12/24/08
Hamanasu Express, between Aomori and Sapporo

Yesterday I packed, visited my host family's hapyokai (performance day), helped my host dad change the tires on his car, and at about 7:30 took off to get on a night bus to Sendai. At Nagoya Station, I inadvertently tested the myth that you can leave your wallet sitting in the middle of a busy area in Japan, walk away, and come back to find it right where you left it. Myth confirmed, thank goodness. Phew.

The bus ride was 10 hours, and I had a middle seat (there were three lines of sleeper seats down the bus). The people with window seats preferred to draw the curtains and sleep instead of watching outside, so I didn't have much choice but to follow suit. Next bus I'm booking earlier.

This morning in Sendai, I bought a Hokkaido & Higashinihon Pass, a special pass that lets me ride on any non-express JR line in the region, plus a few other lines, like the one I'm on now. I caught the local Tohoku line to Ichinoseki, a wonderful old train meandering through the countryside. Nowadays it's been shorted by the Tohoku Shinkansen, sort of a route 66 deal. I was in the second car of the train, and about halfway I looked back and saw that I was now in the last car; a few cars had been dropped at a station because there were so few passengers.

I wandered around Ichinoseki for a bit, then caught the next train for Morioka, still part of the old Tohoku line. At Morioka, I took the Aoimori (sic) line to Hachinohe. While waiting for the next train there, I wandered through a nice little public exhibit of local industry.

From Hachinohe I got back on the Tohoku line to Aomori. I wandered around Aomori for a few hours, then got onto the train I'm on now. I need to sleep, we arrive pretty early.

12/20/08
(no entry, AU IY program)



12/21/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

Yesterday I visited Osaka Castle and walked through the park. Got pooped on by a pigeon. Then I went to Itami Airport for the arrival program. The plane was delayed an hour. Then we stayed at a different "hostel" next to Shin-Osaka.

Today I escorted eight delegates to Gifu-Hashima, Nagoya, and Hanamizukidori. Now I'm back in Nagoya for the time being.

I'd love to elaborate on the IY program, it was very exciting, but I'm really wiped.

12/19/08
J-Hoppers Hostel, Osaka

Can't write much, I'm in a dorm and don't wanna keep the computer on too long.

I met up with Katie at lunchtime. We went to Tennoji and Osaka tower (forget what its name is), then to the famous Umeda Sky Building. Ate delicious ume spaghetti.

Met a couple from Holland and talked with them a while.

12/18/08
J-Hoppers Hostel, Osaka

I'm in Osaka! Much to my surprise, not everyone is staring blankly and rambling about sea slugs. They do stand on the wrong side of the escalator and cross the street without regard to the light, though.

The first thing I did (aside from getting lost in the Osaka rail system) was head to Osaka Den Den Town, the famous otaku shopping district. Even after I managed to get to the station, I wandered through at least two other districts before I got there (a gambling district and this huge fish market. They had live fugu for sale, swimming around in a little pool).

Den Den Town is a little like Akihabara, with less of an emphasis on bulk electronics. I found a Magic card shop called "Yellow Submarine," they had pretty extensive stock in both English and Japanese. I found a Tintin DVD brand new, on clearance, I got it for my host family.

Now I'm at this hostel, it's the same people I stayed with in Kyoto (they have three locations, the third is in Hiroshima). I'm sharing a dorm room with seven other people, though they're all still out as I type this (it's about eleven). I wandered down the street and found a supermarket and bought dinner. Guess I should be more careful buying dinner at a supermarket when I haven't eaten any lunch, these eyes are big. At least I'm not hungry anymore.

11/17/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

This morning I checked out of the hostel and tried the breakfast buffet in the attached bar/cafe. It wasn't that good, but they had cereal... I hadn't realized just how long it's been since I've eaten that.

I walked down to Kyoto Station. Simon suggested using a locker to keep my big heavy backpack in, I don't know why I hadn't thought of trying that yesterday. Anyways, all the lockers I could find were full, until I found a huge room with banks and banks of them in the basement. After some wandering, I found the bus heading to Kinkokuji.

On the bus it was really crowded. I stepped too close to the exit door and the bus asked me, rather conspicuously, to step back, and I did. A lady sitting in a seat facing me turned to her friend and said something about that guy being such a foreigner. I turned to the lady and said, in proper Japanese, "ain't that the truth." She didn't say anything else about me after that. I was feeling kind of annoyed about that, and I was getting a bit smothered. No sooner do I distinctly tell myself that I just want the bus to get on it's merry way so we can all get off, then the driver shuts the engine off. The reduction in noise revealed the rhythm of a snare drum. I looked out the window and saw a marching band ambling its way across the street directly in front of the bus, followed by a full-blown parade. I quietly laughed at myself and just enjoyed the show.

