Japan 2004
This page gives a bit of a rundown of my trip to Japan from 10 July through 3 August 2004.  Normally I wouldn't do this sort of thing, but my friend Jen suggested that some people might be interested to hear about my trip, especially if they couldn't get the story and photos in person. So I've scanned a few photos and included them below. I don't imagine that anyone will actually read the whole thing, but it's as much for me to preserve things as anything, although I also have my journal. The amount of detail varies a fair bit, as I've written this over the last four weeks, since I got home.
Below is a map of the southern part of Japan, with all of the places that I visited marked.
Arrival: About 3 pm on Sunday 11 July, Tokyo. Immigration was loooong, but eventually I made it to a bus, which took me on a 90-minute ride to Ikebukuro, a northwestern part of Tokyo where I was to stay the first night. Tokyo, of course, is insane, with something like 12 million people in the city itself and 30ish million in the metropolitan area. The first thing I noticed in my jet-lagged state was how difficult it is to avoid the people streaming everywhere while carrying forty pounds of stuff on your back. The second thing I noticed is that most streets look alike, and few are named, and the ones that are named are only labelled in kanji (characters). After wandering for 45 minutes I found my ryokan (i.e., inn), which was a bargain at 4500 yen (80 yen make one Canadian dollar). Slept for about 10 hours, amazingly.
Monday 12 July - Tokyo to Mt Fuji
Next day I found some info on Mount Fuji and, without a whole lot of thought, decided to go for it. The best way to climb Fuji, apparently, is at night to arrive at sunrise, which is generally the only time when the mountain isn't socked in with cloud. It was about three hours on a train, another train, and a bus to the Kawaguchi fifth station, which is somewhere around 2500 m above sea level. I arrived there at 6 pm, and ended up chatting with three Canadians: Carolyn, a 20-something teaching English in Hiroshima, her dad Bob, and Bob's girlfriend Cheryl. We ate (burger and fries! Great mountain-climbing fuel!) and headed out at 8 pm. The wind was howling even at this level, and we needed pants, sweater, hat and jacket. The first bit went well enough, and we made good time for the first while. I think we made the seventh station somewhere around 9:30  pm.
To the left  is me, still smiling, holding Seneth's flower holder   (see the story below). The building is the station, which is a privately run (I think) little inn-like place where you can pay to sit inside and warm up, or pay even more to stay the night. And you can pay an exorbitant amount for food and drinks. Not surprisingly, the price increases just as quickly as the altitude.
Somewhere in here it becomes...
Tuesday 13 July - Mt Fuji   to Nara
Soon after this, though, I started to feel the altitude,   mostly as a small headache, but my pulse was also a bit fast. We reached the eighth station at about 12:30 am, and rested there for a good half hour. Bob and Cheryl had fallen behind, and both Carolyn and I were starting to tire. The wind was beyond belief, enough to   make you crouch in a kind of three-point stance every minute or so to avoid falling over backward. It also kicked up lots of dust and sand, which was great for the contact lenses (I was still picking bits out of my hair and ears 24 hours later when I got to Nara). Anyway, we   continued, with long breaks huddled in the shelter of each hut (there were many!), and started to fall behind schedule. It turns out that this was an unusually bad night, as many of the large tour groups that we were behind ended up stopping or turning back, apparently   because the wind was so nasty.
We reached the last station before the top at about 3 am, and there were about 20 people trying to decide whether to go, and when, to avoid getting there too early and having to sit outside waiting for the sunrise. We were only a few hundred vertical metres from the summit, but this last hour was the toughest. We had been in the clouds for about three hours,  so we were soaked and cold. We would usually walk about 100 paces, then stop for a minute or so to catch our breath and rest our legs. Carolyn didn't actually get past the last station -- she  was feeling the altitude as well, and decided to sleep a bit. I went on with the random group of other people that we had met on the way up, and reached the summit somewhere around 4:30 am. I wouldn't have known I was there if it weren't for the two Japanese guys who were standing and whooping it up at a post which said (in kanji only) that this was the top. There were high-fives all around and lots of random yelling.
