Monday, May 28, 2007

Patrick: Hiroshima and Miyajima

Well... there's not much more to say after Brian's post so enjoy the pictures!

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Sunday, May 27, 2007

Brian: Hiroshima and Miyajima

The past two days were jam-packed and fun: all the SCTI students went to Hiroshima and Miyajima as part of the Bing trip. By the way, prefixing "Bing" before any event just means that Peter and Helen Bing, ridiculously wealthy and generous Stanford patrons, paid for it. I heard from somebody that the cost of the trip was about $400 per head.

We met up on Friday morning at the Kyoto eki at 8:45AM and took the Nozomi superexpress bullet train to Hiroshima, where we were met by a charter bus. The bus took us to an area of Hiroshima called Shintenchi which has good shopping and covered arcades. We ate lunch consisting of Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, the main difference between it and Kanto style okonomiyaki being that there are noodles sandwiched between two thin layers of fried egg batter in the Hiroshima version, and just a pancake-like mix of ingredients in the Kanto style. It came with fried soba noodles, which I'm not a big fan of, so it was only passable in my opinion, although others who liked yakisoba thought it was delicious. After lunch, we walked to the A-bomb dome and the peace park. The A-bomb dome kind of sneaks up on you. You see a dilapidated looking building off to the side and before recognizing the famous bare-metal supports of the dome and realizing that that building was there when the bomb when off. We walked over the T-shaped Aioi bridge that was the target of the bomb, and to the Children's Memorial, where Japanese students were singing. It was really touching. From there we walked through the peace park, with the eternal flame opposite a cenotaph commemorating the bomb victims, and finally to the museum, itself an architectural marvel.

The museum really blew me away. I tried to read every panel in the museum because every detail was so interesting. There were memorandums from the National Archives that descried the motivations behind targeting Japan (ending the war sooner, primacy over the Soviets in the post-war era) and also how the selected the target, Hiroshima. There were scale models of the immediate surroundings before and after the bomb detonated, and you really get a sense of what 90% of buildings destroyed means. Then came the human element, with descriptions of family members searching for lost ones, charred remnants of clothing, and descriptions of the horrible injuries they suffered. I was so engrossed that I was the last one out of the museum and late to our arranged meeting time of 2:45PM. It was a really sad and humbling experience. There were some times that I almost wanted to cry, but I came away more knowledgeable about the incident and also somehow cathartically purged by witnessing the human tragedy that ensued.

We immediately traveled from the peace park to our ryokan (Japanese-style hotel) in Miyajima via charter bus and ferry. As the ferry took us across the bay, we could see a bright red tori emerge from the mist, a famous landmark of Miyajima (an island). On the walk from the port to the ryokan, we saw another famous aspect of Miyajima - the deer. At first we were excited to see such docile and friendly deer, but soon there were too many of them and I grew to perceive them as a nuisance. They'd very aggressively go after any food and would also eat through paper and clothing.

Our ryokan was really nice. The rooms, which fit 6 people, were really spacious, well decorated, and had a super good view of the bay and the red tori. Also, there were showers and baths in the basement and an outdoor bath as well. Us guys immediately showered and soaked in the bath and were joined in there by the director, Terry Macdougall. We had a nice chat about sumo wrestling. Dinner at night was spectacular. We had beer and a continuous parade of seafood delicacies. Everything was very large and fresh. The sashimi was so delicious I thought it was melting in my mouth. There were also 2 extremely large oysters per person. Refer to my pictures for more dishes (I forgot to take pictures of some of them though). We were all dressed in yukata (light robes) for dinner and of course it was the perfect time for photos. We relaxed and talked after dinner before heading to the beach for some more drinking. Around 10PM, Pat and Jeffrey and I headed back to take a bath in the outdoor onsen, which was only available between 10-11PM. Then, I hung out in Jeffrey's room until drunk people from the beach started showing up and I decided to go back to my room to sleep.

That night was really surreal. Michael and Pat got into a fight about something that escalated quite quickly and left the rest of us feeling really awkward in the room. After trying unsuccessfully to talk it out, Michael left by himself to take a walk. I also took a walk with Patrick to try to talk things out. The walk was actually very peaceful - it was pitch dark by then but we made our way carefully to another strip of beach we had never been to and watched the tide come in. The tori was no longer lit by spotlights by this time, so it cast a black silhouette against the city line of Hiroshima and its rippling black reflection on the water was also kind of creepy. Pat and I were able to talk through a lot of things and I felt like he was able to clear his head afterwards. By then it was past 3AM already when Pat went back to sleep. I wasn't sleepy so I hung out in another room until about 5AM, then departed once again to the beach to take pictures of the shrine at high tide in the morning. I was really tired for the rest of the day.

The other main thing we did on Saturday was climb Mt. Misen, the mountain in the middle of the island. Actually 4 of us took a ropeway gondola most of the way up, but it was still a really hard hike. It took us about 3 hours to complete it, and almost all of it was either climbing up or climbing down stairs. At least we were rewarded by a monkey park and some good views (that didn't turn out so good on camera). In the afternoon, Pat, Roel, Mary and I headed back to Hiroshima and did some shopping before hitting up the okonomiyaki place once more for dinner. Then it was arcade and sticky pics time until 9PM, when we took a bullet train back to Kyoto so that we could catch the last trains back to our respective host families. It all seems like a long continuous experience because I didn't get to sleep on Friday night. I did take naps every time we were on a bus or train though, so I am not substantially sleep deprived.

