Roma Pass

I forgot to mention the Roma Pass. Basically like most other major tourist cities out there, Rome has a tourist pass that allows free or discounted access to the major attractions in the city.

This particular card allows free access to the first 2 museums or sites visited using the pass (find the expensive ones first I guess) then reduces the ticket price for any other sites or museums you visit on the list. It gives unlimited use of the transit system in Rome including the buses, Metro and some of the regional trains.

Their pass is valid for 3 days and currently costs 25EU. It is valid from activation at first site and then to midnight of the 3rd day.

I suspect I will buy one for after my stint in Sicily, but I am not certain yet. The Appian Way is only a couple EU to enter and I will be walking to it. This means I would use it for a cheap entry and I would only need it for a day or so before I leave which wastes the value.

More Italy Information

In checking around there are two basic day trips from Rome that it appears are good visits if you have enough time to see Rome proper. I am going to be in Rome for around a week and most itineraries filling a week seem to include visiting these sites so currently they are locations I am planning to visit.

First is the seaside location of Ostia Antica. The website has a nice PDF tourist guide of the location. The trip should be right through the Metro, much like the visit to Versailles was right off the Parisian subway system. There appears to be a less than $10 entrance fee and the location is closed on Mondays (as with most places around the world it seems). The site seems quite large and they suggest that it will take a full day for most people to see what needs to be seen. Mostly we are dealing with ancient Roman ruins and they appear to be quite spectacular. They say to grab lunch at the small village right outside the ruins. Apparently their is a bar right off the train station as well.

The second location external to Rome is Tivoli. Of course I visited Tivoli Gardens in Denmark (a couple times now) and this city is apparently the inspiration for the name of the park by way of France (according to Wikipedia). Tivoli includes Hadrian's Villa amongst other sites and is considered one of the better and most popular day trips out of Rome. Instead of heading towards the sea the trip is inland into the hills outside of the city. Like Ostia it is best to expect to use a full day to visit the location and public transport is again the way to go. It appears there are a couple buses that need to be used to visit both Tivoli and Hadrian's Villa. The first will get you from a Metro station to the main area of Tivoli. The second is a bus ride down from Tivoli to Hadrian's Villa. Secondarily is the Villa d'Este which is also just below the town but I am not sure if you need transit or can walk to it. Based on there being no mention of transit it must be a walkable distance. Where Hadrian's Villa appears to be mainly ruins that have been preserved. Villa d'Este is a more recent construction (approximately 430 years) with a palace and some very nice looking gardens and fountains (at least based on the publicity pictures).

There are other locations outside of Rome but nearby that are worthy of visit but I want to make sure I have enough time to see Rome proper. I will probably do research for one more location but only use it if I think I have seen what I need to see in Rome with time to spare by the last Friday there. I will be visiting the Vatican as well, as previously mentioned, and that is a day in and of itself.

Some Italy Information

As I have posted already, I am heading to Italy for my 40th birthday in late October, continuing into early November. Part of my trip will be centered in Rome and some of it will be spent in Sicily. The choices are partially practical and partially for continuity sake. That is, it is practical to visit Rome on my first trip to Italy. It is also practical to be visiting Sicily as it is late in the year and it should be warmer in Sicily (certainly warmer than Sweden was...). The continuity aspect falls from the idea I had stated early in my travel portfolio I wanted to visit all of my heritage locations. I have already visited Canada a long time ago. I visited Sweden and France (to drag the French Canadian back to the homeland) and that left Sicily where the Italian half of my family is actually from. I think it makes us not really Italians but who is keeping score on that? In any event this trip will finish off my known bloodline visits and I can move on to other countries from there (aside from Japan, which fell outside the course and Denmark which is/was an easy visit due to George).

So of course I have started to do my actual research and planning for the Italy trip. I am mostly certain that for this trip I am not going to purchase a rail pass. I have already reserved a rental car for the Sicily portion of the trip. I am spending 5 full days there. I have reserved flights back and forth from Rome to Palermo. It is not practical to drive from Rome or take trains as the trips are in the 10+ hours range and that is too much time wasted in transit for me on a vacation. The plane rides will be an hour each. I am sure they will be on tiny turboprop type planes but all is good. I have heard tell that I am going to have nightmares driving in Palermo itself but I am hoping to do most of my driving out of the city in the early morning and then back later in the evening past the rush hour times. I am sure it will still be horrible but I guess at least I am from Massachusetts and should be prepared for the jerks and psychos to some degree. I understand that Italians are a whole new level but such is the way of things. In general it looks like the furthest points from Palermo are about 3 hours and change and I am willing to drive 6 hours in a day to visit the right places. I do usually enjoy the concept that my vacations help me escape from having to drive but Sicily and Italy present issues where reports are that most public transit can be quite unreliable. I suppose I won't know until I get there, but better to be safe than sorry. I had my battles with French rail and bus systems and I lost a couple of them in the course of having to spend more money than I wanted to and failing to reach one intended destination and I am not prepared for Sicily to turn out to be a losing battle. In Rome I am going to have to rely on transit because I am not driving there. They say you have to have nerves of steel to drive in Rome and I am not willing to work up my road rage on a vacation that badly. Plus the main subways are supposed to be reasonably reliable and I have the ability to walk to a lot of the major things to see from hotel. Especially as far as I walk.

Speaking of major things to see. I am of course going to see the Vatican during my visit. I suppose as a reformed Catholic (read as atheist) it seems blasphemous for me to go there but truthfully Catholicism is a part of my upbringing and more so it is a major reason I am an unbeliever so it makes sense to see the head of the serpent so to speak. There is sure to be a vast amount of opulence all collected from the from the teaming masses that were and are willing to accept the Catholic way. I won't get into the religious debate here, but it is fairly tough for me to skip the Vatican while visiting Rome. As it is, it appears they will be collecting approximately $45 from me for the tours. Ah well...

Another important visit is the Appian Way which is apparently best visited on a Sunday because they close off all the streets to cars and make it a pedestrian only park. The park itself seems very large and they suggest it will take a couple hours to get through all of it. I have reserved my Sunday in Rome for it. That would be my first full day in Italy. I am sure it will be an interesting start.

What I have found interesting about researching Italian tourism is that unlike other countries I have already visited, I am having a tough time finding official tourism web pages. I am usually good at combing the internet for such information but Italy seems to evade me. I am not sure but I assume the Italians have a different method of handling tourism than other countries. It appears to be less governmental and more commercial (in some respects I guess it makes sense but it leaves you reading a lot of prepackaged tour company information rather than truly useful information). For the record the Rome Tourist website doesn't really seem to be geared towards tourists as much as tour professionals. There is information there but I expected much more based on say Paris or Stockholm's websites.

A couple sites that I have found that are at least useful in learning and preparing are Italy Heaven which appears to be geared towards Brits. I had to do some digging to find their Sicily Guide so I figure that should also be linked. Also there is Palermo.com which is geared towards the capital city of Sicily. A site with some information is ItalyGuides.it which has interactive maps and some audio guides, it's not the best but reasonable. Also I have Sicily for Tourists which has some good information and a few itinerary suggestions and Best of Sicily which at least has a nice FAQ.

For the record, here is Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Also, though I am not expecting to buy a rail pass there is ItaliaRail.com.

I am fairly certain I will be staying very local to Rome when in Italy proper. There are a couple short ride day trips I am considering but for the time being it does not seem cost effective to purchase a rail pass, especially where I would need to use at least 3 days worth of train riding to make it valuable as that is the minimum size pass that can be purchased (at least they are not consecutive days). In some respects this will leave me another time to visit Italy so I can go to places like Venice and Pompeii (which of course are not near each other). I am leaving myself around a week to do Rome proper and by what I have researched it seems like it is not too long a span for the Eternal City. I guess time and the trip will prove that one out.

I had already linked my hotel choices. I found additional reviews on the Hotel Milo which prove out what I guess I expected which is that it has a reasonable location for getting around the city due to its proximity to the Roma Termini but is not a spectacular hotel if you are looking for luxury. It will apparently be noisy in the region and the location is not great for restaurants as most are tourist trap places (expensive, not good food). It was stated if, like me, you are looking for a serviceable hotel to just sleep in (or to spend a quick turnover stay) then Hotel Milo is good for you. For the Albergo Athenaeum, which I chose for a couple reasons, I have only found a couple non-professional guest reviews but they suggest what I had hoped for, which is that it has free parking for guests and is right off the hightway A-29 about a half a kilometer so it should provide easy ability to get in and out of Palermo to visit the rest of the island, hopefully without pounding my head against the steering wheel through too much traffic. Overall the review said it is a clean and modern hotel as well. Hopefully it works out well enough.

Hotels in Japan Revisited

So after returning from Japan I thought I would comment on the hotels we used for this trip.

The Hotel Villa Fontaine Hamatsucho was definitely an OK choice of hotel by my standards. The cost was under 100USD a night. A warning that you pay at check in, not check out, though. Still the rooms were clean and up to date. They had wired high-speed internet in the rooms free of additional charge. The bed was comfortable and the bathroom was a decent size and up to date. The mirror had a heated spot that wouldn't fog over with the shower. The TV only had a few channels, which is to be expected but it was a small flat panel LCD. The location of the hotel being in a familiar area was nice and it was only a few minutes walk from the JR station. Assuming the other locations are as clean and up to date I would probably try those as well.

