pay-per-day internet but sometimes it's just something you have to deal with. After a nice refreshing nap we caught the subway up into the Roppongi hills. This is the night-life spot in Tokyo, there are several discos and night clubs as well as a number of Gentlemens establishments with risque advertisements in the doorway. we started off with a bar that had a happy hour, and met a girl from Ecuador. I was surprised at just how many people spoke English in this part of town and at times I almost forgot that I was in Tokyo. We strolled down the streets, avoiding eye contact with the throngs of (mostly African) men attempting to persuade us into their club. After wandering up and down the main drag and stopping at the Hard Rock Cafe to pick up my collectable shot galss, we walked down the hill toward the giant orange glowing tower. The Tokyo Tower, standing 333M high looks like a big orange Eiffel tower at first glance. We went up to the observation deck where you could see a great view of the city. there is a rather large area on that floor with a restraunt and a bar, there was an acoustic duo having a concert at the moment. we walked around and then decided we wanted a better view so we paid the extra to go to the tippy top of the tower. This is a much smaller circular room at the top of the structure. This view is one of the most amazing man made specticles I have ever seen. Tokyo at night is a little darker than I expected it, but the fact that it stretches on into infinity is really mind blowing. The next morning we woke up and planned our day and then set off to tackle the enormous city. We took the subway to the East on our way to have breakfast at the Tsukiji Fish Market, we walked down Ginza st. The Ginza Shopping district is on par with 5th Aveneue in NY and Oxford St. in London. The biggest names in fashion all have their grip on Ginza st. and once again, at times I forgot that I was in Tokyo. We wandered throught the posh market place down to the end, this was where Sony, Nissan, Toyota, Fujitsu, and many of the largest companies in Japan have their world headquarders. At the end of Ginza St. we turned toward the water and toward the fish market, the odor told us that we were going in the right direction. We were looking for a renowned sushi restraunt that was talked about in our Lonely Planet guide for having the best and the freshest sushi. Upon arriving at the fish market we could see that there were no real locations for a sushi restraunt, the stalls were crowded with freezers and styrofoam. Forklifts beeped and whirred as they loaded the day's catch into cold trucks. The market opens when the fish boats arrive at about 1 in the morning, by 5am the sushi stores are open to the general public and throngs of people line up to get their breakfast. Yes sushi for breakfast. I mentioned this in my other blog, but Japanese don't have breakfast food and lunch meats and dinner entrees, they just have food, and you eat it, three times a day, this means sushi and miso for breakfast, rice and shrimp for dinner. OR Rice and shrimp for breakfast and sushi for dinner. Of course some things lend themselves better for one meal or the other, but in general, you're not going to find a Dunkin' Doughnuts in Tokyo. ( I didn't check to be sure, but I think that McDonalds doesn't even have breakfast, they just serve burgers all day, please let me know if you can confirm or deny this) So starting to get very hungry, we wandered around aimlessly looking for this (apparently) famous sushi restraunt with huge lines of people. At the moment I didn't see anything that looked or smelled like a viable restraunt and the only lines were the rats waiting for their chance at the garbage pails. Finally, defeated, we walked out of the fish market to find some regular food. As we walked out I noticed a white couple carrying a camera and walking around with a 'full stomach' look on their face. I decided to take a shot in the dark and asked them if they knew where the sushi restraunts were. "Sure," the man said, "Right over there", pointing to a row of buildings ahead of us in the distance. We thanked the man and hurriedly walked up to the buildings that were starting to look less like a fish market and more like a restraunt. We rounded the corner to find...... OH MY GOD, a huge line. There was a row of about five or six restraunts but the one on the end had a line that must have had 40 people in it. It was already 11:00 and the travel book said the market completely shut down by noon, we stood around trying to figure out what the difference was between this PACKED sushi hut and the rest of the mostly empty sushi huts. We really wanted to know what all the fuss was about, but the you couldn't even get close enough to see through the tiny windows. Finally with time and hunger pressing upon us we went into the neighboring restraunt and sat down.  I'm not the biggest sushi eater in the world, but I have to say that this stuff was off the hook! I now know why the Japanese will pay through the nose to ambulance a large tuna to the airport and get it to Tokyo in a number of hours, rather than in a day, because fresh tuna is beyond compare. I was certin that the fish that I was eating had just been eating something else in the Pacific Ocean less than 12 hours ago. The prices were pretty reasonable as well. We thanked the man and left the market with 'full stomach' looks on our faces.We made our way slowly home the long way, stopping at Akihabara, to see it in the daylight, we were planning to come back and visit it that night as well. At rush hour we trekked across the city to the famous Shibuya crossing, a large six way pedestrian cross walk. I'm sure that a crosswalk being on my list of things to see irritated Karla. Not only did I want to see it, I had to film it. She was a real trooper while I sat on the second floor of the Starbucks and ran my video camera for almost a half hour, capturing the pulse of the city with each wave of people, then traffic, then people. I sped this up and it made for an absolutely AWESOME time laps video, For those of you with Facebook, you can see it linked to my site. I'm barely finishing writing all my experiences, so the complete Tokyo video will be much MUCH later, but I had a vision, and I needed video of a crosswalk. Karla was nice enough to wait around while I had my stupid videographer moment.Back at the hotel we walked the grounds, chatted with the fish in the pond, and Karla took another