Hiroshima and Miyajima Trip

Monday, May 21, 2007

Patrick: Osaka, Baseball, and Kiyomizu Temple

On Friday, we went on a class field trip to Osaka for Contemporary International Affairs. Specifically we ate lunch at the Tsuruhashi district and then went on to visit the Peace Osaka Museum. As a little background, Tsuruhashi (crane bridge) and the neighboring Momotani (peach valley) are the two districts with the highest concentration of Koreans in Japan. Since the World War II era when Koreans and other Asians were pressed into forced labor in Japan, Koreans have concentrated in the Kansai area. Nowadays, Osaka is perhaps Japan's most diverse cities with residents from all over Asia and beyond.

We ate a Korean lunch in Tsuruhashi and then visited a wet market. The yakiniku looked delicious but the prices were prohibitively high for students... The wet market was probably the closest to Taiwanese market atmosphere that I've seen so far in Japan. Everything from clothes to snacks, crackers, and sweets, to kimchi, and fresh seafood was sold. I wanted to stick around a little longer but are schedule wouldn't permit it.

The peace museum was soso. It had floors dedicated to the memories of civilian victims from the fire bombing of Osaka. It also had floors dedicated to Asian victims of Japanese hegemony as well as the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A few Japanese students who were taking the International Affairs class and the Postwar Japanese Society class came along with us. It was a little awkward reading the same saddening diary entries, browsing the same war-marred artifacts.. In all, it was a rather depressing end to the class field trip.

After the museum, a few of us took the train to Koshien (in Kobe, I believe) to watch a Hanshin Tigers game. I bought Jeff's ticket since he said he was too sick and tired to go. I'm not really a baseball fan but I think I've discovered that a Hanshin Tiger's game should be at the top of any tourist's list for things to do in Japan. The fans are absolutely crazy dedicated. They have a song for every person on the team. There is non-stop cheering throughout the game. And the stadium was packed even after the team's suffered a 10-game losing streak last, last week and a 3-game losing streak leading up to the game we attended. The Hanshin's ended up beating the Baystars and the crowd went wild.

When the game finished, Michael, Jason, and some others went clubbing in Osaka and stayed out all night. Brian and I left early to catch the last couple of trains home. I still had the badminton circle to attend on Saturday morning and Brian seemed pretty exhausted and sick.

On Sunday, Stephanie, Daryl, and I went to Kiyomizu Temple. It's apparently a candidate for the new 7 wonders of the world. It was, in my opinion, one of the most fabulous temples I've seen so far in Japan. Overlooking Kyoto, it offered a magnificent view of the city. It was also a very natural place; good for hiking. Leading up to the temple, there was a 10-minute walk along a street lined with shops selling souvenirs and delicious traditional snacks and ice cream. It really was tourist central. And on a beautiful day like yesterday, all the school kids were out too in their uniforms.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Patrick: Misc. Pictures and Festivities

On Monday, Brian and I took the Uji Keihan line down to the last stop.. Uji City. Uji is known as the Town of the Tale of Genji, the glorified womanizer of the Heian era who represents the pinnacle of courtier society. Uji is also famous for it's green tea: maccha and sencha. I don't know much about teas but my host family was telling me that the plot of land outside of our house produces the best tea in the area and now is the season the leaves are harvest and stir fried (itameru)...

At Uji, we visited Byodoin, a famous nobleman's estate later transformed into a famous Pure Land Bhuddism temple. It really was built to be paradise on earth. The building is so famous that it is present on the back of every 10-yen coin in Japan. We arrived too late in the day to go into the main building... actually we would have made it but we decided to splurge and enjoy a delicious dessert at a local kissaten (cafe).

Yesterday, there was a major festival in Kyoto, the Aoi Matsuri. The festival involved a parade starting from the present-day Kyoto Imperial Palace at 10:30 am to Shimogamo Shrine and then to Kamigamo Shrine. The festival involves an offering of aoi, hollyhock, to the gods. Aside from that, the average citizen is not expected to no any more... I was at the Imperial Palace a little before the start of the procession, since Doshisha University is right across from the compound in the northwest. The place was packed with people from all over Japan as well as tourists from all over the world. It really was a grand procession... at least until you've seen the first versions of everything. It was a very repetitive parade, with people wearing practically the same thing. It was also a rather solemn procession devoid of music. I was expecting taiko drums and shamisen. By far the most interesting part of the parade was the princess that rode in a little house-like box escorted by numerous servants. The Aoi Matsuri is one of Kyoto's three major festivals. The other ones are the Jidai Matsuri and the Gion Matsuri. The latter of the two will be held in mid July and is one of Japan's largest and most famous festivals. I expect that one to be way more fun..

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Patrick: DESA retreat continued...

Methinks Brian did a pretty thorough job explaining the weekend's events. I think we would never have gone to Wakayama if not for this trip. We were lucky to get a chance to experience what was in a sense a bonding event for building camaraderie among new and old members of the DESA circle. As foreigners, we were also treated with an extraordinary degree of politeness and friendship by all the Japanese students. They were all very enthusiastic about conversing and interacting with us despite our lack of deep vocabulary.

Like Brian, I think the best part of the trip was the bbq and the nomikai, drinking party, afterwards. The food was plentiful and the variety of alcohol was staggering. It makes me wish I wasn't such a lightweight because it's embarrassing turning red after just one beer. The thing is though, I don't think I am as drunk as I seem to appear (I am sober now while writing this). At least compared to Yuzo (Brian mentioned him earlier) I still remember the events of that night and I wasn't the least bit tired. I must admit, however, my motor coordination was nowhere near perfect.

Here are the pictures I took on the trip. Brian rarely took out his camera so you have to make do with just my perspective. Notice the absurd number of girls on the trip... Why can't our trips be like this at home?