Happily, there was a big (and free!) shelter at the top. Sadly, though, the clouds were as thick as ever, so I could have been standing on my parents' driveway in Newfoundland for all I knew. After an hour or so there were about 40 people in the shelter, mostly foreigners. There was a very entrepreneurial man selling hot corn soup in a can for 600 yen ($8!!!). I had one of these, but apparently my stomach wasn't too happy with me. I sat for a bit, hoping I would feel better after warming up and resting, but my nausea, headache and dizziness just got worse. Sadly, the corn soup didn't taste any better coming up than it had going down. At this point I decided that my best bet was to head down to where there was air. So I said goodbye to the others and basically started to run down the trail. This was surprisingly easy, since the downhill trail is separate from the uphill one; the uphill is lots of rock and firm gravel, while the downhill is soft, mostly sand and gravel. So except for the occasional gust of wind which would almost blow me over, it was easy to boot it down.
As an aside, the weather was apparently MUCH better three days later. To the right is a photo of the view from the summit at sunrise, but looking away from the sun. My sister-in-law found this on the web. Makes me just a LITTLE jealous...
The photos below show some of the scenery from the downward trip, which was spectacular. The one on the left is very near the top, and it's all black sand. It's still very cloudy up here, so there wasn't much to be seen. It made me think of Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings, except it was frickin cold. The top right is much farther down, into the red sand, looking downhill. You can barely see, toward the bottom of the photo, a few other climbers (blue jackets). The last photo is almost at the bottom of the mountain, looking back up at a bunch of huts. I think this was station 7, which was actually a whole bunch of buildings together.
I got down the mountain in about three hours, and ran into Carolyn at the bottom -- she had considered heading for the summit after sleeping, but decided against it, and walked down with Tako and Terry (I'm sure I've massacred their names), two Japanese guys she had met on the hill. From the fifth station I caught the bus, train and train back to Tokyo, grabbed my bag at Ikebukuro (no, I didn't carry 40 lb to the top of the mountain!), and then caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Shinagawa (southern Tokyo) to Kyoto, and then a local train from Kyoto to Nara. I hadn't slept or washed in about 36 hours, and I think the other people on these trains really appreciated my company. Once I arrived in Nara I once again wandered the streets for about 30 minutes before finding my inn. It was already about 9 pm, so I showered (sooo overdue), had a lovely dinner of prawn crackers and water, and then slept the night away. I've discovered a great cure for jet-lag: sleep well the first night, then don't sleep at all (climb a mountain instead), then sleep well again the third night. I'm looking into a patent on this..
Seneth's Flower Holder
This is partly an attempt to do something cute for my   nieces, but partly to poke some good-natured fun at my friend Gakushi. Gaku was also travelling this summer, to Africa, Europe and Japan, mostly for work. He found some time to do some sight-seeing, though, and seems to like having his picture taken with his Seattle Mariners flag (see his travel diary at http://diary.jp.aol.com/vvtveshht/   for some examples). Just before I left for Japan, my five-year-old niece Seneth gave me a very cute cut-out paper flower, which came with a "holder", which was a folded piece of paper with random little coloured stickers on it. The flower itself would never have survived being carried around Japan by Dale "Crush Kill Destroy" Marsden (as my brothers call me), so I brought the holder itself, to have my photo taken with, and to stamp with rubber stamps that you find at various tourist attractions in Japan. The holder shows up twice on this page, but several other times in my full photo collection.
Wednesday 14 July - Nara
This was my first hard-core day of "culture". Actually, I started by sending postcards and finding an internet café, where I also ended up eating lunch. Then I was off to some temples. First was the Kofukuji temple complex near downtown. This contains a (apparently) famous five-stories pagoda, pictured below. I think this is the second-tallest wooden structure in Japan. Quite cool -- my favorite part of this, and many buildings in Japan, is the amazing carvings on the corners and edges of the roofs. The undersides of the eaves are often very ornate as well -- you can see this a bit in the left-hand picture below. Next to this pagoda is a lower building that allowed people inside, and which contained a variety of beautiful old sculptures of Buddha, attendants, and guardian kings.
One unusual aspect of Nara, and the Kofukuji complex in particular, is that it's full of very brave (some would say cheeky) deer. They are seen as somewhat sacred, and have been protected by law for centuries (you hurt a deer, the law hurts you worse). So they have no fear of people, and you can walk right up to them and they pretty much ignore you. I have another photo of one of the deer where the moisture from his nose almost fogged my camera lens.