nap, still suffering a little bit from the Jet lag. Then we planned out the next couple days so we could fit everything in everything we wanted to do. After the short break we set out for dinner and a night with no plans, just exploring. We started with the bright lights of Akihabara, the technology district. I could have stayed there for hours looking at every little shop, Karla was very tolerant of my computer-loving disease, only going her own way once during the evening when I got stuck in a four story computer wharehouse.We grabbed dinner on the go and continued walking, I honestly can't say exactly where we went because we were walking without a real purpose, looking in shops and stores along the way, when everything finally closed, we made our way back to the subway and back to Shinigawa, Outside the train station was one of the Pachinko rooms, and both being curious, we walked in. A Pachinko parlor has to be on the short list for one of the noisiest places on earth, everywhere machines are blasting away, ticking and clicking, shouting congradulatory phrases in Japanese frequently. Successful players had large stacks of trays, filled with the shiny pachinko balls stacked in elaborate piles, sometimes three feet high, and filled to the brim. Though the room was full with people, almost every machine with a player, nobody was talking to each other but rather fixed at their machine gazing into their lucky futures. Each ball representing 1 yen, about a penny. I could see how it was easy to gain such large piles. Not being able to pass by any form of gambling machine without at least trying it, I sat at an empty maching in the far back corner (one of the only ones open), and tried it out. The game resemblend a Tiny plinko board like in the Price is Right, little silver balls were shot into the top at varying speeds and trickled down through the pegs to the bottom. The player held a throttle with their right hand that controlled the speed at which the balls were shot into play, the left hand was used to shovel the balls into the shooting funnel. There was an LCD screen in the background and a series of holes at the bottom of the pegs. Placing a thousand yen note and recieving a tray full of balls I started doing what I saw everyone else doing, not really knowing what I was accomplishing. I began to figure after a while that you are supposed to get the balls through the peg field into the central hole, when that happens, the LCD screen rolls three wheels, very similar to a vegas slot machine and that determines what kind of bonus round you've entered. Then, you want to get as many more balls as possible through that center hole while in the bonus mode. I think that's how it works anyway. Sometimes I would get a large flow of new balls released out of the bottom of the machine into my tray, but other times I would go for whole minutes without recieving any winnings, and when your shooting balls at about three per second, a minute without winning is expensive. Eventually the machine cashed me out, and I didn't feel like I understood the game any better than when I entered. I would later have to Wikipedia the subject to find out more about the rules, and then find out that you can't even receive money for your winnings, you have to trade them for stuff at the front desk, which is grossly priced, kind of like using the tickets they have at Chuck-E-cheeses. Thoroughly satisfied that we had adventured well without a plan, we made our way back to the hotel and went to bed we had a big day tomorrow.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1231715700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1231715700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1231715700/tpod.html Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:22:58 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Kyoto, Kinki, Japan

1-10-09I Took the bullet train to Kyoto, it was a cool experience but after riding so many trains in Europe, it was old hat, even in Japanese. Once I arrived I had some issues finding my hostel. There were main cross streets, but there there were streets that were so narrow that one car could barely get down them, like paved alleys. The new look of the Kyoto Tower and modern train station stood out against the traditional look of the rest of the city. My directions said, "go down three streets past the temple." I didn't know if it was three big streets or just three little alley things. I ended up going way past the street and had to walk around with my laptop out looking for a wireless signal so I could find my way. When I arrived at the hostel, the host spoke great English, luckily the place accepted credit cards so I didn't spend any of my precious cash. After checking in the lady at the front desk tried to pick up my bag, I had to jump to stop her as it probably weighed as much as she did. Admiring her intent, I handed her my laptop bag and went upstairs. My room was a simple room with tatami mats, about 7 feet square. there were cubbyholes in the walls to store some of my things and a hot water maker with green tea. In the corner was a folded futon bed. And that was about it. It was good to get internet and just sit for an afternoon. I touched base with my parents and Karla and really let the events of the last month sink in. Just after dark I went exploring to find something to eat with my credit card. That is a bold statement in Japan and you will know how hard it is when I tell you that I settled for a Cub-O-Noodle and a beer at the Circle-K about a half mile from the hostel! 