The bus took a little longer than I had thought it would, but it was worth it. Kinkokuji is a famous temple plated in gold leaf, and it looks absolutely brilliant in the sun. Even better, the Mirror Pond was calm enough to see a really good reflection. Really, this building is something out of King Midas. I bought a little charm talisman for good health and long life, more because it was neon orange and gold than anything. Being healthy is icing.

I took the bus back to the station and waited around the meeting area for Simon. (He had taken off to do his own thing really early in the morning.) His bus was late or something, and while I waited this old Japanese dude randomly came up to me. He spoke fluent English, and proudly informed me that he had graduated from UC Berkeley in 1953. After talking for a bit, he pulled out some papers and asked me to proofread a few of the sentences on them. It was pretty well written, save for a few interesting points, including using the word "debarked" in the context of skinning a tree. Then he had a train to catch and ran off.

I kept waiting, listing to my iPod. Despite a dozen Japanese people also clearly waiting to meet someone by the conspicuous statue of Astro Boy, I must have looked suspicious. A pair of policemen came up to me and asked if I was waiting for a friend. I said yes. Right on cue, Simon walked up and joined me. The policemen asked to see our ID cards, luckily we both had them with us. They asked us some random questions and copied down our info into their notebooks. After a few strained minutes, they decided we weren't making any trouble and let us be on our way.

This kind of thing does happen in Japan; merely looking like a foreigner is a good enough reason for a police officer to demand your ID or passport. It apparently happens to interns pretty regularly, although Simon said it was the first time they'd done it to him. The law is one of the few places that Japanese racism really manifests itself. They don't make it any secret that being a foreigner is the problem they have with you; from the point you enter the country and they record your photo and fingerprints, it's pretty clear. This is the kind of problem Labo is working to mend, but we've clearly got a long ways to go.

Simon and I took the train to Fushimi-Inari, and met Katie there after looking around a bit. Fushimi-Inari is temple/forest, it's pretty famous too. It's got a main temple area, but then it has a series of trails over a mountain. The trails are lined with thousands of huge torii, it's really an amazing experience to walk through them. Well, it's a walk at first, but it turns into a full-fledged hike, with lots of little shrines and graveyards. It took us a couple hours to get to the top, and another to get back. I got plenty of pictures. Oh yeah, there were kitties too.

We went to an italian restaurant in Kyoto station for dinner. I ordered a tomato salad, which turned out to be a skinned tomato drizzled with dressing. It was pretty good, but calling it a salad is stretching it I think. We had a great time, but I needed to get home so I had to leave first.

I talked to the dude at the JR ticket window, apparently there weren't any more direct trains on the cheaper Tokaido line, the one I had planned on using (it was about 8). He handed me a printout with a bunch of transfers, my best bet by normal train would get me home really late, not sure if the subway at the end of the trip even ran that late. I was (am) still exhausted from all the hiking, so I just said screw it and paid a little extra for a Shinkansen ticket. I walked up to the platform, and half an hour later I was in Nagoya station. Yay fast.

11/16/08
K's House Hostel, Kyoto

This morning I took a shower, turned out they had shampoo and stuff after all. Before I left, one of the employees gave me a map and marked some interesting places to see.

Outside Kintetsu-Nara station there was a huge shopping bazaar, sorta like Asakusa but with a lot more variety. I found a nice place to eat breakfast and then explored the area. I found this wonderful little shop full of anime themed action figures, puzzles and card games. Everything was half off, too. I was carrying two days of clothes etc. in my backpack, so I couldn't just buy everything in sight. I did find some kind of cheap Hikaru no Go trading card game, I got a starter and a few packs. No clue how to play, but the cards are nifty. I picked up a little portable 9x9 go set at a dollar store, but it turned out to be (surprise) really cheaply made. Oh well.

I saw a mochi shop doing their thing, it was a kind of rhythmic thing with two dudes with hammers pounding away. Then they switched to one dude with a smaller hammer and another who flipped the mochi with his hands between hits, and they cranked it up to a really high speed. They really trusted each other and had really good rhythm to do that, it was amazing.

I met with Katie and her friend Kaz at 1:45 at the station, although I did some hiking trying to figure out which station we were meeting at. We went up to a restaurant on the 8th floor of the station, the tallest building in the area. We got a corner window table, it was an awesome view.