The Kyoto Garden Hotel had a nice location but it was obviously an older hotel. The rooms were about the same size except the bathroom was much smaller. It was clean but there was a general run down feeling. They did have a restaurant that served very good Chinese food but you do not have to stay at the hotel to eat there. The TV was an old CRT and they had high speed internet available but you have to get a modem from the desk (of which they have only 20). I was able to get a modem and keep it for the duration of the stay but I would guess if you got there at the wrong time it might be tough. The connection speed on the modem however was not the best. There was however no additional charge for it. The bed was not comfortable to me and that was probably my biggest issue with the place. I generally didn't sleep as well as I could have while I was there. Though we were only a couple minutes from Karasuma Oike Station there were not a ton of restaurants around the hotel. The walk to the palace park was probably about 15 minutes for me with no one else in tow. Longer with others. I would say that for the price it wasn't terrible but I will definitely search for another place for my next trip to Kyoto and only settle for Kyoto Garden if I can't find someplace else where the price is right.

Japan 2010 Day 15

Ok, so there are not a lot of pictures for today because we mostly backtracked places we had been in search of a few random purchases. This mainly meant searching for strange flavored Kit Kat bars. We basically ran through the Hamamatsucho, Daimon, Shiba Park and Tokyo Tower areas hitting all the convenience stores we could after we had a quick breakfast.

From there we headed back into the hotel and got finished with our packing and checked out of the hotel around 11am. We took the longer and less stair infested way to the north entrance of Hamamatsucho Station (typically S5 is a shorter walk but there is a huge flight of stairs to get there and no escalator). The ride to Tokyo Station was brief and we searched out the Narita Express. We found the track the car would arrive on in about half an hour before its departure but then found out we had to reserve seats on it so ran back upstairs with our passes and got 2 green car seats with plenty of time to spare. Our train arrived minus our car then they drove up more cars and connected everything together. The ride to the airport was relatively quiet and took about an hour.

At the airport we got through check-in and security then shopped the airport stores for a bit. I bought a bottle of sake at duty free in hopes I could stuff it in my checked bag when I got to San Fran. After shopping we found the bar and burgers and drinks (I had my last large Sapporo draft) and then found the gate (basically next door) and waited out the plane which was arriving and thus departing late. The flight to San Fran was mostly uneventful. I watched Me and Orson Welles, Crazy Heart and Up in the Air through the entertainment system which was again not the in seat types as we were on probably the same 747 we flew out on. I didn't try to sleep on the flight. The meals were bad and we arrived about 45 minutes late or so. There was a spot near the end of the flight where the captain made the crew stay seated for turbulence even though they had to prepare for landing. They got to rush through the final preps in about 5 minutes. We landed nice and easy though.

San Fran airport wasn't tough to navigate. We had to run through passport control which was quick. Then we had to get our checked baggage which I swear was last off the plane. Then I was able to stuff the bottle in my luggage. We checked through customs really rapidly and rechecked our baggage with a bit of confusion on where to do that. Next was the security rescreen. By the time we were at our gate there was about an hour before flight departure so it wasn't long before we were boarding. The plane was full much like the 747 but we departed on time and they even flew with a good tailwind I guess because we came in more than 45 minutes early. It was an uneventful flight even with the person reading the New York Times right next to me that had a picture of a plane crash in color on the front page). They didn't serve a meal and I nodded off at points. The movies were not interesting to me and I did not watch them. The good luck with this flight was our bags were almost first out of the plane. We got outside just as the Flightline van was arriving and it was a pothole filled ride back to Ronni's house where I picked up my car and drove all bleary-eyed to home. I got home at about 9:30pm. Quickly I dumped my stuff down, ate something then went to bed for work the next day.

All in all it was a great trip and though we had some touchy weather we never really had bad weather. The locations we chose were all fun to me. Granted I enjoyed Nagoya a lot last time but others didn't as much, but this time I think we hit the right places all around. The number one best (ichiban) thing about being back from Japan is paper towels in public rest rooms. I was not happy to return to driving and traffic however.

It is my basic plan and expectation to return to Japan in summer of 2012 with the intent of climbing Mount Fuji as the central reason for that time frame. Fuji can only be climbed to the top in the months of July and August. I am sure it will make the Tokyo heat fairly unbearable but I also intend to buy rail passes and travel the country again. At some point in the future I will also have to dedicate a trip to Hokkaido and probably Okinawa as well (though obviously different trips for their distance apart).

The pictures for day 15 can be found here.

Japan 2010 Day 14

Today started out moderately early to catch the train to Hikone. It is along the Tokaido line but we had to get out at Maibara and then switch to a local line to make it there. I had us out the door about 7:50am or so for an 8:30 train out of Tokyo Station. The day seemed like it was going to be sunny and warmer out on the walk to Hamamatsucho Station but we got a quick spit of a sprinkle to tease us.

The train ride was decent but basically a repeat of the trip to Kyoto only a station shorter. We were in the very front seat of the trains and on the left side so there was no seeing Fuji unless we got up and walked around to look for it. I was fairly tired from the night before where I didn't get to bed until well after 1am but really wasn't able to sleep on the way unfortunately. Probably too much sun.

We arrived at Maibara at about 10:45 and immediately reserved our seats to return to Tokyo for the 3:54 train. Maybe a bit early but a safe time anyway. We then found the local to Hikone. This seems to go about every quarter hour and runs about 5 minutes to Hikone which is the first stop on the line. Pulling into the station you could see the castle on the hill. We immediately made our way to the tourist office and got maps. The directions were simple, up the street a couple blocks and you are there. The castle itself is not very large but the castle grounds are very extensive. Almost in line with the grounds from Himeji. The sakura was in peak in Hikone and that was a very nice suprise. Hikone is out near Kyoto on Lake Biwa. I had suspected it would be past peak but maybe a slight altitude change allowed it to be later than Kyoto. The grounds are surrounded by a moat and outer wall. The fantastic walls might have been taken away from a bit by the sakura but it was still a fairly grand site. We walked around and up to the castle opting to purchase entry only there and not to the castle museum due to expected time limits.

When we got up to the castle proper there were already a lot of people up there. There was a small gift shop between the castle and the terrace that used to be one of the turrets where I bought a magnet. After pictures of the city from the heights of the castle and as much sakura as I could take pictures of with all the people there we got in line to get inside the castle. It appears they let people in in groups that get stuck piling up at a lot of bottlenecks inside the castle. I am not sure why they did things this way. We had to get in line and wait until they let a group in. A gentleman explained a lot of something in Japanese outside the entrance which I assume was information about the castle and its construction but I cannot be sure. When we got in we of course had to take off our shoes then we got to the lower floor and walked around a couple bends till we got stuck in a huge line all over again. Waiting in this line was similar. The guy was not letting people move forward for the people already further inside. Further inside meant upstairs and these were some of the steepest castle stairs I have seen in Japan. My hats off to all the older Japanese men and women who made the climb all the way to the top floor of the tower which I believe was the fourth floor. They basically climb you up to the top then you tour your way down floor by floor until the exit. The stairs again provided bottlenecks as people had as tough a time going down as up. The castle itself is very small and only has the main tower. It is very nice and you can see it is not really reproduction though unlike Matsumoto they put a lot of modern into the works to get people up and down by way of real handrails and such. I suppose with how steep things were it was moderately necessary. Certainly the railless climbs they would have been as built would not support major tourism. I think we could have completed the castle itself in about 20 minutes if not for the crowd. As it was it probably took us 45 minutes to an hour. I am usually slow inside castles but there was really very little to see on the inside.

After exiting there was a lineup and stage for some sort of show about to happen but we waited more than 15 minutes without seeing what it was and deciding to move on. This meant walked around to the back side of the castle and the grounds there. Again there was a ton of beautiful sakura and lots of people enjoying them. After more pictures we took the steep route down and out the back exit then walked around the outside of the moat to the street vendor area. On the way we saw the boat that cruises the moat but obviously didn't try to take a ride. ROnni bought some grilled meat at one of the stalls but I wasn't into the prices of the stall food (all was 4 or 5 dollars for small amounts. One ear of corn was 5 dollars. So I didn't bother to buy anything. Still she found a moderately comfortable place to sit and eat minus the smoker who was upwind from the spot. After she finished we found another gift tent and went into that. From there we finished the circuit around the castle and back in towards the train station. Since I hadn't eaten and Ronni had I chose to be quick and get McDonalds near the station. I had a double cheeseburger and fries with a Fanta grape soda. It was basically the same as in the USA including the tons of gloppy condiments inside. After lunch we crossed over into the station and caught the local back to Maibara.

At Maibara station we had a few minutes to wait and Ronni managed to experience the shinkansen trains blasting through a station at full speed. Four passed through before our train arrived and I managed to get a video of the fourth doing it. I hope it comes out nicely. We shall see. From there we boarded and rode back to Tokyo station. I should have gotten us off at Shinagawa to save some time but I guess I was lazy about it. The ride was basically pleasant though a bit warm. I should mention with the sun and the heat in the day we shed our jackets very early and they didn't go back on for the remainder of the day. I think I nodded off for a bit of the early part of the ride then woke up and managed to point out Fuji on the other side of the train for Ronni. It was very close but again surrounded by clouds so not terribly spectacular to look at. We also so some para-flyers near Yokohama buzzing around over a river.

From Tokyo Station it was old faithful Yamanote line to Hamamatsucho where we headed straight back to the hotel. I got up to the room and opened my Asahi Strong Off and started writing this. Marina had promised we'd do something with her for our last night here so there was nothing but to get some of this done, drink beer and wait for her to call. Oh and watch more Japanese TV. So basically a few minutes after I went downstairs and got a beer out of the vending machine Marina called up to my room to state she was in the hotel. I downed my beer quickly after calling Ronni to let her know to get ready.