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

DESA retreat

DESA is the cultural exchange club at Doshisha. Just guessing, but it probably stands for something like Doshisha Exchange Student Association. They invited us to go on a retreat with them to Wakayama and then either to an amusement park or an onsen. The cost of the bus, lodging, and first night's dinner was ¥12000 per person which I thought was quite a lot, but it was a good opportunity to hang out with Japanese people so it was worth overcoming my Asian stinginess. The students from Stanford who went were Pat, me, Jason, and Stephanie. Michael couldn't go at the last minute because of a programming assignment.

Before going, we had already met some of the Japanese students in DESA. Atsushi-kun, the club president, is Patrick's host brother. Kousuke-san is extremely tall, probably like 6'6". Ami-chan we met before because she works part time in the Stanford center. Some of the other students we met while drinking together on Wednesday - Akiko-chan and Shuu - and others we met when they gave us a tour around campus - Maki-chan, Hotta-san, etc. Of course Shigeo Majima was there too - he was one of the students who came to Stanford last quarter.

The bus trip to Wakayama was long but not boring. We had a nice coach bus with all the standard amenities (except TVs) and even aisle chairs that could be folded up. The trip took 3.5 hours, with one 15 minute break at a rest stop. We left at 2P.M. on Saturday. On the bus trip there Atsushi-kun led a game that consisted of riddles of Japanese puns. I couldn't really understand any of the questions except for one - in English, it was something like, "what sport can't I do?" Somehow I thought of the answer - boxing. In Japanese, it sounds like bokushin, where boku is another word for "I" and "hin" in the Kansai dialect is a negative suffix. My host mom just taught it to me last week. So it was incredibly lucky that I could answer it correctly.

Dinner that night was BBQ, but Japanese-style. Every group of about 10 people sat around a table with 2 grills. We had the hardest time getting the fire just right but in the end we all ate a lot of tasty meat, rice, and vegetables. Everybody also introduced themselves to the rest of the table and we had some conversation, except I had a hard time communicating with the girl next to me for some reason. It just seems like some people are more patient or sympathetic listeners and with others it is feels impossibly awkward. Stephanie didn't sit at my table, but she kept turning around and telling us how hungry she still was. In the end we gave her some meat from our grill to keep her quiet :).

After dinner there was nomikai, or a drinking event. This was the best part of the trip in my opinion. There were 3 long tables in a tatami room (flat rush mats) and 2 large buckets filled with alcoholic beverages in the front. In addition there were all sorts of snacks - popcorn, wasabi chips, potato chips, and sweets. We started the night off with a kampai (cheers) and then the whole room erupted in lively conversation. I had 2 chu-hi (like wine coolers) drinks and some plum wine that night and was pleasantly buzzed the entire time. I sat at the end of the middle table at first and had a fun time talking to a girl I can't recall the name of now, something like Hatari-chan, and another group of people - a foreign exchange student from Australia named David, a really nice Japanese boy who was president last year, and another girl I didn't know the name of. Afterwards, I joined Jason and talked to a senior named Yuki-san. None of the conversations were very deep, for example we learned that Yuki doesn't dance and doesn't really like karaoke either, and what music she likes, but that can't be helped because of our limited Japanese ability. Unfortunately the nomikai had to end pretty early, at 10PM, but that was OK because the party just moved into the cabins we had for the night. Patrick was in a different room, so Jason and I first hung out with these two Japanese freshmen, Yuuzou and Ken. Yuuzou was so wasted, but hilarious. He kept saying that our Japanese was really good and that we should "jishin wo motte itte" or have confidence. It was actually a very good observation but he was so drunk he kept repeating himself. He also kept thinking that Jason's name was Alexander, which was hilarious because nobody on the trip had a name that was even close. Anyways, Ken and Yuuzou were great fun, and then later at night we all piled into the girls' room. A bunch of us played Uno and then sat around talking, another group was playing cards. It was really hard to follow the conversation when the Japanese kids were talking among themselves, but it was still a lot of fun. I ended up sleeping at about 1AM, and Jason slept soon afterwards. Pat was in the card-playing group and apparently he didn't sleep until 5AM.

The next day we all woke up at 7:30 AM and had breakfast and chilled until 10. Then, we left for the amusement park, yuenji, and the onsen (hot spring), which was 70 minutes away. At yuenji, a bunch of us had a seafood barbeque which was really expensive. I spent about $25 on ingredients and had to cook it all myself besides. I bought a jumbo shrimp, a large scallop, a skewer with 4 large pieces of maguro (tuna), a skewer with pieces of marinated pork, and a hot dog. In retrospect, it didn't fill me up and it wasn't particularly tasty (although the scallop was delicious) so it might not have been the best choice, but it was worth trying out. I was in a group that went to the amusement park after lunch - it consisted of me, Pat, Jason, Stephanie, and 2 Korean exchange students. The park didn't have any great rides, but we still had fun. I rode the swings with Jason (besides us it was all little kids) and then we all rode this roller coaster that was a combination of the Disneyland Tea Cups with a traditional coaster. We also played some carnival games and went to an arcade. We even came out with some sticky pics to remember it by. By the end of Japan I will have an immense sticky pic collection, I'm sure. We all went back to the bus at about 3:30 and then got back to Kyoto at about 5:30. One other thing was that Japanese people are really punctual. Everybody was always back in the bus at least 2 or 3 minutes before the announced time and we would actually start driving on the dot. This was pretty amazing because there was nobody yelling at everybody to get moving, everybody was just conscientious and cooperative. A lot of credit also goes to Atsushi-kun and the other organizers for making detailed plans and executing them smoothly. On the way back, Pat and I were really impressed with the camaraderie that was built with the retreat and talked about doing the same with the Stanford badminton team next year. I think it is a great idea, and we will be sure to bring it up with whoever ends up being captain next year.

