Archive for the ‘Japan’ Category

Tokyo… Eh…

Friday, May 29th, 2009

The Day before yesterday was quite possibly the worst day of my travels so far. Jesus it was horrible.

So we decided to go to Tokyo to see Akihabara, the Imperial Gardens and some outdoor shopping place with a name that I could never hope to remember. Getting there was OK I guess but the problem was that it was friggin raining so I couldn’t really take that many pictures. So now I have nothing to really show for my day spent in Tokyo except for a few pictures of the Imperial Garden in Tokyo.

The Imperial Garden was so underwhelming that I will not even subject you to looking at pictures of huge lawns. And then I lost all interest in taking pictures when I saw a bunch of weeds growing in the garden. I would have thought that since this was the Emperor’s garden that it would be the best damn garden in Japan but nope there were friggin weeds! eh.

Next we decided to walk to Akihabara. it was about a mile and a half. We wanted to, you know, experience some of the city. So we walked the mile and a half and then we got to Akihabara. Everything looked great but it was pouring rain so no pictures. There were two things for me in Akihabara.

The first was I got to see two all-in-one PC’s that are nowhere to be found in the US and are quite amazing. These are the NEC Valuestar and the Fujitsu something or another. The Fujitsu was OK but the NEC Valuestar was amazing. If that thing was in the US I would never have gotten an iMac.

The second interesting thing was when my girlfriend and I accidentally walked into an anime porn rental store or maybe they were selling the crap. Either way it was horribly labeled in bright colors and connected to a vintage video games store. I went up to the second level hoping to find Chrono Cross (a 9 year old PlayStation game), but no I was assaulted by anime porn. Wonderful. I should have known when I saw a friggin poster with some girl in a uniform with her underwear half off. Eh oh well. The strange thing is that the place was labeled PC/DVD how the hell was i supposed to know what it was? eh, oh well that’s Japan.

Then we went to that outdoor market, in the rain. It would have been really nice if it wasn’t pouring rain. It was just like a Taiwan day market except everything was double or triple the price and it was cleaner. hmm where have I said that before? eh whatever

Now here is the friggin horrible part of the trip. We decided to head back at a time when it was the rush hour. Usually rush hour is busy but this was three thousand time worse. I spent most of the trip with a fat man’s ass in my crotch it was……wonderful…… I thought I had experienced rush hour when I was in Taipei but this was different. the train was already packed when we left Ueno station. When we got to Kawasaki it was packed and like 30 people left the train car and then maybe 50 got on. At this point the people at the door had to push back with all their might so that they could fit behind the door to let it close (this was how the fat man’s ass got mashed into me). And then when the doors close the people let go and their faces were mashed up against the glass on the door. So this was horrible because the stops were so friggin far apart. So I had a fat man’s ass in my crotch for about 20 minutes.

Then! after all this crap we decided to get Sushi at the Yokohama station (my girlfriend had sushi). And it sucked! can you believe it? Crappy sushi in Japan, where Sushi originated. The sushi was cut wrong, it was very thick and had a crapload of wasabi under the fish. so that was bad. I had eel with rice and that was passable. I would expect Japanese Japanese food to be better than what we get in the US but nope so far it was not been. I will see tonight when we go to another place tonight. But this is like getting bad buffalo wings in Buffalo New York, oh wait I have had bad Buffalo wings in Buffalo.

So yeah worst traveling day ever. If you are ever in Japan do not ride the subway between like 4:30PM and 6:30PM. jeez worst day ever……

Tokyo Disney Sea

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Yesterday I went to Tokyo Disney Sea. We were going to go to Tokyo Disneyland also but since it is the same as the Disneyland in Anaheim we decided against it.

I never thought I would be saying this about anything Disney related but I really liked it. The basic idea is that instead of different “lands” there are different ports, harbors, and Islands. Most of the ports correspond to different Disney stories like Mermaid Lagoon. Mermaid Lagoon, of course, is a port that brings things from the little mermaid to life. Personally I thought Mermaid Lagoon was quite stupid but I do have some pictures.

When you first get into Disney Sea you see this dumb looking globe and if you are like me you are probably thinking “this is wack!”

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but then you get to see this!

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And then I started thinking “wow this place is actually very nice.”

The reason why I stated that Mermaid Lagoon was stupid is because it was made exclusively for people aged 11 and younger. Since I am not 11 or younger it was stupid for me. But here are some pictures anyways.

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That was the Mermaid Lagoon from outside and then two pictures of Ariel’s Grotto which is in Mermaid Lagoon. When I channeled my inner 11 year old I decided that this was actually pretty cool.

We only went on three rides, Indiana Jones, Journey to the center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But for me Disney Sea was not about the rides. I was perfectly content to just walk through the park and look at all the things that Disney took the time to construct.

After we walked around Disney Sea we took the monorail back to Ikspiari which is Tokyo Disney’s shopping area. It is a really nice mall with every kind of shop and food you can imagine.

Tokyo Disney was cool, the only crappy part was the fact that they didn’t have red vines either! arrg I give up no Red Vines for me unless I order them from Ebay. There should be a small gallery attached to this (not sure because I am a WordPress newb haha) so take a look! peace out!

Kamakura

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

I was a history major in my undergraduate career and I took a Japanese history class a while back. This explains why I had no idea what Kamakura was until 2 days ago when I went there. From what I now understand a few hundred years ago Japan was ruled from Kamakura. In fact a General from Kamakura, named Yoritomo conquered all of Japan, which is why Japan was once ruled from there. Anyways some family problems happened and his brother murdered him. what a crappy ending, but his grave is in Kamakura so that’s cool I guess.

But anywho, nowadays Kamakura is a beautiful place to visit. Due to my current employment situation I never ever wake up early. This really put a damper on my Kamakura visit. All of the temples close really early. By early I mean 4PM. Since I woke up at like noon we really only got to see one temple because it took us a while to get there and we had to walk everywhere once we were there.

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As you can see from this picture the temples are all surrounded by nature. It is quite a serene and relaxing place to visit. This is from a temple called Tsurugaokahachimangu (now try saying that 5 times fast!). from the way it looks on the map of Kamakura it is one of the larger temples there. We walked through and saw some other temples but they were closed

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This picture is from Jufukuji Temple. When I took this picture we were standing at the entrance to the garden that leads to the temple. Since the temple was closed this was the best I could do for Jufukuji. But once again you can see that it is very green, serene, and relaxing.

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That is the entrance to the Jufukuji Temple. as you can see the doors are closed and locked. I was very sad. But I think the scenery around the temples is better than going in them, seeing as I am not Buddhist. If you really want to see the inside of a temple here you go!

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Yeah, I like the scenery better. After we went to the temples we were meandering aimlessly and happened upon this place that was aptly named “Shopping Town!” It was just like a Night Market in Taiwan except everything was expensive and it was a hell of a lot cleaner.

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I wouldn’t have even mentioned this place but there were two things worth mentioning. There was this place, the name of which I have forgotten, that sells macaroons. They were good so I will show you a picture!

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I had a Caramel one. The Caramel ones are the set of Macaroons all the way to the right of the picture and almost out of the picture. It was really good. The other thing was they had rickshaws!! And you guessed it I have a picture.

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Look at that guy! he is loving it! I could not imagine being a human horse but hey the big smile on his face says it all. He loves it.

I really liked Kamakura, but if you ever get a chance to go there make sure you wake up bright and early if you want to get into the temples.

This is the Ranting Jamaican bringing his travels to you, still red vines-less in Japan. Peace out!