1-11 Kyoto is the old capital of Japan until 1868, and is still the cultural capital in a sense. People in Kyoto embody the qualities and practically define what it means to be Japanese. There are so many temples in the city that you would faint if you tried to see them all in one day and by the end one would be rather shrine-shocked. The city has a very simple subway that runs north to south, and east to west across the heart of the city. A very efficient bus system picks up the slack. Here is the game I had to play. I have 3000 yen cash to my name, I&nbsp; I bought a two-day unlimited bus pass, there goes 1000. I need 500 each for the two biggest temples in the city, they are cash only. There goes another 1000. That leaves me with the equivalent of about 8 US dollars to get around for two days on. This task is totally possible, except that I had not checked if the train station in Kyoto took Visa, just because the one in Tokyo took it does NOT mean that the Kyoto one will. I began to sweat, what if I got stuck in Kyoto? I actually formulated a plan to just hop on the Shinkansen without a ticket and pay when I got to Tokyo, the Japanese are so nice, they probably wouldn't even charge me extra. Sometimes I play the "dumb American" card when I travel, but I save it for real emergencies. The next day I awoke to find that there was about an inch of snow on the ground. A neat surprise that makes this game even harder to play. My first step was to confirm my fears that there was no way of getting money off of my credit card. I quickly found this to be absolutely true. I would have to really conserve what little cash I had left. I was shivering at the bus stop waiting for the first bus. The #80 bus came down he street. I looked at my map, no #80. oh well, I'll just get on, at least it's going in the right direction. The bus did go the right direction, for exactly 2 blocks, then turned and started going the wrong direction, starting to panic, and at the next stop I attempted to get off, showing my shiny new bus pass to the driver. He made a crossing motion with his forearms and said "city bus" pointing to a little picture of my bus pass with a red X through it. the bus was 220 yen no matter how long you rode it for. So much for conserving my money. I found the correct bus and it to the Golden Pavilion "Rokuon-Ji" or "Kinkaku-Ji" as it's locally called, located just outside the city. It was very serene and peaceful at the entrance to the temple. The snow on the ground made for the perfect effect to the beautiful gardens. The Pavilion is built on the site of a 11th century When&nbsp; I walked around the corner and first saw the golden temple reflected in the lake I was speechless for a moment. It really jumps out and grabs you. There have been extensive efforts to keep the gardens exactly as they were hundreds of years ago, you can really feel that when you visit the site. The temple was recovered with gold leaf in 1987 and now it shines as bright as it did when it was first built. I continued around the gardens and saw the tea room, the Shinto shrine, and the temple gift shop. By the time I left most of the mornings snow had lifted, I feel like I&nbsp; got a very unique photo opportunity, being there when there was snow in the morning. Without lingering too long I hurried along the streets away from the temple to the CORRECT bus stop so I could make it to the silver temple, just outside the city on the opposite side of town. The Silver Temple, locally called "Ginkakuji", was a 13th cenutry buddhist temple. This is the land where Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eight Muromachi Shogunate, lived out his retired years. I arrived at the silver temple to find that it was under reconstruction and mostly covered with scaffolding. But the other buildings and the Zen Garden were open so I walked around and took pictures, imagining what the temple looked like without scaffolding. When I left the Silver Temple, I started checking off as many free temples as possible, I first walked through Shimogamo-jinie Shrine and the Tadasuno-Mori, This is a heavily wooded park in the peninsula-like space where two rivers converge. It is said that the two rivers converging was symbolic of coming to an agreement and often people will go to that park because that was the place where "the truth could not be concealed." After walking though the park I decided to spend 200 of my remaining 700 yen on a McDonalds Double cheeseburger because DAMN they're so good. *post note* Many people have tried to tell me how low I am horrible for eating McDonalds when I could be eating sushi. Hang on... for those of you who just scoffed at me, back up one second. At this point, I've been offshore and from home and land for about 75% of the last 6 months! I don't care if they have the best food in Asia, I don't care if Kyoto had the best food in the WORLD, all I wanted at that moment, was a tiny piece of home that I could bite into and not ponder what the ingredients are. Some people get homesick and cry because they want their mommies, I shed a tear of joy when I get a double cheeseburger after coming from offshore. That's just me. I took the bus around the city and started seeing the East side of the city. I saw a large Pagoda and walked toward it. As I slinked through the narrow streets I saw many girls dressed up in kimono, most with full face masks on. I remembered that I had read in my Lonely Planet book that today was the "day of coming of age" or "Seijin Shiki". A party for all the people who are turning 20 in the following year. Wikipedia said this about it: The age of majority in Japan is 20. The <i>seijin shiki covers all those who will reach this age during the current school year, which runs between April and the following March. The ceremony is generally held in the morning at local city offices and all young adults who maintain residency in the area are invited to attend. Government officials give speeches, and small presents are handed out to the new adults.The weather was busy and the streets were bustling with activity. I walked down to the main shopping district and saw the Yakasa Shrine. While walking I found myself behind a line of Buddhist monks. I guess In my mind a buddhist monk was someone who lived in a temple high on a mountian. (But that's as accurate as assuming a devout christian goes crusading around in armor.) The procession stopped at a number of businesses and sang little chants. Then delivered some sort of divine message to the proprieter of the shop, and continued on their way. I thought it was a very unique experience and I decided that THAT reason right there is why I would consider Kyoto the Cultural Capital, and Tokyo the Political Capital of Japan. By this time it was about 3 in the afternoon and the place was bustling with many people, and little saturday market style booths had been set up all along the entrance. Inside the shrine it was a busy scene, people washing, praying, buying small pieces of paper with fortunes on them and tieing them in groups to strings. I don't really understand what the tying was all about, but at the end of the day there were hundereds of these things tied to strings strung between poles located all around the temple. I'll see if I can post a picture, it's hard to describe.My dogs were killing me! I grabbed some more cup noodles and things at the Credit Card Circle K on the way back to the hostel. Dinner, some tea, and a quick nap and I was good as new, ready to explore Kyoto at night. I made my way down to the Kyoto Tower and the Train station. The Kyoto Train Station was built in 1997 for Kyoto's 1200th anniversiry. It's a very modern structure and was met with praise and hesitation from the Japanese people when it was revealed. It is now the second largest train station in Japan after Nagoya Station.I was walking through the station looking at the cool design when I walked past a group of kids, talking English! One of them caught my eye and gave me the "whassup" nod. Even though half of them were asian, they were all New York exchange students at the University of Tokyo. They were down in Kyoto for a weekend trip. I said kids, but actually they were college student. 