DESA retreat

Monday, May 7, 2007

Patrick: return to reality, sort of

Wow, two posts in a day, I'm on a roll. So the day after getting back from golden week travels, Brian, Daryl, and I went to Kamigamo shrine on a mandatory individual excursion for the architecture class. The shrine is located north of where the Kamigamo river splits and forms the Y shape seen on the map. It is known for the Aoi Matsuri, a festival coming up on May 15th involving a long procession from the Kyoto imperial palace up north to the shrine. Back when Kyoto was established as Japan's capital city, the shrine was set up to guard the city from harm.

When we went, they were holding horse races and I read somewhere that this shrine is where the tradition of horse racing began in Japan. Actually, Brian saw the horses race. Daryl and I were still stuck on the city bus on our way there. I missed my first train to Kyoto station and then Daryl and I went to Softbank to get him a phone. When we arrived at the shrine, the horse races were over.

The shrine itself wasn't particularly impressive. It was of course interesting to see the structures mentioned in the reading up close. Afterwards, Brian and I met up with Chris and Michael at a game center near teramachi avenue and shijo avenue. They had some great fighting games (of which Battle Fantasia was particularly impressive) and the place was crowded with both guys and girls. The girls seemed like they were only there to hold the various stuffed animals/aliens that their boyfriends caught for them playing the UFO catchers. I couldn't stand it after an hour though because the smoking was too intense. It was absolutely suffocating and I was wheezing trying not to breathe.

That night, we met up with Min who took us to A-bar. We were going to go for dinner first but all the restaurants were packed with people out on a Saturday night. A-bar itself was crowded that night. And after some more Stanford students arrived, they kicked us out. The group went searching for another bar/dance club to crash. I had originally planned to be back around 8 pm. I ended up leaving around 10 pm after barely excusing myself with the fact that I was a little sick (probably caught it from Stephanie on the trip) with a slight cough, sore throat, and sinus. Fortunately I didn't drink too much and I was able to find my way home all right without stumbling. The others on the other hand, I heard, stayed out all night. Brian forgot his key. And they found a club to dance the night away. See Brian's post for more details...

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And the next day I also got a haircut.. The barber handed me a magazine and I pointed. For a lot of the styles, he said my hair was still not quite long enough. I guess I'm not suitable for long hair. It's too much of a pain to tame.

05062007

Patrick: a golden week of fun

I finally got around to asking my host father for permission to use the internet. Everyone was so busy and I wasn't sure if my usage would turn out to be another financial burden or not, so I put it off for as long as I could take. However, I feel out of touch with the rest of my life indeed the rest of the world without the internet. It's surprising how thoroughly and indispensably the internet pervades my daily routine. It's was so easy to take broadband for granted back at home or at Stanford.

It turns out my host family has some connection called optical fiber network. Yet it is not as fast as I would expect fiberoptics to be, probably for one or both of these reasons: either the computer is too outdated or it's not really fiberoptics. But of course, I am happy to be able to check my mail and make occasional posts to this blog so that people don't forget that I'm still here... Gotta make do with what you got.

Here are some links to my golden week pictures. It was truly a fantastic week. Perhaps never again will we be simultaneously so carefree and filled with youthful spirit, both of the non-alcholic and alcoholic varieties. Although in Japan, one cannot hope to socialize without drinking, so it seems. But I digress. Taking advantage of the JR pass, which we had so much trouble trying to redeem only to realize that there was no need for trickery of any type (yah should've listened to you Li), we romped through Takamatsu, Tokushima, and Matsuyama in northern shikoku and then through Oita, Mt. Aso, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, and Hakata in kyushu. I think I've seen enough trains, of all types, during the trip to be officially sick and tired of trains. Never, however, will I fail to be impressed by how technologically superior and surprisingly comfortable the trains in Japan are compared with the ones I've ridden in the United States. Just picture this... trains the bank on turns like airplanes and trains that travel silently at disturbingly fast speeds...

Really quickly, here are my impressions of the various stops along our journey. Tokushima's Naruto uzushio (whirlpool) turned out to be kind of a disappointment. We got there too late, it was low tide hence no whirpool in sight, and the ferry's stopped their service for the day. We did get a terrific view of a small part of the setonaikai (inland sea) on the Great Naruto Bridge overlooking the strait. We saw the inland sea when we crossed the setoohashi bridge from Okayama (in honshu) to Takamatsu as well. It is an extremely peaceful and natural area away from the bustling urban culture that dissipates from the likes of Tokyo and Osaka.

Moving on, Takamatsu had some delicious sanuki udon. The innkeeper gave us a guide to all the udon places in the city. If they have such a map for any city, the udon must be fantastic. We also went to ritsurin garden which, although it is written in the tour guide that it is not one of the top three gardens in Japan, the scenery was quite impressive. Check out the pictures in a bit.

After a three hour long express train ride from Takamatsu to Matsuyama and then a stinking hot and slow street car ride, we arrived in Dogo, a hotspring resort town. It is famous for Dogo onsen, a public bath facility where Daryl, Brian, Michael, Jason, and I let it all hang out. After a long hot bath we found ourselves dressed in yukatas sipping tea and eating cookies while the tingling breeze blew in from outside. At night, we had a marvelous dinner at Sushimaru, a restaurant praised in my travel guide and located right next to the hotel.

The next day, we woke up early and caught the ferry from Matsuyama to Oita. On the three hour long boat ride, Stephanie introduced us to the game Munchkins and got us all addicted. Before we knew it, we had arrived in port.

From Oita, we took a train to Mt. Aso. When we got to the youth hostel, we discovered that it was already too late for a hike in the mountains. To find a place to eat, we had to walk a ways back to the station where we found a satisfying and affordable ramen meal in one of the two restaurants in the area. The next day we ate at the other one. That was after heading up Mt. Aso by bus and then to the cone by ropeway. The wind was howling on the top of the volcano and ironically it was freezing. There also wasn't much to see with the morning fog covering the mountain like a veil. But every once in the a while the clouds would clear and reveal a pool of sickly green and blue bubbling vat of who-knows-what at the center of the cone.