We met Marina and she took us to a different Izakaya down the street than we had been to before. Apparently it is a national chain but I will have to get the name from her as I did not record it before we left. There I had a selection of various things that mostly I ate along with the couple items that were orderd specifically for Ronni or Marina. I had 2 beers and a rice based shochu. We had things like octopus sashimi, salmon sashimi, shao mai, grilled pork, fried chicken and a handful of other things all of which were very tasty. Oh and a pizza. For the most part what I ordered was eaten by me. Anyway, we seemed to be in a non-smoking area so it wasn't too bad and we met some folks from Boston who were just leaving as we got in. I happened to be wearing my Savard Bruins t-shirt and they of course recognized the logo and asked if we too were from Boston.

After dinner it was already very late and we walked back to the hotel and said our good-byes to Marina for the trip. I needed to finish this and my pictures off to get to bed. Fortunately it was quick as I was still tired from the short night of sleep on Friday night.

The pictures for today can be found here.

Japan 2010 Day 13

We started the day at 8:30 to get breakfast in the hotel. From there we walked to Hamamatsucho Station and picked up tickets for Hikone for Saturday morning. We had a bit of a problem getting the tickets because the girl at the counter thought I wanted Hakone. Hikone has one of the national treasure castles and is on Lake Biwa in between Tokyo and Kyoto. Hakone is a resort area in the region of Mount Fuji. We visited Hakone as part of our Fuji tour on the last trip. When eventually I got across we wanted Hikone instead we were able to get our tickets and get on our way.
Because our morning was going to be moderately timekiller until we met with Marina in Harajuku Station we decided to go out to Shinjuku and visit Shinjuku Gyoen Park which cost us 200 yen to get in. The park was absolutely splendid and even though the sakura is past peak in Tokyo there was still plenty out there and a lot of nice landscape garden. We spent a bit under an hour hour just wandering and taking pictures before we started to make our way out to meet Marina.

At almost the exact moment we got in the train to Harajuku she called me and we found out that she was going to have to run behind due to a forgotten appointment. With that we decided to get out at Harajuku anyway and we revisited the Meiji Temple. At the temple I tried a horseradish (read as wasabi) ice cream at the gift shop there. It was certainly an interesting flavor and to me not at all unpleasant. From there we weren't certain what to do as we had not yet heard from Marina. I was going to have us walk to Shibuya Station but I spotted the park that we had visited on the last trip by way of recognizing the surroundings. It was Yoyogi Park (which I didn't know the name of from the last trip). It was the park that had the hula hoop girl (though alas she was not there this time). We walked through Yoyogi again taking in the sights and taking pictures. I showed Ronni what I remembered of the park which turned out to be more than I expected. During our wanderings we found a snack shop and Ronni bought a candy bar as she was getting hungry. At that moment I found that Marina tried to reach me. I called her back and we agreed to meet at Meguro Station as she wanted to take us to high tea at Megura Gajoen. On the way out of the park we found the dog walking stalls I remembered from my last visit.

We got back on the train at Harajuku and made our way to Meguro a tad ahead of Marina. From there we walked to Meguro Gajoen which is basically a large banquet hall building set up mainly for celebrations and weddings that also ha a few restaurants and a fair amount of artwork inside. Unfortunately the restaurant that serves high tea was not doing it today so we had to settle for a standard buffet which was still very enjoyable. I took a sampling of a lot of things then had dessert for a couple rounds. Marina had a few rounds of regular food, though less than I took, and the dessert, so we were in the place for a while. After eating we toured all the floors of the building up to the the two Christain chapels and the waterfall on the outside. It is certainl very showy and I expect it costs a pretty penny (yen) to have a function there. Marina said that probably only rich people do anything there.

From Meguro we were back again on the Yamanote line to Shimbashi where we took the monorail to Daiba for the Oedo-Onsen Monogatari. We had already agreed we would do the onsen today because Ronni was actually interested in trying it as long she had a buddy to go with. I went along because I wanted to try one even if I would have to figure it out on my own. If you are unaware an onsen is a Japanese public hot bath formed over geothermal hot springs. As with anything Japanese there are conventions to be followed and I didn't have a mentor to work with so I just had to watch and guess along the way. I knew some of it beforehand because I had read about it but it was still moderately awkward for me, not that I was bothered that much. The idea is you get checked in and get a kimono, get undressed and then get into the spa part where you get a small and a large towel. Discard the kimono and get into the bath area where you first scrub yourself off in a little sitting shower area. They have soap, shampoo and rinse. You clean youself off completely. After you have washed you can get into the hot pools. I followed the protocol and scrubbed and rinsed then got into one of the middle temperature pools off the side of the hottest pool in the center of the room. I spent a few minutes there then got ou and cooled off for a minute or two before going into the center pool which was the hottest. I spent probably about 7 minutes in that one which may have been too long. I got out and cooled off for a couple minutes before getting in the jacuzzi type pools where I stayed for over 5 minutes before getting out and cooling off for a couple minutes then getting into a medium temperature pool to laze about for a few more minutes. Out of that I showered off with some cooler water and then toweled out as much as I could with my small already soaked towel. I went back to the locker room and dried off and dressed back into the kimono and then went into the central area to wait for the women. I was probably about 5 minutes ahead of them. In this veyr touristy onsen they have a large central area where you can buy food and drink and other stuff too. The thing is your stuff is all locked up in a locker. So when you get in you get a wristband with a key and a barcode on it. You use the key to lock your stuff into the changing room locker and you use the barcode to buy stuff in the central area. When you go into the hot spa you get another locker for your rented kimono as well but that is another story.

By the time I was done with the actual spa I was very overheated and felt moderately dizzy and decided I was done with the spa part for the night. Marina and Ronni came out a couple minutes later. I searched out a beer and they got drinks and we chatted for a while. We decided we should get food (Marina and I anyway) and we opted for the Korean place where we had some sort of spicy soup. I liked it but it was about a 3 on my spicy scale. Marina thought it was very spicy. The girl serving it said it was the spiciest they serve so I guess I didn't miss out on anything. Ronni got an ice cream at this point. After we ate and chatted some more they opted to go back in because they had missed the jacuzzi type pool. I got myself another beer and girl watched (Japanese women in kimono, enough said) and waited for them to finish up. From there we got sorted out and dressed and left the place. We took the monorail back to Shimbashi and then the Yamanote back to Hamamatsucho where we left Marina to finish her ride back home.

From there I had to get this written and my pictures uploaded which involved drinking another Yebisu The Hop.

The pictures for today can be found here.

Day 11 pictures fix

My brother Gary pointed out the link to the day 11 pictures was pointing to day 10 pictures. I have adjusted the link down in the post. If you want to find the pics without scrolling down then click here.

Japan 2010 Day 12

We had to start the day early to make it to Shinjuku Station in time for our 8am train to Matsumoto. Shinjuku is basically the other side of town from Hamamatsucho and our way there is the Yamanote line for about 1/2 hour ride. Also I was not familiar enough with Shinjuku Station to know intuitively where to go to catch our train. For that reason we met downstairs to eat a quick breakfast as they opened it up at 7am. We ate quickly and were on the Yamanote line by 7:20 including the walk and wait for the next train. The ride got us there at about 7:45 and I was able to catch that we needed the Chuo Line (rapid express) for our train and we were up and on the track just as they opened up the train about 10 minutes before departure. They apparently start the train from Shinjuku and end it at Matsumoto. They guy that got us the tickets the day before was obviously intimately familiar with this and we thought he was telling us the earliest train we could get there was at 10:37 but that is when the 8:00am train arrives in Matsumoto.

The train ride was basically pleasant except at the very earliest they had the heat blasting because it was still below 10C before we left. I actually liked how cool it was out but the train was blazing hot. The trip is very scenic into the mountains towards Nagano in which prefecture Matsumoto is situated. Along the way we got a couple glimpses of Fuji and there were a few spurts of clouds but the weather was mostly blue skies except on the peaks of the various mountains we were passing through. Matsumoto is to the north of Tokyo and obviously higher in altitude. It is situated in amongt what they call the Alps here in Japan.

Upon arriving in town we found the Tourist Information booth and got the map and the basic explanation to see the castle and two historical shopping streets. We then found the newsstand/convenience store in the station and I bought a cherry blossom flavored Kit Kat which I ate presently and it was very enjoyable. After the shop we made our way down the 15 minute walk to the castle. Basically the castle is the main reason a tourist will visit Matsumoto. It is one of the 4 national treasure castles that has never been destroyed since it was built. Matsumoto was started in 1530 or so, so it has been around for a while. It is known informally as the black castle because of the black wall sections that make it seem more black than the traiditional white of most Japanese castles. The walk from the station is basically an L shape and it shows that the town must be very heavily a tourist town, probably most especially in summer. The streets and buildings were all clean and up to date long the the path to the castle.

The castle itself is very striking to see and with the moat and the sakura around it was a very pleasant picture to take as well. The weather we had was a little cool, but nicely so and almost completely clear skies. Matsumoto is surrounded by the alps on all sides basically and they also help to frame the castle and the city very nicely. We took a short walk through the grounds and hit the gift shop quickly before going into the castle itself. The castle is deceptive because it has the major and minor towers. The minor tower looks like it is 3 stories tall but it is actually 4 stories and the major tower is 6 though it only looks to be 5 stories from the outside. The castle is obviously not a few years old rebuild and it was very interesting. Many of the stairs were very steep and they apparently had to tie on bamboo handrails because it appears the castle was originally built without them. The stairs to the 5th floor were insanely steep and they had a fair distance between steps that looked like it caused a lot of trouble for the older Japanese there, especially going back down. The castle was very well preserved although on the 6th floor there was unfortunately a bit of grafitti carved into the wood. I was a touch disappointed with that. Of particular interest was the moon viewing room which is open air on 3 sides and the lord and his samurai used to sit and drink sake all night in it. It has a veranda/balcony on those 3 sides that they had blocked off with bamboo posts so you couldn't go out on them unfortunately.