18-20 years old. They invided me to come with them and I joined them at dinner, I only had a tea, there goes 100 more yen, I'm down to just pocket change now. It was just nice to meet some people from the states in a foreign. Normally people who would never associate with each other if they met on the strees in the States, could become friends for a night when traveling abroad. We had nothing more in common but a country and a language. They were business and marketing students. I felt old while I asked them all what they were going to do with their degree when they were done. I HATED when people asked me that! And here I am doing it. I guess when I was in College all I wanted to do was just get done, now that I'm done, I wish I had a better plan. But 'cest la vida. que sera, sera.We wandered the streets and found a couple cool bars and a night club, they all pitched in their pocket money to get me into a cash-only club, I bought pitchers for the crew in thanks. I had a fun time and I'm sure to remember the evening for a while to come. The funny thing is, not a single one of them sent me an email or found me on facebook, even though they all said they were on facebook. I guess New Yorkers can have one-night friend-stands and not feel like they have to email them in the morning, hehehehe.1-12I awoke with a Headache, OUCH. Tea, yes, tea, black tea, that will do, almost like coffee... ahhhh I feel human again. I rolled over on the tatami mat in my room and despite feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, I planned my day. No time to dilly-dally when I only had two days here. Plus today's mission was seeing if I was going to be able to get home on my credit card, or if I would have to pull some evasive manuvers. I stumbled out of the hostel, no snow today, thank god. I had scheduled a tour of the imperial palace for 11:00am and it looked like I would have to wait to go to the JR ticket counter afterward, because I was almost late already.Nursing a hangover I made my way to the Imperial house where I was screened, passport checked, metal detector, etc. Then I was allowed into a small warming room while we waited for the rest of the tour group to arrive.My initial impression was that the palace was very nice, but where were all the tall buildings? Why were the streets not paved? For being such an important place, it sure doesn't look very expensive.Expensive is apparently relative.The Imperial seat was moved to Kyoto in the 8th century, and stayed that way for 1000 years. The palace I toured was not actually the main palace, but actually the secondary guest palace where the royal family lived when their main palace caught burnt down. This happened surprisingly often when using candles as light.Looking at the building design and seeing how corridors connected all the buildings, I could see how any small fire could destroy the whole place if not contained quickly. We walked around the palace and learned about how there were 6 gates around the parimeter and each one was intended for different guests, depending on your status, you may enter through the servents gate, honorable guests gate, guests of the state gate, women's gate, head of state gate or the Emperors gate. We walked by some beautiful buildings with tatami mats and simple japanese paintings on the walls. these wall paintings were painted by a very famous japanese painter and though they are simple, they are considered to be some of the most priceless in Japan. There was a room with cherry blossoms on the walls, one room with cranes on the walls, and a third with painted tigers. The guests social status would determine which room you waitied in. The funny thing about it is that all three rooms were exactly the same size, the only difference was what was painted on the walls and the signifigance, which Is a cool concept that is very eastern to me. Signfigance value is something that Americans have yet to learn alot about because of the relative youth of our country. maybe when we get a few hundered years under our belt will we actuall value pasttimes and traditions.There were several hundered years of Japanese architechture right next to each other because fires were constatntly burning down parts of the palace, and new styles were usually used to repair or expand the palace.We walked through beautiful gardens and around to the room of the Emperor. Now, I've seen a lot of royal rooms in europe. But this seemed like the most simplistic royal residence I've seen ever. It's an open air room about 40X80 feet with a futon mat to sleep on, a priceless (but simple) tatami mat to sit on and a W shaped blind to get changed behind. That's about it.It's definately something completely 180 degrees from Western.Pretty simplistic, yet priceless to the Japanese people and Kyotoites.I rode the bus back to the main street and strolled into the JR ticket office. "Crejito Cardo OK?", They smiled and nodded? YESSSS! I felt like I was in a Visa commercial or something. I did a little happy dance and booked my ticket to Narita to pick up Karla. I had won the game! I Made it 72 hours alone in Kyoto with only $30 cash and a Visa card almost nobody would accept. I went next door to the Circle K and bought cup noodles and a beer to celebrate.1-13The next morning before lunch I walked down to the Higashi Honganji temple, currently under wraps until 2011. The smaller building (the Amida Hall) was open, but the Founders hall at Shinshu Honbyo was completely covered while it underwent renavations.This is the mother temple for Shin Buddhists, It's founder was Shinran Born in 1173 and died in 1262. And it is one of the largest Buddhist denominations