After Kofukuji I needed a bit of a break from the heat, so I headed to Isuien garden. This is apparently well-known, but there was no one else there while I was, which was fine by me. There is a teahouse, and the pond pictured below, and just a generally relaxing atmosphere.
Next was Todaiji, which contains the Daibutsu-den, the largest wooden structure in the world (see the photo below, and note the ant-like people on the steps in front). This beast contains a massive Buddha (Virocana Buddha, who is 49 ft high (he's sitting down) with an 18-foot head and a 3-foot eye), and a couple of mean-looking guardian kings. It's a spectacular building. You can see the intricate eaves that I mentioned above, with four or five layers of supports resting on each other. There was a monk inside performing a ceremony of some kind.
From here I walked through the park a bit -- Nara Park is about the same size as the downtown of the city, sprawling to the east into the nearby hills (you can see them behind Isuien garden above) and containing many spectacular buildings. I walked through the park and southward toward my ryokan. Dinner this night was a great meal of ground tuna and bits of seaweed on rice, along with a bowl of udon (thick white noodles). Called it a night early, but not before grabbing a beer from a vending machine and sipping it while writing in my journal.
Thursday 15 July - Nara to Kyoto
Next morning I had a Japanese breakfast at the ryokan, which was all kinds of little bits: cooked spinach, sweet egg, "some sort of bean thing"; (that's what I wrote in my journal!), and miso soup packed with tofu, seaweed, etc. Then went to Gango-ji temple nearby. This was pretty cool, and had a neat graveyard on the grounds, with very close tombstones. I've shown the photo to many people, and we can't figure out if they bury people one on the other, or vertically (i.e., standing up). Or maybe they cremate them? Anyway.... On my way back to the ryokan I stopped at the Shiryokan museum, which has lots of everyday items but not a peep of English. I also stopped at Koshino-ie, a merchant's house that's been restored. It was very beautiful inside -- it's very narrow and deep, because taxes were apparently assessed based on the width of the house.
From here I picked up my bag at the ryokan and sweated my way up to the train station to head to Kyoto. I dropped my bag at the youth hostel in Higashiyama (the eastern part of central Kyoto), then, to avoid passing out, decided to get some lunch (Thai; AWESOME food for about $9!). Then headed up the hill (to the east) to Chion-in temple. This was pretty neat, as there was again some chanting and meditation going on. I ended up just sitting for about a half-hour and listening. The monks would chant a series of notes that went on for a good 30 seconds (I counted), without breathing. Relaxing, anyway.
The rest of the day was boring, which was probably just as well. By this point my knee had started to hurt a fair bit; I think I strained it a bit on the way down Fuji, and by early afternoon it was pretty painful on most days. I went back to the hostel, washed, went out quickly for dinner, but otherwise just sat around and talked to the other random people in my room (a big open room with 12 air mattresses on the floor -- all this for only 3500 yen!).
Friday 16 July - Kyoto
OK, don't worry, I do have photos from Kyoto. Friday was my only sightseeing day, as the parade was to be on Saturday, and then I was leaving Sunday. Friday morning I stopped briefly at Higashi Hongan-ji temple, near the train station. The main building was under construction, and there was a ceremony with about 30 people in the other building, so I decided not to hang around too long. That, and temple-fatigue had started to set in pretty seriously by this point. So I went to get some tourist info, then wandered north from the train station. Eventually ended up, after lunch, at Nijo castle, in the north-western part of the central city. This has a moat and a wall, but the buildings inside are not at all the same -- mostly just low wooden buildings, but very beautiful inside and out. Below on the left is Ninomaru Palace, which was built by the first Tokugawa shogun in 1602. Inside are tatami rooms with paper walls painted with murals of animals, forests, battles, etc. The hallways have "nightingale floors", which are deisgned to squeak at the lightest touch, to warn of intruders. And in a few rooms there are (slightly cheesy) manequins of the shogun, his attendants, visiting lords, and so on. But no photos allowed.
From here I walked toward the Imperial Palace through some side streets. I came across a tiny temple that was very close to the street, which allowed me to take a couple of photos of the edge of the roof, which is decorated with these metal carvings (to the right). Very cool. These types of roofs were all over the country, and always caught my eye. Saldy, I couldn't get into the Imperial Palace without a reservation, so I wandered a bit, sat a bit, then headed back to the hostel.