I'd say it took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to do the complete internal tour of the castle. We probably spent about 2 hours and a half or so including the photographic opportunities from all over the grounds. I took a ton of pictures of the castle from as many angles and ideas as I could. It appeared to be a very photogenic castle as a person standing there. Hopefully some of the pictures came out.

After the castle we walked back and found The Old Rock to eat lunch at. It was styled as a Brit Pub. I had a couple Super Dry Asahi pints and the fish and chips. The Brit beers were too expensive to actually consider buying. They gave us forks but I lamented the whole meal that there was no knife to be found so I had to cut the beer battered fish with the fork which wasn't ideal. The meal was very tasty but I did launch one piece off the table with the fork.

After lunch we walked the old shopping streets and poked around for more picture opportunities. There is obviously some sort of sigificance with frogs in Matsumoto but I don't know what it is. There were all sorts of frog statues and merchandise though. We bought ice cream at one of the vendors. The place had pictures and no flavor names in English. I bought one that looked like it was supposed to be red beans and was very enjoyable.

After the ice cream we walked back to the station and were just a few minutes early for our 15:47 train back to Shinjuku. A nice elderly Japanese woman tried to talk to us but we couldn't communicate across languages too well. I think she was commenting on the fact for a few minutes we had the front two cars of the train but not the rest. After a bit the rest did show up and we were able to board for the 2.5 hour ride back. From there we transferred right to the Yamanote line and headed right for Hamatsucho. That added another half hour. We got out at the north exit and visited the 7-11 so Ronni could pull out a little more cash then walked to Tengu for dinner. I had a sashimi plate that I supplemented with a stick of asparagus wrapped in pork strips and bacon wrapped scallops. I had two Tengu Special Beer Browns to accompany the meal. I followed up with ice cream with soy bean powder and brown sugar syrup.

After dinner I bought another couple beers and some snack across the street and came back to the room to have some of those and write this.

The pictures for Day 12 can be found here.

Japan 2010 Day 11

Today was planned for Ginza and Asakusa. Getting around by JR was going to make things a bit different than the previous trip where we used the Tokyo Metro. We didn't start the day until 8:30am where we met downstairs for a quick breakfast at the hotel then headed to Hamamatsucho Station to take the Yamanote line to Yurakucho. This would deposit us near Ginza. We just needed to get out the back side of the station and we were on the edge of Ginza.

It was still before 10am when we got there but we walked down a few streets then found the main street and passed by the Sony building. With the aid of the on street maps it was just a few minutes until we found the statue of Godzilla that was such a problem to find on the last trip. I guess it's much easier to find things again than it is to just find things...

After the brief stop at the Godzilla statue we made our way out to Hibiya Park where we walked around it once, found a heron and took pictures of that. Found a couple stray cats. Found a band practicing for a show later in the day. Then decided to head back in for the Sony building. Upon returning to the Sony building we found that it does not open until 11. This meant we walked further down the street to the Kabuki-za theather and took a couple pictures of that. We then walked back to the Sony building but there was still 20 minutes before they were opening so we sat on some stone stools across the street for the duration then crossed over just before they opened.

The Sony building was slightly better than I remembered the last visit being but still nothing like the stories I've heard they were like several years ago. As with before it is a large showroom for all their current and up and coming electronics, from cameras, to mp3 players, to cell phones, to television and computers. The big up and coming thing of course is 3D televisions and they even had a presentation on them that was conducted in Japanese but we sat in anyway along with a couple other gaijin. The glasses technology is a bit different from the older way of doing things with the glasses being electronic and they basically block and show left to right at intervals to make the 3D work. They are large and sort of bulky but it is obvious they are designed to work over actual glasses a person may have to wear besides the 3D glasses. Unfortunately for me the technology still doesn't seem to be compatible with me from most of the demonstration. In 2 parts of the demo they used animated movies and those were not so bad for me without a lot of motion. Once things started to move all I could see wa blur and/or flashing characters. For part of the demo they had a PS3 that was capable of doing 3D for game. We got to play a few moments of Motostorm II. This was the most succesful 3D for me. I suspect it is because the models are 3D and the rendering can actually cause the 3D to exist. It is not a set of cameras capturing 2D images to simulate 3D but rather the game telling the 3D how to work. That falls into the sport demo which was of some soccer matches recorded in 3D. Those were like seeing cardboard cutouts of the various items on the screen as though they were different distances from me in 3D. So there was a sort of 3D effect except the objects still appeared to be 2D. I think to me it is still technology that is too far off from any real success to take seriously. I also do not think I will care about it until they can do it without an extra pair of glasses to wear. All in all though the Sony building was probably more intesting this time than last.

After the Sony building we walked up to a Freshness Burger down near Hibiya Park we had seen near the Godzilla statue. I wanted to show Ronni the Freshness Burger because I liked them a lot on the last trip. More than Mosburger. I had the salsa burger, fries and a beer. The beer was a problem for the guy at the tap because they were on the end of the mini keg or something so it took a few extra moments to get me the drink. The fries are potato wedges and very tasty and the burger was both messy and spicy as I had remembered it from the last trip. I was very happy with it. McDonald's has nothing on them. As the pictures will show the day was overcast with bouts of rain the trip into Freshness Burger got us through one bout of rain, which was nice.

From lunch we walked back to Yurakucho and took the Yamanote to Ueno. In reading the maps couldn't find a JR that really gets close to Asakusa so I found that if we out at Ueno and took the non-park side (apparently the Higashi-Ueno exit and not the Iriya exit unfortunately) exit then we could take a straight walk to Asakusa. I was absolutely correct in this but I suspect the walk was in the mile and half to 2 mile range rather than the shorter walk I expected it to be. Needless to say we walked for a bit before we got to Asakusa proper.

We basically wandered the stalls and shopped for gifts and had another of the deep fried bean paste filled dumplings (this time I got the apricot flavor as did Ronni, first time I did not purchase the green tea flavor) and also eventually another soft serve ice cream. Ronni found a cookies and cream flavor and I had one called Ogura, Hokkaido. I still can't remotely say what the flavor is but I enjoyed it a lot. In my defense it was the unknown nature of the flavor that made me get it though for Scott I should have gotten the sweet potato flavor and for George I probably should have gotten the black sesame flavor. Should we manage another trip (hopefully in better weather perhaps I will try one of those. After a bit more walking and shopping we headed back to our hotel by way of the Asakusa line of the Tokyo Metro rather than walking any distance to the JR trains which just do not appear to come close to Asakusa.

We stopped at Daimon which put us right by Hamamatsucho Station and went in and reserved seats to Matsumoto for Thursday to see the black castle then took a short tour to make sure of where The Dream Factory is for dinner. This was the Italian restaurant we ate at by Marina's suggestion on the last trip. He was not yet open but it is easier to get to from the Villa Fontaine than it is from the Shiba Park Hotel. At that point we turned back in to the hotel to relax until dinner time where I had a beer and wrote up to this point.

For dinner we walked down the street to visit The Dream Factory which is the Italian restaurant from my last trip to Japan, of course recommended by Marina. The chef is trained from Italy, Milano area I believe, and specializes in pizza and lasagna. I had the house wine (2 glasses) and we ordered the bruschetta for an appetizer. I had the standard lasagna and Ronni had a Margherita but with some peperoni to boot. The food was very good, I did steal a slice of her pizza. The crust is very very thin but the pizza was tasty and enjoyable. The lasagna was really good, though I had expected a red sauce rather than the bechamel. Either way I liked it a lot. I was craving a grappa by the end of the meal but they didn't appear to have one. They gave us a couple biscotti with a small cup of amoretto for dipping for dessert on the house which was very nice. I finished out with an espresso. From there we walked back to the hotel to prepare for an early day of travel to Matsumoto and the black castle on the following day.

The light picture day (owing to the weather and partially to the repeat scenery) can be found here.

Bicycles and such

Ok, bonus post here.

While we were in Kyoto the numbers of bicycles being ridden around town was vastly increased in comparison to Tokyo. This appeared to translate to most of the cities except I don't recall seeing a lot of bicycles in Hiroshima. I wonder if the large masses of tourists that run through Hiroshima might overtake the sidewalks too much. Oddly, in Japan it is expected that the bicycles will ride on the sidewalks rather than the streets. The sidewalks in Kyoto were very wide along the main streets and those wider sidewalks all had marked off bicycle lanes. The lanes were much narrower than the pedestrian area and as a matter of course none of the cyclists even bothered to be in the designated bicycle lane. At any given moment you could be passed by a bicycle with just inches to spare from being hit. They generally didn't slow down for anyone or anything.

Coming back to Tokyo you notice the bicycles do the same thing, which is ride on the sidewalks and try to jam around people as fast as they can but the difference is there are much fewer per capita than in Kyoto. I am not sure how much of this is caused by the size difference in the cities and how available mass transit is in either city. Perhaps it is the costs of the mass transit and the varying salary levels between the cities. I am sure there were more automobiles owned per capita for the residents of Kyoto versus Tokyo as well. There appeared to be a lot of houses with cars parked out front. I assume this is from them being in a more remote part of the country with lesser housing costs than Tokyo.