From Mt. Aso, we took a train down to Kumamoto, where we decided to take a break from the long train ride and stretch our legs. We headed to Kumamoto castle which in my opinion was quite an impressive and solid structure. Who knows though, it might have burnt to the ground and since been reconstructed like what appears to have happened to most if not all historic buildings in Japan.

From there we left for Nagasaki. During Japan's period of isolation, Nagasaki was the only port open to foreign trade. It was also where the persecuted Japanese Christians sought refuge. And finally, it was also the site of the second atomic bomb detonation. Nowadays, the city seems to have recovered quite nicely and has since benefited from the foreign influence with national treasures like the Oura Cathedral (which was not very spectacular compared to Stanford's Memorial Church), Ming Chinese style temples, and the Peace Park. Having traveled for the previous days in the countryside, it was good to be back in the city again. We hit up karaoke the first night. Then the second night, we couldn't find any clubs other than sketchy hostess clubs suggested by equally sketchy girls in sketchy dresses standing in sketchy poses saying sketchy phrases in sketchy voices. We opted for Jason buying some alocohol and returning to the hotel to play King's Cup in celebration of Brian's 21st birthday.

Our last and final stop was Hakata in Fukuoka. We stayed an hour's train ride away at the Takeo Onsen youth hostel for the night. That night, we headed to Hakata to check out the opening night for the Dontaku festival. We came away a little disappointed the first night since we were expecting larger crowds and more rowdy behavior and inebriated people. The next day, we saw the people. Though sober, they lined the streets everywhere watching a huge parade of school bands, baton troops, dancers, the Fukuoka soccer team, etc. It was quite an experience and definitely worth the visit. In the end, I've decided that Hakata really is a happening place. And it was not named the city of beautiful women for nothing.

We concluded the trip with a 4 and a half hour long shinkansen ride from Hakata back to Kyoto. It was truly a fabulous trip and I thank Brian, Stephanie, Michael, Jason, and Daryl for coming along with me. It certainly wouldn't have been the same without them. During the trip we starved a little, worried a bit about where we would stay the next night, got lost, found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, waited around for trains, waited around on trains, slept on floors, met with disappointment after disappointment and frustration. But looking back, even I am impressed by how much we saw. Just the fact that we were able to get through ok sticking as closely to the plan as time and money permitted is quite an accomplishment in itself. Traveling in a foreign country, trying to communicate with the vocabulary of a four-year old, I think we gained an invaluable and priceless experience. And gosh it was fun.

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Sunday, May 6, 2007

Golden week final days and beyond

The final days of golden week wrapped up the essential sightseeing for the trip. We stayed at a youth hostel in Takeo Onsen, about halfway between Nagasaki and our real destination, Hakata. The youth hostel was really nice, but pretty far from the train station. So, the lady picked us up from the station herself in a van. It was really nice of her. The hostess of the other youth hostel at Mt. Aso was also very nice, which I don't want to forget to mention. In general (from the 2 we stayed at) it seems like youth hostels in Japan are very clean, safe, and helpful. They also cost less than $30 per night. In comparison, the nights in Nagasaki cost over $80 per night. After checking into the youth hostel and leaving our stuff there, we went to Hakata to check out the first day of the matsuri (festival). It was pretty cool, but not really that impressive. There were lots of people, but not as many as we expected. For dinner we bought snacks at the central park, where there were many stalls set up selling food. After a while you start to realize that they're all the same things over and over again - takoyaki, yakisoba, yakitori, okonomiyaki... all yaki, yaki, yaki (fried). There were some exceptions of course, like dessert. There were chocolate covered bananas that looked like little guys with hats. They also sold goldfish and little turtles (this wasn't for dessert though). After finishing our snacks in the park we walked around and took in some performances. There was a really hot Japanese dance group called the Honeys who did some routines, and a 2-girl guitar singing group. They were all of very high quality. There was also this Indian dancer doing a really funny/cool dance. I'm not sure if it was meant to be funny, but it was funny like an Indian accent is funny. The last thing we did at the festival was attend this dance thing. I'm not exactly sure how to describe it but it was repeating and the audience was invited to participate. They gave everybody two wooden paddles and you'd alternately hit them and wave them around in specific ways. After a while everybody learned the dance, although you'd still hear paddles being whacked at the wrong time. It was a pretty neat cultural experience.

The next day we came back to experience the festival for the full day. We had some trouble finding lockers at the station, however, because we weren't the only ones there. In fact the entire city was crowded with people, probably over a million. We bought our lunch in a department store and then headed back to the park to eat it. I had this sushi box that was meant for 5 or 6 people (I shared some with other people, geez what are you thinking). As usual Patrick bought the most varied sushi platter he could find and Michael bought a pretty-looking dessert (that was his lunch). There were lots more dance performances going on. They had lots of little kids doing dances to hip-hop music, and big kids later. We left when the old people came to do their dance, which was kind of sad. That's when we checked out this procession with a guy wearing a black mask sitting on a horse. I have no idea what he symbolizes but there were lots of people packed all around just watching him do nothing. That was boring too. After all that we walked for hours taking in the parade that went down the main street. First came the baton twirlers, and for the next 10 minutes that was all you'd see - groups of baton twirlers one after another. After that were the marching bands, and literally band after band would march by. I recognized one of them playing the intro song to Hana Yori Dango. After the marching bands were old women doing traditional Japanese dances. We left shortly thereafter because there was only one shinkansen we could ride that was going back to Kyoto that day. So that was an anticlimactic sort of ending to our trip, but enriching and fun nonetheless.