Gion Matsuri, the major annual festival in Kyoto, takes place throughout July, but the focus is on 15-17 July. Each neighbourhood builds a float which carries (or used to carry) the battle-axe of that neighbourhood. The floats are on display on the nights of 15 and 16 July, and are then paraded through the streets on the morning of 17 July. So on the night of the 16th, I headed out to see some floats. On my way out the door I met Martin, a Dutch guy who had literally just arrived at the hostel. So we went wandering together. The streets were absolutely packed with people, to the point where some streets were one-way for pedestrians, i.e., the police were stopping those who tried to walk the wrong way. The streets were lined with food and drink booths, so we naturally grabbed a beer. After a bit of random walking we decided to try to get onto one of the floats. There was a bit of a lineup, and we ended up chatting with a Japanese family: Toshiko (the mom), the dad (I can't remember his name!) and their daughter Norie. Only the dad spoke much English, but they all knew a few words and we all knew awkward sign language. They somehow got us onto the float without paying. We went up the stairs, into someone's house, then over a little bridge, into the float, and out again in about five seconds. Skip below to the photos and you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about. All the boys on the near side of the left-hand photos are ringing bells, while the men on the far side are playing flutes, and there are a few drums somewhere. The music sounded pretty random to me, with little melody and a rhythm that could creatively be called 4-2-6-19-1-12 time. But it was still enchanting.
So then we were off the float, and our friends wanted us to go to a party at their company. So off we went, running through the street, to find about 15 people sitting on a driveway facing a crowded street, with the remains of dinner on the table and a seemingly endless supply of sake and beer somewhere nearby. They sat us down, fed us drinks, and talked our ears off. They were generally a friendly bunch of people, although the boss guy who kept making lecherous comments about his young female employees was a bit disturbing. Most spoke enough English to make their point, and understood me if I spoke simply, with the help of a hand gesture here and there (no Eny, I didn't knock over any beers with my wild hand-gestures). We ended up sitting until almost 11, and then had to scoot because the hostel was shutting its doors at 11:30. We made it with about 5 minutes to spare.
Saturday 17 July - Kyoto
Saturday was parade day. The parade ran through a few big, wide streets, around the part of central Kyoto, and then into some narrower streets. The photos below show the coolest part, which was the big floats, called hoko. They're all painted and decorated in great detail, with the "band" sitting inside and playing their music. The two guys you see standing on the front of the hoko (near the ground) wave their fans in creative ways, to give directions to the 60 or so men who pull the float along (see the middle photo). These guys have a tough job. When it comes time to turn the corner, they throw bamboo slats on the ground, pour water over them, and then roll the front wheels of the float onto the slats. The guys with the ropes then pull at 90 degrees to the side toward which they're turning, and the wheels scrape sideways over the slats. If they're lucky, this takes two tries (drop bamboo, pour water, puuuullll, then drop more bamboo, etc.) and everyone watching cheers. If they're unlucky, it takes three or more tries, and observers get restless. In the narrow streets it's often a close shave with many buildings, wires, poles, etc. (see the right-hand photo).
The parade went on for hours. After I'd had enough, I wandered up the hills to the east (with some help from the subway) to the Nimukai Daijingu shrine, one of the few Shinto sites that I visited. This was one of my favorite places. It's a bit of a walk, and I actually had no idea if I was actually in the right place. But the shrine is spell-binding --  very simple, set back into the woods, with no one there (when I was there, anyway).  From there I wandered along a trail that ran north toward a bunch of other temples that back onto the hills. I somehow lost the trail and ended up skidding my way down a very steep hill and ended up in the off-limits area of Nanzenji temple. This had a nice garden, where I sat for a bit, and then headed back to the hostel. The rest of the day was uneventful -- dinner and rest for my pathetic knee.
Sunday 18 July - Kyoto to Hiroshima
Next day I went briefly to Toji temple, near the train station. This is home to another five-story pagoda, the tallest (or second-tallest) wooden-structure in Japan. Had a quick sushi lunch (mmm... sushi...) and then a long shinkansen ride to Hiroshima. I didn't do much here on Sunday, other than check into my ryokan. I strolled up a hill to a nice viewing point to the east of the city, then back to the ryokan. Dinner was quick and cheap, and then wandered the streets -- very lively, fun place. Slept early!