We walked through Nara park, saw lots of completely fearless deer. They would come up to you and bow, in the hopes of getting biscuits you could buy at little stands. We visited the Todaiji temple, it cost to get in, but it was really cool. Todaiji is the home of the Daibutsu, the largest buddha in Japan. The temple that houses it is the world's biggest wooden building. I bought some souvenirs, including a little fortune dispenser. I tried it twice and got 'normal' luck both times, and decided not to push it. Katie got 'terrible' luck, and Kaz got 'good' luck. It took some considerable willpower to resist getting the pink deer antlers and the plushie katana that squeaked whenever you whacked anything with it.

After we saw that, we went down to Kofukuji, another temple area. It was getting dark by the time we got there, so then we headed back to the shopping area to look around some more. Then Katie had to leave, and Kaz walked me to the JR Nara station.

The train ride to Kyoto took about an hour, although I was on the local train. Kyoto station is probably the coolest station architecturally I've seen so far. Kyoto is a lot more urban than Nara, something that was apparent as I walked to the hostel. (Turns out I was right about Nara being old; it's the oldest capital city in Japan, about to celebrate its 1300th anniversary in two years.) As you walk out the station, you're greeted with Kyoto Tower, a space-needly thing on top of a hotel. The directions were a bit less clear, but I found the hostel ok. This place is totally different from the one in Nara. It's two buildings, three and five stories, with a very modern aesthetic and card keys and stuff. There aren't any Japanese people staying here either, that I've met in the common area at least.

This was about 9:00, so I went out to find something to eat. There were some restaurants, but it's not that interesting to eat out alone. I found a convenience store and got some soba and natto. The soba turned out to be on some sort of jellied broth that was supposed to liquify in the microwave, it wasn't all that good. The natto roll was good though. I'm finally starting to get a taste for the stuff.

I ate and hung out in the common room until about 10, when Simon showed up. We've been figuring out plans for tomorrow and chatting, now he's reading a book while I type this. It's pretty late, I should go to bed.

EDIT 11/24/08: blogger ate the luck. Fixed now.

11/15/08
UGAYA Guest House, Nara

I got off to a rocky start this morning. First I forgot my jacket, then my toiletries. I made it just in time to the interviews.

Yumi (the coordinator of the program from Tokyo), Terajima (the director of the Nagoya office), and I interviewed six applicants for the North America year-long high school exchange. It was remarkably similar to the interviews I did for this internship, only I was on the other side of the table. All six of the applicants were pretty good, luckily I don't have to be the one make any final decisions.

After the interviews finished at about six, I hurried over to the train station to begin my weekend journey. I went to Nagoya station and took took the Kintetsu Urban Liner Limited Express, transferring at Yagi and Sandaiji. The express was really nice, and although it was dark out, what I could make out was really pretty. The moon was just past full and was peering through wispy clouds, in the way you would see in nice paintings.

I arrived in Kintetsu-Nara at about 9:30...

whup, my roommate is going to sleep, I'm gonna be nice and finish tomorrow

*tomorrow*

Let's see... after I arrived at the station, I followed the directions to the hostel. I checked in and the dude showed me around. It's a pretty quaint place, with a great atmosphere. All the bunks are full, so I get to sleep in the tatami room for bunk price. Yay.

It occurred to me that I might need my own little soap and shampoo for the shower, so I asked if there was a place nearby I could get some. They pointed me to a convenience store nearby. I walked through the neighborhood, it was after ten by now. Nara isn't exactly rural, but it feels pretty antique. There are the low buildings you see in museums, with the stylized roofs, and the streets are really narrow. From what I can tell, this place must have avoided the WWII firebombings that "reset" most other cities, architecturally.

I picked up some dinner at the store as well, and headed back. There's a community area in the lobby of the hostel, and I hung out with a few cool Japanese dudes while I ate. One of them had walked around the island of Shikoku dressed as a monk, another had biked around the largest lake in Japan (took him 26 hours). We talked about a whole bunch of stuff, me practicing my Japanese and them practicing their English. There was a big poster board map of the world on the wall, they had me stick a pin where I was from. There were pins all over the place, but only two in the SF area and one in Sacramento (none in KC). I stuck mine in Davis.

I went to bed, I'm sharing the room with a girl from France, Amy. She's doing the rush tour of Japan, she's got a big backpack and a tight schedule.

Anyway, yeah met some cool people here. I like this hostel thing.