There is no doubt that Tokyo feels like a newer fresher city than any we have visited in general. I am sure if we visited Kobe we would think it was new due to the fact it was basically taken down by an earthquake a few years back and had to be rebuilt. Still one thing to notice is most sidewalks and roads seem to be in very good repair no matter where you travel. Certainly the subway stations in Kyoto looked a lot older than what you find in Tokyo as well, but they were still clean and very functional if not the picture of modern wonder. All the same Tokyo has its little corners that are less brand new than other parts of the city.

Japan 2010 Day 10

Today was mainly the transit day back to Tokyo from Kyoto followed by an evening with Marina.

We got going later than we had been even though I still woke up as early as I had been. At 9am we met at the lobby and headed up the street to the McDonald's for breakfast. I didn't want to try to jam our suitcases into a breakfast place in Kyoto station so figured it was our best bet. They apparently have hotcakes on the menu for breakfast and I got the hotcakes set which included a hash brown and a coffee as well. It actually wasn't that bad at all. I was surprised. Sure the hash brown was greasy but still it all tasted ok. After breakfast we walked back down to the hotel. The McDonald's you may recall was up near the Imperial Palace park so it took a few minutes. We checked out of the hotel pretty much right away and took the subway to Kyoto Station where we basically just headed straight up for the shinkansen. I bought some choco-cookie-mushroom snacks and a coffee for the wait and trip. We were a bit ahead of schedule for the departure time of the train. Still the weather was nice and the wait wasn't all that bad.

The train left at 10:56am and we were on time all the way, which of course is no surprise for Japan. The trip was basically uneventful and I used the laptop to watch Hero along the way. The battery fell about 3 minutes short of the end. From there I just window watched the rest of the trip. Unfortunately there was a haze around the mountain areas and we were not able to see Fuji at all on the ride. It must have been obscured in haze and clouds. Still when we arrived in Tokyo the skies were basically clear with a few fluffy clouds and the temperature was still nicely warm. We took the Yamanote line to Hamamatsucho from Tokyo Station and then it was a short walk back to the Villa Fontaine which was right where we left it. We were basically able to check in right away. It was about 2pm when we got in. I think check in time is supposed to be 3pm but they had rooms. We asked at the desk and Ronni was able to change her room to a single charge. It turns out they charge more for more people but you still get the same room, which is what we thought happened. I was happy she could change it down so not to get overcharged. It took a couple minutes to explain the situation but the guy at the desk was very helpful.

After getting our stuff dropped off in the room we immediately walked out to the Tokyo Tower area so I could walk around part of the park next door. I figured it was too nice a day to spend several hours in the hotel waiting for Marina. On the way we passed through Zojoji Temple again and it was a bit more active than it had been the other times. There was chanting and such and a few small stalls selling things which we hadn't seen there before. After passing through we walked to the park where I left Ronni to sit a bit and walked around the park. The train day leaves me with a feeling of lesser accomplishment so I needed to some walking. It is a nice little park with some stairs and a landscaping and a waterfall and I even found a little shrine which I suspect has to involve hopes of love or fertility or something of the sort for the number of eggs, both chicken and quail, I found in it. There was also a lot of one cup sakes there too.

After the bit in the park we walked back through Zojoji by way of the cemetary and found that whatever was happening involved a significant number of people having a few group photos taken. Ronni thought maybe it was a graduation of some sort. I guess if Buddhists graduate it was something like that. From there we walked back to the hotel by way of stopping at a Sun Kus to pick up some beer and snacks for the room (for me at least, Ronni found some Smirnoff Ice bottles and bought that). This left us enough time to clean up and get ready for the night out with Marina. I also spent a few minutes having a beer and some Cheeza crackers that were very tasty while writing the early portions of this post which turned out to be longer than I expected for a transit day... I really hadn't eaten anything but the mushroom cookie things since breakfast by this point. Still I couldn't eat too much and ruin the Kaji dinner.

Marina was running late, so instead of meeting her at the hotel we met her at the north exit of Hamamatsucho Station. We both got there within a couple minutes of each other so we were well timed. From there we walked down the street a little to Kaji for dinner. Along the way I explained that Brien exited Japan early. For dinner we all had the Kaji Steak Special which is the Kobe beef set. Kajima-san was exactly like he was 2 1/2 years ago and the food was just as spectacular. He started us off with a small appetizer set that had a shrimp with garlic pesto, bamboo and what we think was horsemeat sashimi and a glass of blush wine. Then as a special he had a gigantic scallop that was still in the shell for each of us. He dissected them and cooked them and pretty much served us the whole thing on the shell. The meat itself was very sweet and very good but there was a sort of neck thing or something like that which was very rubber though still tasty. It was a bit difficult to eat. From there he worked his way through the vegetables which again included radish, squash, onion, new potatoes and garlic chips that were fried with the beef fat. At that point he took out the beef and started it up for us. I ordered rare and Marina and Ronni got medium rare, again the stuff was cooked for similar times but he gave them the thinner pieces and me the thicker pieces. The steak was again incredible, what I remembered and worth coming back to Japan for. He cooked some bean sprouts with green and red pepper strips to go at the same time as the steak. He followed that with steak cracklings made from the beef fat again then we had the fried rice with garlic and beef fat and a miso soup. I managed to get in two beers during the meal. I had seconds on the rice again. After the rice we go the mango which was fresh and delicious. After the mango came a small coffee. We sat and chatted for a few minutes after eating then headed on our way back towards the hotel. I should point out that Marina said in all the time she has known him he looks exactly the same, so it is not surprising that to me he looked exactly the same...

On the way back to the hotel we found a Caffe Veloce (yes, it has 2 f's in the caffe) and had a full size coffee each for Marina and myself and Ronni had a hot chocolate. I also had a coffee jelly that was very tasty to go along with it. We sat and talked for a fairly long time and it was a nice night. Probably close to 11pm we decided to head in for the night after making plans to get together with Marina for Friday for a day of fun.

The pictures for today can be found here.

Japan 2010 Day 9

Today was dedicated to the trip to Nara. We met at the lobby at 8am and then rode the subway to Kyoto Station where we again had breakfast at Doutour. After breakfast we had time to get to the Nara platforms and wait for the rapid train to Nara. All the trains to Nara from Kyoto go through tracks 8, 9 and 10 and some are local trains and some rapid trains with less stops. We took the 9:15 rapid train which got fairly well filled up. The ride took slightly longer than 45 minutes.

Upon arriving in Nara the station was obviously under rennovation so we had to spin around a couple times till we figured out where the local tourist office was. The lady gave us a map and said it was a 15 minute walk to Nara Park and that is the main body of where to go in Nara. There are several temples in the park and a couple pagodas as well as some shrines, gates and a few museums. The weather was a bit grey but the temperature was not bad so it was basically a pleasant day. We sort of didn't follow the tourist office lady's suggestions for a route to a T but managed to get through the trip in about the 4-5 hours she suggested. Right off Sanjo street is the 3 storied pagoda. From there we found the 5 storied pagoda and Kohfukuji Temple. At about the point of the 5 story pagoda we started to see the deer that run around Nara Park. They are tame in the sense that they are not skittish around people and many vendors sell crackers to feed them. There are literally hundreds of the things all over the park. They come up to people looking for food at every chance they can get. There are a lot of toys and other deer marketed things in Nara.

I had thought we were in the majority of what had to be seen and was a bit surprised at how small things were by this point. We found a turtle pond and walked around that then we found the maps that suggested we still had a huge area of park that we had missed. This meant we had to guide ourselves further east then to the north to Todaji Temple after passing through the Nandaimon gate. Both are huge and the temple houses a very large Buddha statue. From the temple we worked our way around the perimeter of the park to the Kasuga Grand Shrine which had tons and tons of stone lanterns all around it. I was sort of stone lanterned out for photos so I didn't take a lot of pictures there. At that poin we found our way back through the deer park through some of the less landscaped areas and back into the main grounds of the park. Along all of this we saw literally deer everywhere but oddly there were much less in the wilder areas of the park.

By this point we had been in Nara for over 4 hours and we opted to head back in towards Sanjo Dori, the main street. We turned into one of the mall alleys and found what turned out to be a Chinese restaurant to eat at. Ronni had a chinese omelette and I had some dumplings which were tasty as well as crab claws in chili sauce and some white rice. The claws had their shells so it became and interesting exercise in eating them with the chopsticks but I got the majority of the meat off them. I would be curious to know how I was supposed to do it from someone who knows. They were very yummy but the chili sauce was more sweet than anything. Still I enjoyed them. I coupled that up with a beer and the green tea they served as a matter of course. After the lunch we walked further into the mall and found a Mr Donut. I wanted a donut as soon as I spotted it in the mall before we decided where we were eating. We got a couple donuts and I had a coffee.

After the donuts we made our way back to the station and headed back in to Kyoto. The sun finally broke out of the clouds at this point but I was not happy about it because it turned the train into a cooker box and I was dying to get out of it by the time finally arrived back in Kyoto in about 50 minutes or so. We caught the subway up to the room. Ronni had decided she wasn't going to eat dinner, so I relaxed for a few minutes before deciding to go out and forage for food. I had to let lunch settle a bit. I used that time to get this written and watch some TV and recover from the heat of the train. I have a touch of sunburn all over again. I suspect most of it happened from Sunday but even the cloudy days can increase the exposure. I am not lobster red but I have a tinge of pink on my face anyway.