Monday 19 July - Hiroshima
This was my sight-seeing day in Hiroshima. The main thing to see is the Peace Museum, which sits on an island in the centre of the city, very close to where the atomic bomb exploded. The museum contained tons of information on the history of Hiroshima, the bombing itself, and the lead-up to the bombing. One of the most interesting aspects was the differences between what I've heard before about why the US decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, and what I read in Japan. What I've heard before, mostly, is that the bomb was dropped there and in Nagasaki because the city hadn't been conventionally bombed, so the effects would be more evident, and because the bomb would scare the Japanese into surrendering, thereby preventing the carnage of an invasion. The museum in Japan places more emphasis on the American's desire to impress the Soviets, and the fact that there were no Allied POWs in Hiroshima. There are interesting differences in tone and emphasis, anyway, between the story from a Japanese perspective and that from the Allied perspective. The musuem also contained many everyday items that had been affected by the bomb, and a very disturbing diorama of some of the effects on people; I won't describe the latter, but I'll probably never be able to forget it. At the exit of the museum was a set of paintings that had been done by survivors.
From the museum I went to wander a bit outside. I came across the three main outdoor momuments, two of which are pictured below. On the left is the cenotaph for bomb victims, with the "A-bomb dome"; barely visible through the arch. The dome is the remains of a building that partly survived the blast, and has been preserved in that state. On the right below is the Children's Peace Monument, which was apparently inspired by the story of Sadako Sasaki, who in turn inspired the book "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes"; that you may remember from elementary school. Children from around the world now make paper cranes and send them to Hiroshima, where they are placed in the cases that you can see at the base of the monument.
That was about it for Hiroshima. I had Italian (?!?) for dinner, then went back to the ryokan.
Tuesday 20 July - Hiroshima to Hakone (Gora)
Next day was straight to the train for the loooong ride to Odawara, the gateway to Hakone. This is a mountains-and-hot-springs area that's very popular with people from Tokyo. It's just southeast of Mt Fuji, and is itself a subsided volcano; basically, the top half of a cone-like mountain sunk into the ground, leaving what is approximately a huge crater (maybe 30 km across)  with a smaller mountain in the middle. There is a neat route to travel around this central mountain. I started with a rickety old train that runs from Hakone-Yukoto up the side of the mountain to Gora. It took me a bit to find accomodation, but eventually I found it. Unfortunately it was late, so I ate and slept!
Wednesday 21 July - Hakone (Gora to Moto-Hakone)
Next day I went back to Gora, then took a cable-car partway up the hill. I stopped at the Museum of Art, the best part of which was a large garden, partly a moss garden (below on the left) and partly a bamboo garden. There was a gallery as well, showing some very old pottery. From here I wandered down through Gora Park, had lunch, and then took the cable car all the way to the top. There, I transferred to a gondola, which was made of plexiglass with one tiny window: stifling. This took us up up up to Owakudani, where there are souvenir shops, restaurants, lots of tourists, and lots of stinky gas and steam venting from the ground (below, right). The smell is stunning, and some of the trails were closed because of poisonous gases.
Then it was another gondola down to LakeAshi. Nice lake, but the boat that carried us the length of it was probably the cheesiest thing I saw in Japan -- it's modelled after a 17th century French battleship, and comes complete with life-sized plastic pirates with which you can have your picture taken. Nice. Just as we arrived in Moto-Hakone, on the southeast side of the lake, a nasty thunderstorm broke out. I waited this out, then walked up the hill about 40 minutes (on a very narrow road) to the hostel. The most memorable feature of the hostel is that it has a bath fed by natural hot-spring water. The smell in the bathroom is gag-inducing, but you get used to it. Unfortunately, the water is crazy hot -- it was so hot that when I put my toe in it was so stunned that it took me about three seconds to figure out that the water was hot, not cold. So no bath for me, only a shower!
Unfortunately there were no open restaurants up here, so I had the joy of walking back down the hill to find a nice seafood restaurant. I was sick of walking, and my knee was hurting, so I took a cab back up to the hostel. Sat with a Korean guy there to watch Korea and Japan's under-23 soccer teams tie 0-0. Then bed.