After I got home at around 11 PM, a guy called Max also entered. He was the SCTI student from last year who is now studying in Japan at Kanazawa university under a scholarship from the ministry of education. We chatted until about 3 in the morning about various things, but mainly it was him giving me advice on Japanese girls. This was quite understandable considering he was probably 6'2" and a muscular white guy.

The next day I went on a trip to Kamigamo Shrine, which is a required trip for my architecture class. There was a cool horse race going on at the Shrine. I got some video of them galloping by. It is really incredible how fast they are going - you don't realize it until you watch them run by right next to you. After the temple trip, Pat, Michael, Mike's friend Chris, and I whiled away some time at a game center. I had arranged to meet my Korean friend Min at 7, and a large SCTI group ended up eating dinner together and then going out. We first had drinks at a bar that was a hole in the wall, then some more SCTI students showed up and we had to move. We went to Club Africa, which had more space, and had more drinks there before it was decided that we really needed a trip to a convenience store to get everybody drunk. So, we bought drinks at a conbeni and sat by the river getting drunk. I didn't have much to drink, only a little beer at the first bar, a plum soda at the second bar (slightly alcoholic), and a chuuhai at the conbeni (like a wine cooler). By that time our group consisted of Min, Keisuke (Kyoto U student), and the following SCTI students: Pat, Michael, Mike's friend Chris, me, other Mike, Emmanuel, Stephanie, Deni, Megan, Johnnie, and Jason. Min had Pat had to leave, but the rest of us headed to a club called Sam and Dave's to go dancing. I was forced to commit because I forgot my house key and my host parents went to stay at a friend's house, so I had to stay out as late as Max stayed out, since Max had a key. By chance, he was at Sam and Dave's as well, so that made getting home together easy. We all ended up dancing until 5AM, when the club closed. It was actually my first time clubbing. I found it unbearably smoky and also painfully loud. However, the smokiness and loud music made it really easy to dance. Dancing is just something you have to do for a while to get comfortable with it - to get used to beat and the music and how your body moves naturally to match it. Social dance is absolutely useless when it comes to hip-hop dance, but I found DDR pretty helpful. It trains you to move your feet and to dance in rhythm. Everybody else seemed to have a good time too. There was a lot of grinding going on. A lot of the SCTI guys were just searching for girls. Of them only Johnnie and Jason were mildly successful. The girls outright reject you if you don't meet their standards, so this was somewhat a statement of the sort of people who came to the bar. The girls who come are looking for gaijin (foreigners) and are very casual about sex, from what Max tells me. The guys who come are the most varied bunch of foreigners and Japanese imaginable, sharing in common only an infatuation for Japanese girls. In terms of the club itself, it was expensive (2000 yen to get in, 2 drinks included) and the bartenders were good. After the bar closed Max and I ate breakfast at Wendy's and then shared a taxi home. I spent the next day recovering.

Golden Week Day 5


Golden Week Day 6


Golden Week Day 7


Kamigamo Shrine

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Brian: More Golden Week Updates

5/1/07
¥500 bus to Aso summit
¥440 ropeway entrance to Aso summit
¥500 bus down
¥700 German-style omelette rice
¥130 bus to Kumamoto castle
¥500 admission to Kumamoto castle
¥130 bus back to Kumamoto station
¥100 streetcar to hotel in Nagasaki
¥1974 steak dinner at Gyuemon
¥1166 karaoke
¥105 juice OJ from FamilyMart
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¥6245 total

It did not look like a good day to climb Mt. Aso. When we got up and had toast for breakfast, it was overcast and raining outside. Nonetheless, we gamely took headed for the bus-stop and took the 30 minute bus ride to the top of Mt. Aso. As the bus traveled further and further up the mountain, it became almost completely enshrouded in fog. At some points the visibility was at most 10 ft. It probably wasn’t that dangerous, however, because the bus could only climb the mountain very slowly. At one point, I spotted some horses through the fog and snapped a picture. The last stop was at nearly the top of Mt. Aso. From there to the crater rim, we took a ropeway gondola that cost ¥440. It was at the crater rim that things got crazy. The wind was seriously continuously strong and it was pretty cold even by midmorning. There was this one Korean dude that was wearing only a short blue polo shirt that looked like he was as comfortable as in an onsen, though. It was pretty amazing to watch him walk around like nothing was going on. Unfortunately, our view of the crater itself was pretty much obscured by fog and clouds the entire time. We managed to get group shots of us with an exciting cloud in the background. Part of the fun was the stylish hair we came out with. Patrick’s hair was particularly charming when it was wind-swept.

Shortly thereafter we departed from Mt. Aso for Kumamoto to transfer to a train to Nagasaki. Since we were there anyways with nothing to do, we decided to visit Kumamoto castle. It cost ¥500 to get in the front door and the castle itself wasn’t much of a sight. It was pretty similar to the Imperial castle except less grand. There were some interesting things to see, however, such as a ninja performance that we saw the last few minutes of, and the view from the top of a multi-story turret.

The train ride to Nagasaki was almost disastrous. The train we caught was actually two trains joined together for the first segment, which would later separate and head to two separate destinations. Patrick and I got on the front of the train, which was heading towards Nagasaki, but the rest of the crew did not know the train had two halves and went into the latter half of the train, which was bound for Sasebo. It was only with some cell phone calls and a quick scramble at the next stop that we were all safely together in the train headed for Nagasaki.