Oh, I should mention. This is Nara's 1300th anniversary. As an American it is nearly impossible to think of a city being 1300 years old because we're lucky to see something in the 400 year range. Still Nara was a capital before Kyoto which was capital before Edo (which is now Tokyo). I believe it was capital when the official structure was a bit less firm than it was by the time Kyoto became capital, though I will have to reread the history I read before the trip to give you all something accurate. Something I am not doing right now. It is evident with the signs all over the city that they are celebrating the anniversary (or birthday depending on how you look at it) and that is supposed to be a year long celebration. I suspect they have some really big things brewing for the summer time as there was tons of construction happening all over the parts of the city and park that we saw. Aside from the signs it appears they were just mainly in Sakura mode right now however so we didn't see any special 1300 year festival type things or anything. Still it is obviously something significant as not many cities can stand in the same place for that long in the world.

I also forgot to mention on the Imperial Palace day that the guide did mention The Tale of Genji in reference to the palace. I read the book before the last trip to Japan. It is a big heavy book and is more about the politics of the time than anything, so no a stirring samurai story or the like but I did find it an intersting read. If you are interested in Japan and want a look into the culture I would definitely recommend it.

I should also mention that the Sakura were really in bloom through Nara. The pinker ones were still in the early stages but they were definitely more open than I had seen in Kyoto.

Minus Ronni I decided to try the B1F place on the corner f Karasuma and Oike. It is an Izakuya as far as I can tell but all the other guests were eating as well. We had come across it in search of food a few days ago but all the signs looked like sushi. I figured it would be a good chance to get sushi since Ronni wasn't along. There didn't appear to be a true menu, just a special board or some such? The staff spoke as little English as I speak Japanese. I was able to order a beer and suggest I wanted to eat and that I would like sashimi. They ordered me a sashimi set that involved shrimp, scallops, salmon, tuna, octopus, a red colored fish and a white fish I could not identify. I ate all that and the wasabi was fresh and perfect. I have to admit I left the shrimp heads and tails behind. I am not the biggest shrimp nut and the extras are a bit more than I want to crunch on. In the course of the meal I had 2 more beers and eventually the waiter told me that pile of stuff I thought was ginger, which I don't typically eat was actually a ground tuna, kind of in between a paste and a tartare. When he told me it was tuna I ate it and it was enjoyable though due to its ground nature it absorbed so much more soy sauce than the standard cuts of fish did. All in all the meal was extremely enjoyable and the walk was very short. After I was done eating and drinking there I walked back to the room finished my other beer and ate the macadamia nuts I bought the night before. From there it was time to relax for a while and watch a goofy Japanese game show with a guy I've seen on a dozen other shows before as one of the hosts.

The pictures for Day 9 are located here.

Japan 2010 Day 8 Pictures

The pictures for Day 8 can be found here.

Japan 2010 Day 8

Today is probably going to be a longer story so strap in for the ride. We had already decided to stay in Kyoto for Sunday and move Nara to Monday. This played fairly well with getting Brien set on his train to Tokyo. He had originally reserved his train for 10am but since we weren't going to wait until that late we had already decided we would go to do what we were going to before he left. However he decided to change his mind and instead would take the earliest train out of Kyoto by leaving with us for Kyoto Station. I figured our best bet was to get a bus to Kiyomizudera Temple and we may as well do that through Kyoto Station after getting some breakfast. We got to the station and got Brien through the swap of his ticket and then headed into the subway mall to get breakfast. We had a quick coffee and spot to eat and then headed up to the bus ticket office and bought another 1 day pass which in retrospect turned out to be a mistake but I will explain that later.

We got in the line for one of the trains heading to Kiyomizudera Temple, the pure water temple. Just waiting in line for the bus, which we had to wait through to the second but they jammed a ton of peope onto the bus we got on, we could tell the weather was going to be really nice out. There were almost no clouds and it was already getting to a beautiful temperature without any cold cutting breezes. The bus ride was cramped and a fair number of stops and starts. For some reason the majority of people got off at the stop before the one we took. I suspect it is a more common route to the temple up the hill. Kiyomizudera is a temple up on a hill that is famous for its balconies. It was also particularly unusual that there were no other gaijin on the bus. The stop we got out took us across the street and up a narrow road uphill until we met with an obvious shopping street. From there we climbed that marking that we would come back for some ice cream and to look in a few of the shops when we departed the temple. It was still very early in the morning but the shopping street was already very crowded with people. When we got to the temple grounds it was one of the best temple visits I have made in Japan. While the golden pavilion was nice it was really a very simple grounds and a quick pass through some gardens and done quickly. Kiyomizudera was a very large temple with some internal parts to visit and a vast expanse of temple grounds. With the weather being so beautiful I am glad we visited it today rather than the earlier cloudy/rainy day. While I am sure the golden pavilion would have glistened better in the sunlight these grounds were awash with cherry blossoms in full flight and the temple itself was very impressive to see. I am sure we were there for over two hours and then add in more time for the shopping streets outside the grounds so that we probably were in the vicinity for over 3 hours. Along the way we got soft serve ice creams. I had a cherry blossom and green tea mix and Ronni had a banana and strawberry mix. The one I had was very tasty and the cone sort of tasted a like either an American fortune cookie or perhaps slightly sweeter rice crispies. Either way it was a good ice cream. We followed up with a bit more shopping down the street until we hit the main road again.

Following the main road we were not very far from the Gion district which is supposed to be the main geisha district where there are still some active geisha and a fair number of women dressed as maiko which are not professional entertainers like the geisha. We did see a few women in dress and I managed to get a couple pictures.. Gion turned out to be larger than I expected and we walked around and found Kennin Ji Temple which actually had a a nicer Zen garden, in my opinion understanding that I am not nor probably ever will be zen, than the on we already visited and was different in that they let you take a lot of pictures of the inside of the buildings. We had only stumbled on it being that the Kyoto tourist office had not suggested it but it was a very nice visit and I am glad we found it. This is a major reason I like to do a lot of things on foot when traveling. You can't really stumble on a neat place in a subway, bus or cab so easily. After Kennin Ji we wandered around Gion some more and eventually decided to eat at a place that I think as a Korean barbeque with a grill right in the center of the table. They unfortunately didn't have any English on the menu but we were able to order drinks, rice and a beef set that was very tasty and something like a bul-go-ki. Given the fact that we were cooking our own I was able to have mine very undercooked. The food was very enjoyable. We didn't see any desserts on the menu but we had already had the ice cream beforehand so it was a not to worry thing.

After lunch, where I accidentally left my tickets and pamphlets behind (damn) we walked up the street in search of a bus that might take us to some of the other temples but by then the streets were so crowded with people I was basically awestruck. I could only repeat, "Wow," every so often. In our attempts to move through for buses we noticed that most of the buses were heavily packed with people. In our movements though we came upon another temple and park complex on the outside of the Gion district and decided to see what was inside. I almost immediately regretted that we chose to eat already because there were thousands of people and dozens of food vendors all over the place. It was one gigantic Sakura party that was just jam packed with people. We wandered through the grounds which included tons of cherry blossoms and a landscape garden and couple temples and shrines for some time. We bought some candied strawberries, which are like candied apples but with strawberries instead. A Japanese girl buying a stick herself told us they were very tasty and I fell in for it. They indeed were very good and the strawberries very nicely soft and sweet. This however meant we had trash and no place to put it after we were done eating them. Even in a park loaded with vendors selling all sorts of food there were no trash barrels to be found. People just police their own trash and carry it around with them forever, which is what we ended up doing until we were up at one of the temples and I found a bin. Somewhere early in the morning I had to take off my jacket and I didn't put it back on until my evening run. The weather was sunny and a perfect temperature all day. I could not believe how perfect it had turned out to be really.

After a while wandering through the park we decided we should start to find a bus back to Kyoto Station where we could pick up tickets to Nara and to Tokyo for the following two days. In trying to find a bus the sheer volume of people really showed itself on us. The bus stops were loaded with people all trying to pack into already jammed full buses. I suggested we move away from the eastern temple areas and more towards the center of the city in hopes of getting away from the crowds and maybe picking up a bus or the subway with less people. In reading the map it initially looked like Shijo Station may not be too far away. We had to cross back through Gion and this had become so much more overrun with people it was difficult to walk at anything faster than a stagger speed because that was as fast as the crowd was moving. After a while we got to the river and just beyond the river we found an entrance to a train station which I thought would get us to the subway. Instead it turned out to be a third party type train system that I had no idea where went. However the station apparently was the beginning of a vast underground complex and we walked along with less people under the city for what was probably about 5 blocks. I had no idea that there was a vast cavern system underneath Kyoto. We walked due west because I was sure that would bring us to Shijo subway station eventually and I was right. I unfortunately was in travel mode and didn't take any pictures of the tunnels though. It was basically like being in the longest subway exit ever. As I said we walked several blocks of the city down there. I know the weather was great outside but the place was so crowded there was no chance to move with speed and I am glad we ended up down there. We did eventually find Shijo Station and even more of the crowds but we were able to pack into a subway car and make it into Kyoto Station from there.

In Kyoto Station we went to the JR office and found out after waiting in line for about 10 minutes (The station was packed solid with people like the rest of the city) that you do not reserve seats for trains to Nara, instead you just show up at the platform and show your pass. Fortunately we had to get our tickets to Tokyo for Tuesday so the long wait was not really much of an issue in the long haul. We accomplished something for it aside from learning how to get to Nara anyway. After the JR office we walked through he subway mall in search of dinner and decided to eat at D's Place which is an Italian style restaurant specializing in pasta and pizza. I had the bacon and mushroom spaghetti which though not mentioned on the menu was filled with red pepper strips and was finally something spicy for me. I enjoyed it a lot. I couple tha with a beer in a fluted glass. Ronni had a set meal that included a pasta, doria (which appeared to be a burger on a tomato risotto though using Japanese rice) and a drink and dessert which was premade. The food was good and I really enjoyed the spiciness of the pasta. I followed up with a coffee then we went back to the subway and rode in a much less crowded car back to the hotel.