Thursday 22 July - Hakone to Kamakura
Next day I saw a couple of sights in Moto-Hakone, then caught a bus to Yunessun, where I had stayed on Tuesday night. The B&B that I stayed in (actually a 400-room hotel!) was attached to a big water park, Japanese style. I coughed up the 3100 yen to get in, then took a stroll. There are too sections, the unisex kids-water-park-like section and the separate-sex traditional bath section. I went to the water-park area first, which was... interesting. There was a fragrant bath, a sake bath, a green tea bath, a rock bath, a water bath (???) and, my favorite, a coffee bath. Not surprisingly, there were lots of signs at the sake bath saying "please do not drink the water". Unfortunately, as you'd expect at a water-park, there were screaming kids running everywhere. I had lunch, then went to the much nicer traditional bath area. This had a selection of indoor and outdoor baths, big and small. Sooooo relaxing -- I could barely walk afterward, I was so mellow.
From there I bused back to Yumoto, trained to Odawara, and caught three different trains to my hostel in Kamakura. This was a bit grungy, but was on the beach, which was good. I had dinner on my own, then met my friend Gaku -- he had arrived in Japan the day before for the conference, and was in Kamakura to visit his grandma. We had a beer but called it an early night.
Friday 23 July - Kamakura
I met Gaku at the train station, and we went walking up the main shopping street. He wanted to buy a few Japanese things that he apparently can't find in Canada or the US. My favorite was the washi paper, which is hand-painted with spectacular, colourful designs. Problem is, it's so beautiful that I just want to keep it, rather than using it for something. Anyway, we went to see the main shrine in Kamakura, Hachiman-gu (see below), and also went into a nearby museum for a bit. Then we had a traditional-ish lunch, which had all kinds of wacky bits in it. My favorite was some white slimy stuff with the most bizarre texture I have ever encountered. From here Gaku had to head to Tokyo, so we parted ways. In the afternoon I did some email in nearby Ofuna, and then sat on the beach for an hour and iced my knee. Sushi for dinner (mmm... sushi...), then a relaxed night in.
Saturday 24 July - Kamakura to Tokyo
Kind of a crappy day. Trained to Shinagawa (in southern Tokyo), locked up my bag, and then headed out to do some sightseeing. The only place I made it to was Ginza, a big, apparently prestigious shopping area. I wandered there a bit, then headed back to Shinagawa to grab my bag and try to find accomodation. I tried the nearby Strings hotel, which I had been told was cheap - turns out it was 27900 yen a night, and they only had smoking rooms. I managed to keep a straight face as I told the guy that, unfortunately, I required a non-smoking room (as if to imply that paying $350 for a night was accceptable). I finally decided to go to a capsule hotel in Ikebukuro, which was a bit far. But the hotel itself was alright. Capsule hotels were developed in the 1970s as a cheap place to stay in the city for people who are stuck there late. They also seem to be popular with single travellers on the cheap! The photo below shows my hallway, which contained 40 capsules. Each capsule is about 1 m by 2 m, with a TV mounted on the 'ceiling" and a radio and light. It was a bit uncomfortable with all my bags, but it served the purpose. There is a big bathroom upstairs with lots of showers, soap, razors, and even complimentary combs! That night I had another cheap, quick dinner and did some laundry in a weird laundromat -- basically, four washers and four dryers in a little cubby-hole just off the main street.
Sunday 25 July - Tokyo
Nice breakfast, locked up my big bag, then wandered a bit until I was to meet my friend Eriko at the train station. Eriko lives in Washington DC, but was visiting friends and family in Japan at the same time as me. I met up with her, her sister and her sister's boyfriend at the station. We went shopping for a cell phone for Eriko, then went to Asakusa. We went to the big Sensoji temple there, after wandering through a shopping area. We went for lunch, and then wandered through some side streets to the kithcenware area of town -- basically lots of shops selling all kinds of kitchen stuff. My favorite was a shop that sold only plastic food, i.e., models of dishes that restaurants put in their windows to draw in customers. (In a few cases, after sitting in a restaurant and discovering that there was no English menu and no menu with photos in it, I had to go outside with the waitress to point to the model of what I wanted). We wandered for a bit in one shop full of dishes, and I managed to not break anything.