Our hotel in Nagasaki was really fancy. Of course, we were paying up the wazoo for it. It comes out to $80 per person per night, with 3 people squeezing into a 2-person room. That buys you an English-speaking butler to take you to your room and unlock your door for you. And, unlike in America, you don’t have to tip him. The first thing we did was go out looking for dinner. We found a nice shopping arcade and in the basement was an amazing restaurant, Gyuemon, that served everything from Bimbimbop (the Korean dish) to Hamburg (an American dish??) to steaks to traditional Japanese fare. I was craving meat so I ordered a jumbo New York steak with a rice and soup set, which came to ¥1974. It came steaming on a teppan and was amazingly delicious, so it was well worth it. The desserts were quite amazing too. I didn’t have the stomach for one, but Patrick ordered a parfait that was really pretty.

The night was still young after dinner – it was time for karaoke! It took a while walking around comparing prices but we eventually found a karaoke bar with a good selection that wasn’t too expensive (Shidax) and started singing away at about 10:30PM. We went at it for 2 hours with all sorts of songs from Jason’s rapping of Outcast to Bon Jovi to my attempt at James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”. Of course, we ended with tradition – Backstreet Boys. On the way home, Michael realized it was my birthday, and we sang happy birthday on the streets of Nagasaki.

Golden Week Day 4


5/2/07
¥23100 to Pat for 2 nights in Nagasaki ANA hotel and 1 night in Matsuyama hotel
¥100 trolley to JR station
¥670 lunch (chanbon)
¥294 2 pastries from a bakery
¥100 trolley to Nagasaki Peace Park
¥130 Qoo (apple drink)
¥440 for 4 erasers
¥210 fountain pen
¥630 from hyaku-yen store: 1 wire mesh container, DS screen protector, camera screen protector, 1 metal puzzle, 3 puddings, 1 calpico drink
¥1050 kaitenzushi dinner (10 plates)
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¥26724 total

Today was a day to just enjoy Nagasaki. For the first time this trip, we were staying at the same place for two nights in a row. The three of us in my room – Jason, Stephanie, and I – got up at about 12:00PM, just in time to see Patrick and Daryl come back from a morning walk. They went to see the oldest church in Japan and a temple. As a group, we went to the JR station and found lunch nearby at a Chinese restaurant. It was a type of dish called chanbon, which was noodles with lot of Chinese cabbage stew on top. They had these ridiculously large plastic replicas outside where the stew and noodles literally were the size of basketballs. We ordered the dish and it was indeed large, but not as much as we thought. The five of us (Michael didn’t join us) ate a large chanbon and a small one, and 10 dumplings, with lots of room to spare despite the fact that the large chanbon is meant for 4 people. We decided that meant it was meant for 4 Japanese people. We filled ourselves up with bread from a bakery, which is the cheap way to do it.

After lunch, we went to see the Nagasaki Peace Park. The centerpiece is a massive statue of a muscular man meditating with one hand pointing to the heavens and the other hand palm down to the ground. It is meant to signify that the bomb came from the heavens and the other hand points to all the life that lives on the ground. One of his legs is crossed while the other is straight. We thought it would be cool to imitate his pose until we saw everybody, and I mean everybody, else doing it. It is strange how everyone thinks they are being so clever and imitating the pose. I guess it is kind of like how when you meet somebody with an interesting name, you make a joke about it and think you’re being very funny, but that person has undoubtedly heard that joke his or her entire life. There was this one family that had a tripod set up and the entire family was imitating the pose in front of the statue. The dad was not satisfied for the longest time and kept making the family redo the shot, and they were there for probably 10 minutes trying to get it perfect.

We then headed to a nearby monument marking the hypocenter of the nuclear blast. Patrick found a rock and wrote “Peace 2007” on one side and “BSA” on the other to commemorate my birthday. He put the stone on the ledge of a pillar that came from the ruins of Nagasaki after the blast. Visiting the hypocenter was the more moving of the two experiences. The peace park was a celebration of life and had flowers and happy people wandering about, so one did not feel the burden of all the lives lost in the explosion. At the hypocenter, however, the area was minimally decorated and the crowds were sparser. At the site of the hypocenter itself was a bare black monolith, and surrounding it were concentric concrete lines that mirrored the blast radii that would have emanated from the blast. It was then that I felt the lives of those who perished so long ago in the detonation of the atomic bomb.

At night we went out and met up with one of Michael’s friends from high school, Chris, a tall Chinese guy who was on break from studying abroad in China. We had dinner together at a kaitenzushi place, where each plate was only ¥100 (¥105 with tax). The format of kaitenzushi is a central island where the sushi is prepared, surrounded by a conveyor belt and outside of that, tables for the customers. You simply grab whatever you want to eat off of the conveyor belt. I ended up grabbing 10 plates of sushi, from tamago (egg) to tuna to squid and octopus. It was much cheaper than back in the States, where even the most basic plates cost about $2.

To celebrate my 21st birthday, we bought some amaretto and rum and had a party in the hotel room. We made Boccie Balls (amaretto and OJ) and also had coke and rum. Then we played a game called King’s Cup, which had all sorts of obscure and fun rules. It was my first time playing a drinking game and I was miserable at it, but it was a lot of fun. I ended up with the last king, which meant that I had to drink the king’s cup, but by then I had had a fair amount of Boccie Balls and only drank half of it (Jason drank the other half for me). During the game, we made up a rule that no pronouns were allowed – anybody saying a pronoun would have to take a drink. After that, we all talked like cavemen, which was the most hilarious thing when drunk. We ended the night with an improvised club in one of the hotel rooms by turning off the lights and using my laptop to play songs from YouTube. All in all it was a really fun 21st birthday.