in Japan.I took off my shoes and walked in the smaller temple.There were a few people praying or meditating, a small class was in session on one side of the temple. Priceless bronze and gold statues stood on the shrine at the front of the room. The floors were covered with Tatami mats and wood floors bordered the outside. I walked along the covered pathway over to the founders hall, it was HUGE, and though I couldn't see inside I could imagine that it was as breath taking a structure as it's 12th century christian counterparts.I walked back to the hostel and picked up my bags, somhow they had gone from heavy bags to ungodly heavy unrealistic obsticles."how did this happen" I said to myself as I stopped every 3 blocks to catch my breath. " I didn't have any money, I didn't buy anything, Why are my bags heavier"It could have possibly been all the maps and brochures and little things that congragated at the bottom of my bag, that stuff adds up.Finally on the Shinkansen I breathed a sigh of relief. What a crazy few days.I had a soda and a cup noodle left over for my train ride, I had even done my homework and asked for hot water in Japanese. The cart service girl knew what I was asking for and filled my cup with hot water, I thanked her in Japanese and smiled to myself as complete immersion is starting to work for me.To anyone going to Kyoto, a few words of advice:1. Comfy shoes, or you will pay the price.2. You need at least 2 full days to see the important stuff, but you could easily spend 4-5 days seeing all the sites in the city and surrounding areas.3. Don't try to see all the temples in Kyoto, that's like trying to visit all the churches in Rome, it's just not possible. Pick the top ten and then see how you feel. After 10 temples in 2 days I was ready to be done with temples.4. Take Cash Money, Visa is not everywhere you want to be.5. With respect to #1, see if you can take slip on shoes, because you'll be taking them off and putting them on 100,000 times and it gets old if you have laces.6. Bus passes = YES totally worth it7. Subway passes = NO, Not worth it.8. there are so many nice hostels in Kyoto, Don't stay in an expensive hotel. You won't get a bigger room, you'll just pay more.9. There is a City bus system, and a bus company in Kyoto. Tickets for one are not good on the other, make sure you know what bus you're getting on, and that your ticket is valid.10. Lonely planet guide books and phrase books. Don't expect them to know English. Learn to say Good Morning, please and thankyou, and "Can I have _______ please". They will come the rest of the way.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1199914980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1199914980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1199914980/tpod.html Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:05:40 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Shinagawa, Kanto, Japan

So the seven of us left all went to Shinagawa in two groups. We all checked into the Shinagawa Prince Hotel but this time instead of getting the awesome "western" style room in the big tower I split a closet with Tim. This room was small! The two beds were rather firm, and the window was a little small but it at least came with free green tea and bathrobes. Every hotel I stayed in not only had tea but hot water makers to make it with. What a great Idea! when you think about it's that's like offering coffee but no coffee maker. Anyway, we had a place to lay our heads and that's all that counted. I did have one serious issue that could cause some problems: My ATM Card had expired while I was crossing the Pacific. I have never before set up a cash advance before so I didn't have a PIN attached with it. There was no way to generate a PIN unless I could get to a Bank of America Banking Center which does not have a branch in Japan. What a pain. I argued with the card companies over Skype for about an hour but basically, It looked like I was borrowing until Karla got here in four days with my ATM card. Tim lent me a little money and thank god he did because it's so hard to buy anything in Japan without cash. Only one type of quick market accepts credit cards. 7-Elevens are Cash only and so is McDonalds. Visa says that they're "everywhere you want to be" but I remembered from last time I was in Japan how much of a Cash-and-Carry society they really are. Luckily the Shinkansen bullet train and a couple of taxi's would take it so I managed to get around. Keith, Wayne, took the train around Tokyo that afternoon. Two areas we ended up in were Akihabara and Ochanomisu. Both large districts full of electronics and musical instuments. Unlike other types of cities, Tokyo is set up so that all of one type of store are arranged next to each other. One would think that this would create a lot of competition and drive competion and drive prices down. But perhaps being such a large metropolis, having the right location is everything because the locals know which district sells what. If you're buying fish, go to the fish market, if your buying a computer, go to the electronics district. I guess it makes sense. Colin had called ahead and touched base with the Nippon Kaiyo guys from the boat and we arranged to meet that evening for beers and dinner. We went to a nice restaurant in the basement of the Prince complex and had some awesome authentic Japanese food. Shabu Shabu, which is a boiled beef and vegitable dish, with miso, udon noodles, saki and several other unidentified delacacies.