Eriko and I then subwayed to Akihabara, the electronics district. This is full of eight-story electronics stores that sell every type of electronic you've heard of, and then some. There was one bizarre store that had random "duty-free" souvenirs on the top few floors. The photo below on the right is me on a street in Akihabara with some flashy signs.
From here Eri and I trained back to Ikebukuro, and parted ways so that I could grab my bag and head to Shinagawa to check into my hotel for the conference. This was nice, but kind of small by Canadian standards (well, the room, not the hotel). I tried to head to the reception that was to take place that night to kick off the conference, but I was too late -- I ran into Gordon Munro (an economics professor at UBC) on the way, and he told me that the reception had shown the classic property of an open-access resource, i.e., there was no food left after about 20 minutes. I ended up calling Eriko, and went to Shinjuku to meet up with her, her sister and sister's BF, and a couple of her other friends, Toshie and Atsuko. We had a couple of drinks, got a bit tipsy, and I trained to the hotel by midnight.
The Conference: Monday-Thursday, 26-29 July - Shinagawa
The International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET) conference was held at a small university campus about 15 minutes walking down the hill from the hotel. There were about 400 attendees, with about 300 talks. There isn't a whole lot to say about the conference that will interest anyone who's not a fisheries economist, so I won't write much. But here are some highlights and lowlights of these four days:
Dinner on Monday was fantastic -- Gaku took a few of us to a traditional Japanese restaurant. Great food with very elaborate presentation. Went for beers on Tuesday night with Gaku and a group of younger people we had met at the conference, or who Gaku had known before. I had dinner at an izakaya, or pub, then went to the (in)famous Roppongi, a big night-club area in Tokyo. We went to a couple of cheesy bars, and then a few of us headed back to the hotel at about midnight. (The others were out til 7 am, apparently). On Wednesday I bailed on the conference lunch (The lunches were pretty bad -- cold fried food. Not the height of Japanese cuisine) and had sushi instead (mmm... sushi...). I ran into Linda, another conference attendee, and we both bailed on the afternoon conference session and instead headed to Tokyo station. We met up with Eriko there and walked through the East Garden at the Imperial Palace. That night was the conference banquet, which thankfully had good food, but was sadly not air-conditioned. So we sweated our way through beer, Suntory whiskey, and dinner. I ended up trying a bit of fried whale -- it tastes just like chicken. Thursday morning was my talk at the conference, which went well enough. Other than that, all was pretty average.
Friday 30 July - Tokyo to Izu-hanto (Tago)
Long day. I woke at 4 to meet Marita and Gaku to head to Tsukiji fish market, the largest fish market in the world. We had to go early because this is when everything happens, so that the fish will be in restaurants by lunch and dinner time. Marita and I took the train to meet Gaku, and then we all walked to the market. We missed the fresh tuna auction, so we wandered through the packaged-fish area before happening across a frozen-tuna auction. It was in a very cold cooler room, where these guys (see below) were wandering around, looking at each of the 400 or so tuna, feeling the flesh, etc. Then there were a bunch of ringing bells, and four auctioneers in different parts of the room started chanting prices and waving their hands, and at least one looked like he was doing a little dance. We watched this for a bit, then went for a sushi breakfast at 6 am.
I went back to the hotel, slept a bit, and then checked out. Today I was heading to Izu-hanto, the big peninsula southeast of Tokyo, to visit Eriko for a few days and see the area, which she assured me was beautiful. I went on a panicked search for cash and then caught my train for Shuzenji. From there I caught a bus for Tago, Eriko's hometown, where her parents lived and owned a ryokan. I arrived just before 4, and we went to the ryokan, which was right by the water. Dinner, like all of the food that I ate there, was fantastic: seared skipjack tuna with garlic, onion and ginger; tempura; mackerel sashimi; and Thai vegetables. Oh yes, and beer and sake. We walked around town for a bit, had some shaved ice with green tea ice cream, and sat outside with a few drinks. It poured rain for most of the time, which was from the hurricane that was making its way south of us. So we just sat outside and tried not to get hit by the rain seeping through cover on the deck.