Brian: Pictures from Golden Week

Golden Week Day 1


Golden Week Day 2


Golden Week Day 3

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Brian: A few Golden Week Updates

4/28/07
Expenditures for the day:
¥5425 Takamatsu Terminal Hotel
¥1050 Udon lunch
¥600 bus to Naruto
¥500 entrance to bridge
¥880 yakiniku (harami)
¥135 yakisoba sandwich
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¥8590 total

We arranged to meet at Kyoto station at 9:00AM, whereupon we redeemed our JR passes, withdrew money, and left by Shinkansen for Okayama. From there, we changed trains to Takamatsu, arriving around 1PM. We left our baggage at the hotel, then had udon for lunch. Takamatsu is known for its udon, and in fact we got a map that listed all the places in the city that served udon. Lunch was indeed delicious. The difference is in the texture of the udon noodle itself. It is more chewy and has a good intrinsic taste. At about 2:30 we departed Takamatsu to see the Uzushio whirlpools in Naruto. We arrived at about 5PM and paid ¥500 to enter the observatory bridge. There weren’t any whirlpools today, unfortunately. The view from the bridge was still pretty good. The water swirled around the base of the bridge and around rocks that were visible because it was low tide. The water formed what looked standing waves in the narrow channel. I only wish there was a real whirlpool because we went all that way to see it. It was 9PM by the time we got back to Takamatsu. We walked around a shopping arcade looking for food to eat and ended up eating yakiniku, which is where you grill your own meat. There were only 6 small pieces of meat per plate, so I ate a sandwich at a convenience store afterward. Tomorrow we will go to Ritsurin Garden.

4/29/07
¥345 sandwich and cider
¥400 Ritsurin garden entrance
¥610 udon lunch
¥800 Dogo onsen
¥1370 dinner
¥62 popsicle
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¥3587 total
The days are filled with lots of traveling. It’s hard to keep up the enthusiasm for the new places we visit. In the morning was the Ritsurin garden, supposedly a contender for one of the top 3 gardens in Japan. Honestly, it was pretty hard to appreciate the beauty of yet another garden so soon after experiencing the Imperial garden and Ueno garden. It was just a nice stroll in the park but nothing special. The fun part was just hanging out and goofing off in this big meadow. The other cool thing was the ponds filled with lots of huge koi. There is a stand that sells fish food and right next to it, the koi swarm in massive numbers. Jason was trying to feed this super large koi we nicknamed the godfather koi. After the Ritsurin garden we had udon at another restaurant in Tatsuyama before heading off for Matsuyama. The train rides are really good for taking naps or doing reading. We arrived in Matsuyama at about 5PM and had to take a really crowded trolley car. The day was hot and yellow like the mid-Autumn and the trolley car was like a tin can in an oven. We finally arrived at and checked in to the Hotel Patio. It was right across from the Dogo Onsen, our object for traveling to Matsuyama. The 5 boys, Patrick, me, Michael, Daryl, and Jason headed over just before 6PM and waited briefly before entering the Dogo Onsen for ¥800. Stephanie had been in an onsen before and said she didn’t like it, so she stayed at the hotel and took a nap. It was the first time I’d been in an onsen and the second time I’d been in a communal shower setting (the first time was a week and a half ago in the capsule hotel). This time it was even more awkward because I was with my friends. None of us really had any idea of what to do. First we had to put our shoes in shoe lockers. Then, we made our way upstairs and entered the men’s dressing room. It was really busy, with lots of guys walking around wearing nothing. We found some lockers and stripped down and explored the onsens. There were two on the second floor, which looked virtually identical. The first looked less crowded so I went there, the rest stayed in the second onsen. The process is very simple – there are showers arranged around a central fountain-like onsen. You soap and shower on the fringe before stepping into the hot onsen in the middle. Jason made the comment that one of the reasons the onsens are so popular must be because it is so equilibrating. Everybody is the same when they are stripped naked. All social status is removed and men sit side by side just soaking in the heat and mineral water. The feeling afterwards is the best. You put on a yukata and kneel on a cushion. Then a woman comes and serves you tea and okashi (sweets). We stood on the balcony just feeling the breeze for a while. The onsen is probably the highlight of the trip thus far.

4/30/07
¥600 limousine bus
¥2560 ferry to Oita
¥3850 owe Pat Hotel Patio in Matsuyama
¥150 bread
¥180 tea
¥480 beef curry
¥200 2 green tea bread
¥150 CC Lemon
¥500 ramen + egg + tofu
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¥8670 total
We had to wake up extra early to make the 6:45AM limousine bus to the Matsuyama Kankou Port where we made a reservation with a ferry. The ferry was enormous, comparable in size to a cruise ship. Once on board, it didn’t feel like we were on the water at all. There was the barely noticeable hum of the engine and the water moving by through the windows, but otherwise no rocking or swaying that would betray the fact that we were in the ocean. I managed to do some reading, and then we played a card game called Munchkin. The game is a role playing game, but is also a parody of the genre. It was extremely amusing, with cards like “Bribe the GM with food” (a GM is a grand master, the person who arbitrates and narrates the game) which would increase your level by one. Other cards were “A Rat on a Stick”, “An Eleven-foot Pole”, “Cite an Obscure Rule”, and “A Potted Plant”. The gameplay was also very interesting. The point of the game was to level up to 10 first, and on every combat it was possible to either help or backstab a player. The first time we played, I started out with really bad cards so I was weak in the beginning. Thus, nobody bothered backstabbing me and instead, we all ganged up on the players with the highest levels. So, it seems like the best way to win is not to create enemies and keep a low profile until you’re within striking range of level 10. Then, you try to level up quickly after somebody else tries first (and is backstabbed).

The ferry left us at Oita, where we had a simple lunch and then traveled to a youth hostel at the base of Mt. Aso. The hostel was dormitory style, and we all got a set of pillow covers and sheets to cover the mattresses with. Food was not provided so we walked the half an hour down the mountain to the city for ramen in a small shop. Tomorrow we will climb Mt. Aso.