&nbsp; It was great to see the Nippon Kaiyo guys again and I really hope that there is future work with them in the near future. After dinner we took a cab to a nightclub area and hung out until the wee hours of the morning. Good times were had by all and by the end of the night we all ended up going our seperate ways. After the nightclub I returned to the hotel. But pretty much everyone woke up with big headaches, mysterious credit card charges, and pictures on their camera phones that only lead to more questions. The next day we slept in. Wayne caught his plane and went back home to Canada. Keith and Kelly went sight seeing. Tim and I walked around a bit in the afternoon. For dinner that night I met Kelly and Keith with Oda San from Nippon Kaiyo and we went to Sushi by the hotel. I'm not a fan really of sushi but I thought that I'd eat just a little to be polite. It turned out that this sushi was AWESOME! I definately am not a fan of sushi in the states but this fish was so fresh it dissolved in your mouth and you didn't even have to chew it. There were all types, salmon, tuna, sea cucumber (I didn't try that) tempura and a few other types of fish I couldn't identify and we had difficulty finding a word in the translator that Oda San carried around with him. It was a great experience, and very nice of Oda San to take us out like that. After dinner we stayed in, went bowling in the two-story bowling alley at the Prince hotel. And ended up hanging out making a ruckus in Colin's room all night. The rest of the crew was leaving tomorrow and I was going to Kyoto until Karla got here. We said our good-byes and I packed my bags for an early departure the next day. The Unity job was officially over and done with. I consider it a wonderful success and I really hope to get the chance to do more Williamson jobs in the future. They're a great company to work for and I would go anywhere, any time with Colin and Mike. Thanks guys if you read this!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1239227100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1239227100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1239227100/tpod.html Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:36:17 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Yokohama, Kanto, Japan

Seeing land again was a good feeling. Actually, we came in at night so you could see the glow of Tokyo way before we would have been able to see the land at daylight. Once the boat hit Chikura we started ripping wires and cutting zip ties making everything ready for port. By the time we were escorted in by tug we had almost everything of ours packed up into four large shipping crates. Clearing customs and Immigration took an entire afternoon. We were dealing with an agent, as most boats do in foreign countries. We were limited to how many people we could fit in the agents van at one time. We were all wrapped up and ready to go by about 8 o'clock that night. by the time the last of us checked into the hotel it was almost 11.&nbsp; We bathed and took in the beautiful view as well as the plentiful pleasures at the bar and made up for lost time dry on the boat. Now if Alcahol is your thing, and you just have to have some on a dry boat, bring it. But! There are some rules that go along with it. I'm not going to list them all, I think I've discussed this often in my blogs previously. So here's a story. One person, who shall remain nameless. brought booze onto the boat, but for some strange-ass reason, couldn't manage to dtink it all in over a month on the boat. So instead of giving it to someone he knew was cool, or throwing it overboard, he decided to sneak it back into the country and customs caught him and we all were with him. It was obvious that he didn't go anywhere, we just got off the boat and went straight to the customs office. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder what people are doing trying to sneak alcahol on a dry boat. Just go without, or ... if you absolutely must...... you must play by the rules. Anyway, people began to go their seperate ways. We saw some of the crew for a while at the hotel bar and then they split. That night we tried to find the Hard Rock Cafe. It was a catastrophy, and the hard rock was closed. Then we wandered around and found a 24-hour convinence store. Like a 7-Eleven knock off. Mike and I got beers and cup-noodles then returned to our rooms. Keith, Colin, Kelly, and Jared did their own thing and ended up coming in pretty late. &nbsp;The next day a couple people flew home leaving seven of us to go to Shinagawa together. I had three days before Karla showed up so I decided to take the Shinkansen to Kyoto for the interim and see the old capital while I waited for her to arrive and the we could tour Tokyo.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1239226860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1239226860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1239226860/tpod.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:42:16 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Offshore, Japan

Hours durned into days, days turned into weeks. For the longest time we mapped flat nothingness. I think for two weeks we maybe saw 4 targets and non of them were of interest. Two interesting features we mapped after the IDL were the Emperess seamounts and the Japan Trench. The sea Mountains are a chain that are left over from the hot spot that makes up the Hawaiian islands, as the plate moves, these islands erode and go benieth the surface. this mountain chain runs all the way from Hawaii north to the Aelutian Islands in Alaska, where it goes underneath the northern plate. These mountians are absolutely massive. you can see that&nbsp; from the floor these mountains come up about 2200 meters off the bottom. serious stuff if you're trying to lay a cable between the pass. The second item of interest is the Japan Trench. Along with the Marianas Trench in the middle of the ocean it is one one of the two deepest trenches in the world. we only mapped a small portion of it and the deepest depth we mapped was 9060m but that's nothing to shake a stick at. Life on the boat was beginning to be a&nbsp; little monotonous and after new years everyone began counting the days. That's usually a pretty dangerous thing to do at the end of a job, but the Mt. Mitchell is such a big boat that we could tell that there were no storms in the area that were going to prevent us so there was a good chance we would be wrapping up in less than a week. The Mt. Mitchell definitely lived up to it's websites touts of feeling more like a floating hotel than a work boat. I would say that it was defiantly the best boat I've ever been on for a length of time.I started getting excited two days from land. You could see people surfing Japanese tourism websites and talking about potential plans. We considered everything from snowboarding Fuji to drinking beers at the Sapporo factory in on the northern island. The most likely answer was to stay in Yokohama where we port for a night and then move up to Shinagawa, a southern area a Tokyo, until eveyone flys home.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/27/1227123960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/27/1227123960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/27/1227123960/tpod.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:06:29 -0400 A tale of two surveys.