Saturday 31 July - Izu-hanto
Big breakfast. Then we went for a hike, along the shore and then up to the hills that run along the coast to the south of Tago. Spectacular scenery: the photo below shows the shore, looking southward. We ended up at Dogashima, just to the south, and tried to walk along a rocky spit to a set of islands, but every time we tried it would start to pour rain and we would run back to huddle under the rocks. Finally we gave up and walked into town, caught a bus and went home for lunch. The afternoon was very lazy, sitting around on the deck, and then for a walk to the next bay and watched the waves roll in to the dock, opening and closing umbrellas constantly as the rain started, then stopped, then the scorching sun came out. Then home for dinner: albacore tuna sashimi, mackerel, breaded fish and squid, and guacamole on bread. Heaven. We had beer with dinner, and then Eri made cosmopolitans and margaritas. Did I mention that the Japanese like to drink? The night was a lazy as the afternoon, and involved (surprise!) a few more drinks.
Sunday 1 August - Izu-hanto
Next day was swimming time. Not swimming as I usually do, which is back and forth (and back and forth and back and...) at the UBC pool, but snorkelling. We went to a beach about a 20-minute walk away. This was absolutely spectacular. It was a very rocky are with steep cliffs, as in the photo above, where we swam is just behind and to the right of that photo. There was a lagoon, but many passages out to more open, and very wavy, water. We clambered around on a fairly exposed cliff and tried not to be washed off by the occasional big wave (not as scary as it sounds, although I suppose, in retrospect, that a nice big rogue wave would have made it a bit scarier). There was a cave that went right through the rocks out to the open water. I was surprised, given my only other experience with temperate snorkelling/diving, in BC, at the amount of life. As a marine biologist you might expect that I could name some of the fish, but sadly they all just looked blue (or pink, or green-and-pink) to me. Well, I can name a few (according to my journal, anyway): puffer-fish, some really cool (tiny) cuttle-fish that always tried to look intimidating, and some "turtle's feet" barnacles. There were tonnes of comb-jellies in the water, and a good number of soft corals on the bottom. The cave was packed with very bright anemones. And of course my favorite, the seaweeds. I'll spare you the details on those.
We had lunch at the beach and laid around a bit. As it turned out I got a nice little sunburn at this point, and no doubt in the water as well. We went in for another bit, but were pretty tired. So it was back to the house, to the store for some gin and tonic (500 yen for a litre of gin!). Dinner was smashing. I lit the BBQ with a small blow-torch and then waving a fan on it for about 10 minutes (no lighter fluid!). We BBQd some marinated beef (both lean and fatty) and some veggies, which you can see Eriko keeping watch over in the left-hand photo below. Oh yes, and there were sausages, which you can see me looking very impressed with on the right. Proof of my abandoning vegetarianism. That night was the usual sitting around on the deck (drinking gin and tonics this time) and chatting. We also managed to spot some fireworks that were happening waaaay across the bay, in at least three different places.
Monday 2 August
Today I had to head back to Tokyo. But before I left, Eriko's dad had to check on some fishermen who were out on an island in the bay. A perfect excuse to go for a boat ride! So we headed out around the point, and to the north was the scene below: Mount Fuji! I hadn't actually seen the top of the mountain during my whole visit (except when I was standing on it) because of the clouds. But it was clearly visible this day. I was excited enough to take two photos. We went to check on the fishermen briefly, and then took a quick run up the coast to Dogashima. After this we sorted out my bus arrangements, had lunch, then went to the bus stop and said goodbyes. I took a bus to Mishima, and then the shinkansen to Shinagawa to get my bag once again. Then I went to my fabulous accomodation at a capsule hotel in Asakusa, in the eastern part of Tokyo.
That night, on Eriko's recommendation, I had dinner at Mos Burger, which is a Japanese version of McDonald's but much, much better. I took the subway to Shibuya, the trendy kids' area (I fit right in! ha ha). I walked around a bit, but it's not a terribly exciting place if you're on your own! I had a little sushi snack, though (mmm... sushi). Then back to my coffin... I mean capsule.
Tuesday 3 August
Not much excitement this day. I went back to do some souvenir shopping near Sensoji temple and in the kitchenware area. Then it was off to the airport for a long check-in lineup. Two movies and nine hours later I was in Seattle, and then home in Vancouver. The trip was fantastic -- probably my best ever -- but it was nice to sleep in my own bed, especially after not having slept for about 36 hours.