I spent a couple minutes freshening up but I wanted to see if the Imperial Palace park had churned out some of the blossoms that were still forming the couple days before so I headed back out to catch what I could before sundown and perhaps to snap a few night pictures of the blossoms as well, which is what I did. Surprisingly the blossoms in the park did not seem as far along as those near the temples. I am not sure if they are different varieties or their basic situations change things enough that they just haven't opened yet. Still I managed to bet a few hopefully nice pictures and to try my hand at taking some flash photos of the blossoms after it got darker. I walked through the park and around the palace. It was dark by I had turned the corner that started me on my way back south. There were still people in the park but not really that many by that point. The park is large so it took me some time to get through the circuit. When I got back to the main street I headed for the hotel and stopped at a Sun Kus on the way back to pick up a couple beers for the next couple nights and some snacks. I returned to the room and wrote this up while watching a candid camera type show on TV. There are a lot of pictures for today. Easily over 300.

Japan 2010 Day 7

Today was dedicated to getting to and seeing Hiroshima. We had an 8:20am train to Hiroshima so met at the lobby of the hotel at 7:30. With the quick subway ride to Kyoto station and a bit of scouting we were able to determine what we needed to do in short order. We also spent a couple minutes getting Brien a ticket to Tokyo for Sunday morning. With the spare time we went to the Lotteria and I had coffee and a banana muffin and the others each had an orange juice.

We caught the shinkansen no problem and the ride to Hiroshima was about 2 hours long. Fortunately on the way out it was a direct ride without any changes and we were in green car all the way. The ride was pleasant and we passed Himeji which we had visited on the last trip and I was able to see the castle in the distance from the approach to the Himeji stop.

The weather was definitely less overcast though maybe a touch cooler than short sleeve temperatures. There was no rain or even the slightest look of rain on the day.

When we arrived in Hiroshima we immediately visited the tourist office and got maps and directions to the A-Bomb Dome and the Peace Museum and Park. They suggested we take the street car there. The car was crowded but we manage it well enough. It had to stop not only for the designated stops but also for red traffic lights making the trip feel extremely long.

We arrived at the A-Bomb Dome stop and exited with a little bit of a todo I won't explain on the blog. The dome is a very sobering sight. It is the last visual remnants of what happened in the city in 1945. By this point over 60 years later the rest of the city has been reclaimed but the dome has been preserved as a reminder. The peace park surrounds the dome and there were plenty of cherry trees around in slightly later bloom than what is in Kyoto making the park a very pretty site to see. We did not hover the entire park but there were obviously Japanese people having their Sakura picnics here and there about the grounds. Through the park we made it to the Peace Museum. Entryis 50 yen which is a bit more than 50 cents right now. Ronni and I rented the audio guides which were about 3 bucks apiece. They were nice to have because in some respects it reduced the need to read when you couldn't see with all the people in the way but the narrator was slow to me and I ended up reading more than I listened throughout the museum. The museum itself was incredibly neutral towards the US and Americans. Iwas very surprised by this. There is not doubt there was a lot of commentary on the horrors of what the atomic bomb did to the city and there are some very disturbing visuals and depressing stories throughout the museum but the horrors are not directed at individuals or the US or anything beyond the idea of nuclear war in general. It was a very interesting museum and I am very glad we visited it. It is difficult to really understand how great and terrible a thing it was until you see it for yourself.

From the museum we walked up to the shopping street and found a restaurant to eat in. The theme was Italian again and I had a penne with a hot pepper and bacon red sauce. It was not really all the spicy but it was tasty and I had a couple beers to go along. Brien and Ronni both had burger dishes that looked reasonably good. I had a Ice Tiramisu for dessert that was both tasty and enjoyable.

After lunch we had a better understanding of the scale of the map and chose to walk to Hiroshima Castle. The visit was free however only the outer walls have been rebuilt. The castle was destroyed by the atomic bomb and they have the foundations of the various buildings marked off on the inside. The outer wall area is a replica and you can walk through it and see some of the style of how things were done much in the way Kanazawa castle worked. It was nota particularly long visit but it was nice. We also visited the temple next door which at some point I will have to dig out of a map. There was a wedding going on as it was Saturday. The party was using moderately traditional dress except the bride was in white as opposed to the traditional Japanese black.

After the castle we walked back to Hiroshima Station. On the map it appeared to be a shorter distance than the time of the walk seemed to take so I wonder if the scale on the map was accurate. In any event we made it in a teeny bit longer than I expected and upped our train trip back to Kyoto from 5pm to 4:15pm. We had to ride in standard car rather than green car. It wa very crowded but we were on a Silence Car so there was not a ton of noise. This brought us to Shin-Osaka where we exchanged to a green car ride that took about 15 minutes to Kyoto. Brien wasn't feeling well so we hopped the subway back to the hotel and Ronni and I ate at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. I had cashew chicken this time, which was supposed to be spicy but really wasn't to me. It was tasty and enjoyable though. I would advise trying the place out if ever you are in Kyoto and crave Chinese food. It is called Saien. I am still in love with the waitress who would send me to hell or jail, whichever came first. After that we split up for the night and I came up to the room to write this and have my other beer I bought the night before, a Yebisu black beer that turned out to be very enjoyable.

While writing this up I watched a Japanese game show where the contestants were playing curling like in the winter Olympics but instead the stones were people with curling stone shaped hats that were riding on slippery disks. They had a plastic mat laid out an they had put soapy water on it. The effect was rather unusual as the varioius "stones" carreened down the course and into each other. I wouldn't quite have appreciated it so much if it was not for the hats they were wearing which were priceless. They appeared to have a hard time deciding if they scored if they fell off their disks or not. Eventually it appeared that if they fell off they did not.

I have posted the pictures for today here.

Japan 2010 Day 6 Photos

The pictures for day 6 can be found here.

Japan 2010 Day 6

Today I had intended for us to go to Hiroshima but with the 8am start and no prepurchased tickets the earliest non-smoking train cars we could have gotten were at 11am and that would have cost us a non-green car ride to Shin-Osaka. That would have gotten us to Hiroshima at 1:30pm or so. We gathered those tickets and funda Doutour for breakfast and to regroup. I had a cheese toast which was basically an open faced grilled cheese sandwich along with a coffee. Brien ended up with what turned out to be a tuna melt for all intents and purposes and Ronni bought a packaged pastry of some sort. While eating we chatted about the day and Hiroshima and we decided that it would be better to try to do Hiroshima on Saturday if we could get earlier trains in and we would try to get tickets back with the idea that we could always exchange to earlier. With the rail pass anything we do does not cost us extra money.

After deciding to go to Hiroshima tomorrow we went back to the ticket office and traded our tickets for 8:20am rides on Saturday. We also gathered return tickets for around 5pm. From there we found the city bus office and bought an all day pass then took the bus to Kinkakuji Temple which is the Golden Pavillion. It is a temple that is covered completely in gold leaf on the upper portions. The bus ride took a while to get there but deposited us fairly much right on top of the grounds. We bought our way in and took the tour which does not have you going inside the pavillion. Instead it is a tour of the grounds with several very spectacular views of the temple s well as a nicely sculpted landscape garden all around the grounds. I think the visit was moderately short as we did not have anything to go inside and see.

After we finished Kinkakuji, Ronni wanted to Ryoanji Temple which has a zen garden in it. It is in the same vicinity as Kinkakuji but took probably a 25 minute walk to get to. The distances on the map seem to be sort of made up with a handwave on the stuff we had. It certainly seemed further than the maps made it look. This also was a mainly outdoors sort of visit. You do go into the temple to see the zen garden but really you are on the wooden floorboards of the external halls of the buildings. They require you to take your shoes off. I am not very zen or mystical or the like so I don't see much with the zen garden rocks. I assume someone more in tune with that sort of thing will make more of it than I did. All I saw was a few rocks set up on a raked gravel yard. The rest of the grounds were also dedicated to landscape gardens and the views were often very nice if only we had more sun at that point in the day. Still it was a nice visit.

After the Ryoanji Temple we walked back to the main road for about 10 minutes and got lunch at the Jolly Pasta. It was next door to a Big Boy which actually made me laugh when I saw it. The Jolly Pasta did not have any English menus. Only pictures. We all ordered what we hoped we wanted based on the pictures. I ended up with a spaghetti with beef strips, hot dog strips and bacon strips in a mildly spicy tomato sauce. The menu showed a little pepper to say it was hot but I didn't really find much spice in it. The taste of the food was good though. I rounded that out with a glass of red wine and Ronni bought some garlic toast which I had one of. It was obviously a local family type restaurant as there were many unbridled children running amok in the place while we ate at various times. As a note this was a place that had both smoking and non-smoking sections and there were some smokers there but it really does not seem as though the numbers of smokers we are seeing this time around are quite as high as 2 1/2 years ago. People are obviously still smoking but it doesn't seem as obtrusive at this point.