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Shinigawa, Tokyo, Kyushu-Okinawa, Japan

Travelling back up to Tokyo was like the fourth lap of running a mile, we could all see the end and wanted to wrap it up and started counting the days. At every moment the most popular topic was when we were going to arrive at port. Everybody had their guess, but they wanted to check their guess against what the computer said. the problem with computing long distances with a computer is that it figures that you'll go straight at the current speed for the whole way, which is never true.Now that the route was pretty much defined, we were just on autopilot on the way back. The weather did give us a little bit of a problem as we approached the islands south of Tokyo, but we were only blown down for one evening and then operations went back to normal. I was craving a cheeseburger so bad I could taste them in my sleep. I had just about enough of that Japanese bed. for the first two weeks it was "ethnically different". By the third week it was annoying. Once we arrived at the end of the route the last 8 hours worked like a finely oiled machine. Everybody did their part to demobilize the boat as soon as we were done using all the instruments for the last time. All the shipping got arranged and in less than two hours after we hit the dock we were offloading our bags and on our way to the hotel. It was the fastest big boat demob I've ever seen.A driver took us to the Shinigawa Prince hotel and we checked in. There was a surreal feeling in the hotel and the dock rock was starting to kick in. maybe that was the three beers that Chris and I pounded in the car on the way to the hotel (totally legal by the way). The Prince line of hotels is very nice and we found ourselves at one of the largest hotels I've seen since the Atlantis in the Bahamas. The Shinigawa prince had 4 seperate towers and something staggering like 4200 rooms or something ridiculous like that. After checking in the train station across the street was closed so we wandered downt the streets and ended up doing pizza and Karaoke in the basement. It was fun to cut loose a little, but even in our efforts to feel at home we failed. Even the pepperoni pizza had octopus on it. We all took one look at it and said "really?".&nbsp; We still ate it, we just wished it was a little more Americiana if you know what I mean.We woke up in the morning without issue and had breakfast together before all heading to the airport at our individual times. When flying back from Tokyo to the west coast, you usually arrive about 8 hours before you took off, it's a very weird feeling to have a single day last for 32 hours. Overall it was a very good experience and it looks like I'll be on my way back in less than a month as we do the Pacific crossing on the Mt. Mitchell.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1230358140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1230358140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1230358140/tpod.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:18:22 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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IDL - Offshore, United States

We have been approaching the IDL now for two weeks, held back by route development and storms. Finally we slid across the line without event. I'm not sure if there is any procedure about crossing the IDL like there is crossing the date line but either way, I shaved my head and made a sacrifice to Neptune to get us safely to the other side of the pond. When we crossed the IDL my processing software had a complete meltdown. The completely round earth is one of those things that a computer can understand but you can put it in situations in the field that completely confuse it. The equivalent would be asking a logic program simething like the "Chicken or the Egg" question. (All geeks turn to Star Trek Movie Number #1 where Spock and Kirk talk to the Ultimate Logic VIGOR). My processing software considered me to be in the western hemisphere up until today, but in it's mind, in the middle of the night, we just jumped to the other side of the other side of the world.&nbsp; So in the computers mind the world is flat and when you sail off the left side of the screen you come in on the right side of it (take that Columbus). This makes it very hard if you want to print charts of the Pacific Ocean without a break at the IDL. I wrote and email to the software company and the response was "we don't support data that crosses the dateline. We suggest you stop logging, cross the date line, and start again." what a pain. No suggestion on how we map the seafloor directly below the dateline. &nbsp;Anyway, headaches with my job are continuing, This is not a Carnival cruise, I'm just reminding all the readers. I really do work out there, I just write about the cool stuff. Everything about this boat is good though, I really can't find any way to complain. The cooking is great, having my own room is AWESOME and having internet on board is what seals the deal. If this boat didn't have internet, I'm sure we'd all be at each others throat and fighting over DVDs in the lounge. It was wonderful having communication with the outside world. It made me feel like I was not so trapped on a boat. The net was not good enough to skype over but not fast enough for the whole boat to skype at once. If someone was downloading a video or whatever, you could definitely tell. Streaming data really slowed this thing down. So we tried to keep it to a minimum. Regular surfing and email was OK though. And I used it on a daily. Sometimes it was even a distraction having it in the processing area. Keith was addicted to facebook and I found myself randomly surfing sites and started signing up for news blogs I would normally NEVER take the time to read and I even started filling out an online family tree from memory. Using Google to help fill in some of my family genealogy. Christmas came and went. We had prime rib and king crab legs for lunch, which was the main meal on the boat since we were working opposite shifts. The boat and Kelly were nice enough to wrap up some things for us and put them under the tree for us. Even though I am a bah-humbuger. For some reason all getting together in one room and opening gifts, even if they are mostly similar, still made me feel a moment of comrodery with my shipmates. "Bastardized holiday sponsored by big corporation" or not, it's still nice to get something to unwrap on Christmas morning. No matter how small. The weather is pretty shitty no matter how you cut it. Even in a 230' boat it still rocks and rolls in 20' seas. And the direction of the planned line doesn't always work with whatever direction the seas are going at the moment. So sometimes it gets real interesting. Big rolls especially, we had a couple of freak sized waves that landed on our asses with overturned chairs and drawers out of filing cabinets on the floor. But those were few and far between. When that sort of thing happened I wondered what it would be like to have random earthquakes in a regular 9-5 office 3-10 times a week and see how the average Joe adapts to having his working space constantly tossed on the floor, add coffee. Tim checked the internet weather at every opportunity and was constantly asking peoples opinion of where they thought the current high pressure system was going to go and if the monsoon coming off of Thailand was going to reach Japan before us. For New Years we wanted to blow off flares, but we settled for blowing the horn, I doubt anyone heard us. But the way it worked out, we were just past the IDL on New Years so aside from some Russians and a few people in the South Pacific, I got 2009 before anyone else! Paul again spoiled us with Holiday Prime Rib and King Crab Legs, feasts fit for kings. We ate our fill and enjoyed every moment. I didn't make a new years resolution this year, but I am going to do something, that's for sure. Trying to deal with traveling over so many time zones is difficult. We also did all the changes at 12:00 noon, which was also crew change. So someone was always surprised that they were an hour early. When we really got going after the stint of weather we started changing our clocks back about every 3-4 days. It's a really weird thing to slowly roll the clock back 9 hours over a month. It really lets you know how man-made time is and how much nature doesn't follow it. but vice versa.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1228536660/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1228536660/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tbassplayer/28/1228536660/tpod.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:11:28 -0400 Domain of the Golden Dragon

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Offshore, United States

The first order of business after leaving the straights of Juan de Fuca was to calibrate the Sonar system, this went without even and we were quickly on our 5 day steam to the first work site. As if Keith didn't have enough to worry about with a split open head, we also had to go through the ritual of the Sippican with him. A Sippican is a temperature probe that we launch usually daily over the side of the vessel to measure the speed of sound in the water. It comes in a gnarly looking tube and is launched from a handgun looking device. It's a right of passage to trick the new guy the first time he does a sippican probe and everyone was in on this one. We told Keith that the probes were explosive and a charge would go off like a 12-gauge shotgun, sending the probe straight to the bottom. In reality, when you pull the pin, the led weight plops into the water and freefalls to the bottom, very anticlimactic. So, in preperation for the "firing" of the probe we dress up the victim in saftey glasses, a work vest, gloves, ear protection, etc. and make a whole ordeal about safety and how dangerous these things are. When the pin is pulled and the probe falls gently into the water, the practical joke goes into phase II by shouting "oh shit, it's a dud...DON'T MOVE" this will test exactly how much the newbie beleives that he is holding a potentially explosive device. Anyone who can't contain their laughter runs off to get the "disarming procedures" and work on "neutralizing the device". After a length of time (usually 4-6 minutes) someone shouts "all clear, and you reveal the joke to the victim, who usually can't beleive they've been taken for a ride. I've done this to many newbies and it's sort of a right of passage, or fraternal initiation. Keith passed with flying colors. &nbsp;Trying to stay busy during a 4 day transit is hard, I mostly worked on processing the calibration and surfed the internet. Having internet on the boat has been the nicest thing ever, although I believe it might be spoiling me. Speaking of spoiled, I have found the food to be absolutely out of this world. there are at least two entrees at every meal and plenty of sides to go with them, the buffet style galley area allows me to get as much of what I want and none of what I don't which is exactly my style. The cook Paul, switches the themes often enough that it keeps from getting bored of any one thing. There is a soda fountian and two different types of juice avilable at all times, as well as cereal and chips and other snack type foods always in the galley. For those who feel guilty about eating so much (like me) in the aft tool room there is a treadmill, dumbells, tension bands, and stationary bike that can suddenly become a modular bike if the waves get high enough. It's a super luxary to have a workout room on a boat, this is the first boat I've ever been on that actually acknowledged that it's hard to get exercise on a boat, and has done something to counteract that. If you're not into the whole "getting healthy" thing then that's ok, there is a TV lounge with surround sound, leather couches, and more DVD's than a single person could watch in a year. There is a cleaning staff that works daily to keep the boat clean, and it shows, they do a great job and even come in our state rooms once a week to vaccume the floors and change our sheets for us, this is honestly over the top service when it comes to a research vessel. I've heard stories of vessels where they do that for you, but I thought they were nonsense fairy tales like the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. One day a list was posted in our work area with all of our names on it, and days of the week, I looked at the title, "Laundry Day" I aked the capitan where I go to do my laundry and he replied "no, just drop it off in the aft room, we do your laundry for you". I almost shit my pants on the spot. Now I've seen it all! Not only is there internet, huge staterooms, all you can drink soda, a workout room, and now they even do my laundry for me, holy shit this is like a holiday resort cruise/survey! After four or five days of transit we arrived at our first site which was a little extension to the side of the route that had previously been surveyed. We worked for about a day at this site and then continued on the the point where the Aquilia stopped.&nbsp; Doing this little "test line" was the perfect way to get all the bugs out of our system we were able to turn out a product without having the pressure of data constantly coming in and needing to be dealt with. This job is starting off good in so many ways, I'm leary of enjoying myself too much because that's when shit usually goes wrong. So, I guess I should explain in a little more detail exactly why we're doing what we're doing. Before a fiber optic cable can be placed on the seafloor, they have to do a survey of the route where they plan to lay it. We are searching for underwater mountains, valleys, cliffs, or any type of geology that would prevent the cable from staying where it is originally placed. If anything out of the ordinary is discovered along the route, the on board client representative may request that we go back and develop on either side of the route to try and find a better path. The job is fairly easy but because of the possible development, it's nearly impossible to correctly guess how long a survey will take. I'm not even going to make a guess as to how long it will take until we have crossed the mountian chain in the middle of the Pacific, because who know's how much development we'll end up having to do there. As I've said before, there are some people who just add up the total survey distance, divide it by the max speed of the boat, and BAM, that's how long it will take you. That is absolutely WRONG! If you ever let those people into the upper management of your survey company they will run you straight into the ground. Nothing about survey is predictable, and you have to just go out and stay out as long as it takes for you to get the job done. Sometimes it's months on end....
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