After lunch we took the bus to Hijo Eki-mae which means Hijo Station. Unfortunately Hijo Station is a couple blocks away from Hijo Castle but the ride was shorter than walking the whole way by far and we couldn't have gotten closer from what I could tell on the returning towards city center routes where we were. I believe Hijo Castle was occupied by the Shogun when the Emperor moved to the palace that we had already visited. The grounds of the castle are huge and it appears the place had not been destroyed in recent years so a lot of it is original. The castle is low and sprawling rather than tall with turrets like most of the other Japanese castles we have visited. Entering the castle again required the removal of shoes. There were several bus tour type things going on inside the castle and they made the navigation of the building somewhat unpleasant. I will never be a fan of large slow moving crowds. Especially ones that appear to do their best to intentionally get in your way. At a point I saw an opening I pushed ahead of the two tours that were holding us up so I could get some breathing space. I managed to see what I wanted to see but keep ahead of them the rest of the time. I had to wait for Ronni and Brien to get out because though Brien also pushed forward he opted o wait for her at a point in the building. After the castle innards we toured the grounds outside which got to a wall top at one point which had a nice view of the grounds as well as cherry tree garden that was starting to get into better bloom. To me it looks like the whiter cherry blossoms start earlier than the pinker ones. We visited the gift shop and I bought my first magnets of the tip. Unfortunately the Imperial Palace again did not have magnets. But I was able to find nice ones for Kinkakuji and Hijo Castle.

As the day went on the weather started to clear up so that we were occasionally getting more sun but unfortunately a cooler breeze also picked up to go along with the sun sort of canceling out some of the enjoyment. Still the weather for the next couple days is supposed to be nicer so perhaps it will be better for pictures.

After Hijo Castle we headed back to the room for a rest before dinner. I again used the time to start this up so I wouldn't have to rush it in before bed time. We will need to be at the train station no later than 8:00am I bet to make sure we don't miss our train out t Hiroshima, so getting to bed earlier would be better overall.

They called me a little after 6pm and we walked down the street and found an arcade style mall around the corner. There was a sign board for food for a Cafe Salon. The board showed a burger though when we got into the restaurant I suspect it may have been a lunch menu board or something. They had no English on the menus. Brien and Ronni both chose the very obvious steak and I chose something not being certain what it was. It turned out to be either a pork, chicken or maybe rat curry that was very tasty and mildly spicy though it smelled stronger than it tasted on the spice level. With a drink menu that only showed wines and frou frou drinks Brien and Ronni stuck with the house water and I ordered a coffee which came after the meal was done. The food was good to me and Brien and Ronni both ate theirs so it couldn't have been too bad.

After dinner we foraged a convenience store for snacks for Ronni to have in the morning because we would likely fail to get breakfast with our 8:20 departure for Hiroshima. I took advantage to buy a couple beers for the room and a bag of peanuts to go with them. I also managed to find a bag of the blueberry hard candies I had from the last trip and bought those too. From there it was a short walk back to he hotel to settle in for the night.

As an aside, it is obvious that Kyoto is a muh smaller city than Tokyo. It feels possible to walk from one end to the other though I am sure it would be a long walk. I walked most of west to east and it was a reasonable amount of time solo. The city is longer north to south than west to east and that might be where its size might show. Even with it being an obvious tourist city it definitely feels more run down and lower wealth level than Tokyo. The streets and sidewalks are all well maintained, don't get me wrong, but the buildings and houses look a bit older and the laundry hanging in the balconies is different from Tokyo. The people seem to have their own look to. Less business suits and more regular clothing. The kids also seem to be a touch less stylish but that's a guess because even when I was that age I was never up on fashion.

I've also watched a couple baseball games on TV now and I think that they take even longer than the ones in the US which is mainly bad because they don't have the commercial breaks in between innings. So that means it is just taking a long time by nature. There are a significant number of westerners on their teams mainly from the US and the Dominecan Republic as far as I can tell. I assume they are guys that would never make it in MLB. I should also mention there is a big todo in sumo about an Estonian wrestler who has attained the rank of Yokozuna, which is grand master. That means he's won a lot of high ranked matches. I believe it is the first non-Hawaiian westerner to make it it to that rank. He has blond hair. I cannot tell if they are treating him with respect or not but he is certainly a gigantic media curiosity right now. It appears he has celebrity status. Looking at bit of footage of his matches on the news he seemed to be very good at technique along with having some good size.

Lastly, with his various sets of injuries, Brien has decided to make this a week long trip for himself instead of two. I am sorry to see him go but if he is going to be too damaged to go on maybe it is for the best. We'll help him get out of Kyoto on Sunday where he'll get to Tokyo then on to Narita and fly back to Boston on the same flight set we'll be taking a week later. He will be visting Hiroshima tomorrow with us though, he says.

Japan 2010 Day 5

We started off the morning with a walk up the street to the McDonald's near palace gardens. While getting in line to get our McWhatever breakfast sandwiches there was an accident involving a scooter and a car in the intersection right out in front of the restaurant. I am not sure what happened, I only heard the sounds first then gave a basic, "Oh crap," though a bit stronger language when I saw the person from the scooter lying under the bumper of the car. Not to be a vulture I only took one picture. It wasn't long before the police and ambulance arrived and they took the person from the scooter away on a backboard with head immobilized. They didn't move him or her until the ambulance came. I don't recall seeing a helmet so I figured concussion at the least. The person was wearing a purple running suit so it is easy to think female but I never could tell for sure. My guess on the accident is the scooter was trying to cut up to the front of the line like they all do and then the light turned and the driver of the car started just as the scooter was doing that. Only a guess but it was a fairly loud crunching sound.

After breakfast we walked into the garden grounds and saw what we could before the Imperial Palace tour started. The cherry blossoms are more starting to bud here than they were in Tokyo which was a bit further along. The grounds are very large and there is a lot of walking to get through it. At 9:50 we got up to the palace and took the tour which lasted a bit over an hour. The grounds are all where the palaces stood but of course everything was burned at some point or another so everything is replacement along the way. Visually this tour was much nicer than the Tokyo Imperial Palace tour because the buildings are all still done in the older styles. The Tokyo palace buildings look like concrete bunkers. The tour was conducted in English and the lot of us on the tour were gaijin of some format. I get the impression a fair number of them did not understand English because they did absolutely nothing to pay attention to the guide. They were a very noisy lot but fortunately the majority of them did not push up to her so those of us who wanted to hear what she had to say could get up there and hear her easier. The tour definitely could have benefited from the little security guy from the Tokyo tour. There was almost no attempt to stay with the guide though at least no one tried to jump any barriers. The grounds are very nice and I only regret that the weather was more overcast because I am sure the pictures are not going to be as vibrant as I would like. Still we didn't get completely rained out. I realize now that they have another palace on the grounds, the Sento Palace that I did not book a tour for. Unfortunately, I didn't realize there would be another palace in the same city, heck in the same garden park. I told the others I would try to book it but on getting back to the room later in the day I have found it is booked solid until July so we will have to come back to Kyoto at another time to do it. Oh well, live and learn. A point where my research failed me.

After the tour we finished off the gardens then headed to subway and rode into Kyoto Station to have lunch. My thoughts were there would be a lot of places to choose from in a small area and I was indeed correct. We let Ronni choose and she choose Mano's Cafe because she liked the desserts that were showing in the storefront. Indeed the place really seemed to be more a dessert place than a restaurant but they had some pizza, pasta and sandwiches. Ronni and I each got a Pizza Margherita and Brien got the Mixed Sandwich which appeared to be a combination ham/egg salad/ salami/ cucumber/ who knows what else sandwich. She tried a Yuzu Soda which seemed like a make it yourself Fresca. I had a coffee float which was iced coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and Brien had a Mixed Fruit float or something that was like a sorbet shake. The food was reasonable but messy and they had not napkins. We had to use the hand towel from the beginning of the meal to clean up. For dessert I had a cafe American and a cherry blossom chiffon cake. Brien had a carmel chiffon cake and Ronni had a berry berry cake which was a yellow cake with cream icing and berries. It was all decent food though a tad pricey by the end.

After lunch we walked around the mall of the station and found the Higashi Temple along the way and looked in on that. It appeared there was a large Buddhist rite going on in the temple and a lot of people were kneeled and watching it. We had to take off our shoes to go near the temple. Along the way we found a gallery that was apparently heated by the fires of hell and got worse the lower floor you got. We had to exit quickly or we would have burst into flames. The temple has a large construction around it. I am not sure if it is for protection or because they are rennovating it. It does give it a very strange look.

After the temple we climbed back into the subway and headed to the hotel where I dropped them off then walked to scout out Hijojo Castle and just the vicinity in general. I walkedboht up and down the street going west to east. The castle isn't far from our hotel and will cost 600 yen to get in. Not bad. Kyoto is obviously not gigantic in size and an active walker would not really even need to use public transport to get around it felt. The castle is to the west and I walked to that then went down the main street to our east until what looked like the end major intersection then turned back and went to a small market and bought a couple beers and a few snacks then headed back to the room. I cracked one of the beers when I got in and started writing this so I wouldn't have to get it all done just before bed. I decided that the cheesy snacks I bought last night work really well with beer though. I called their room to tell them to let me know when they wanted to go to dinner.

Ronni didn't call until about quarter to 7 to say that they weren't getting dinner and I checked out the window and it looked seriously rainy so I decided to just hit the Chinese restaurant that i part of the hotel. I had a shredded beef with green pepper dish that also had mushrooms and noodles in it and a bowl of white rice rounded out with a huge mug of Asahi beer. It was all very tasty and enjoyable. I was very happy with the quality of the food. Ithink I fell in love with the waitress but she is most probably jailbait. In any event she was incredibly attractive and very sweet. As with all Japanese women it is impossible to tell age unless they are obviously old.

After dinner I headed back upstair, caught some TV and finished up this.

The pictures for day 5 can be found here.