2/10-17/06: Sapporo Snow Festival

The Sapporo Snow Festival. In a word: cold. The first night, we met up with some of Stephen's JET friends from all over Hokkaido at the Thriller karaoke bar, themed after Michael Jackson, of course. Had many delicious white Michael Jacksons (khaluha, milk, and vodka vs. a black Michael Jackson which is just vodka and khaluha) and sang horrible/wonderful karaoke songs (such as I saw the sign, numb/encore, american idiot, under the sea, etc.). Then headed to the hotel where seven of us sneaked into a small room and fell asleep watching the Olympics and discussing which noble gas and which element was the best (xenon and tungsten were among the favorites). Super early the next morning, four of us went skiing/snowboarding, which was awesome. Tried out some jumps and almost killed ourselves. Although I was able to jump the highest, I also face planted the hardest and rolled over myself at some point in time. The videos of us were amazing. I can't load them onto this website, but you should definitely see them. That night, because every dining place was packed, we had a hard time finding dinner, but then stumbled into a terrific Korean Genghis Khan place. So delicious, but sad that no one would be at a Korean place. We went to see the ice sculptures. They were actually less impressive than I had expected, as this event was hyped up to have people coming in from all over Japan. Also, it was -7 degrees Celcius. There were some cool displays, though, and lots
of food stands. While we were getting various snacks and standing in line, Brett from Obihiro casually said, "There is a gecko in my pants" in Japanese. One older man looked over with this strange expression and asked in pretty good English, "What do you have in your trousers?" "A gecko." "Oh." Hilarious. The next day everyone had to go home at various times depending on how far away they live. But a bunch of us didn't have to leave for a while so we went up Sapporo Tower, which was kind of neat, seeing the entire city from above. Their bathrooms were especially fun with a great view. We also bought Tim Tams at this import store!! They are the delicious chocolate cookies that are made in Australia/New Zealand and can't be found in the US. You bite off each end of the cookie and suck up coffee or hot chocolate, which gets soaked up into the cookie before you eat this amazing dessert. Brett, Stephen, and I also made a stop at the bus station, at which point while buying his ticket and counting out change Brett said to the ticket lady, "Ryoku... Hachi.... Oh, Snap-seryu!" We ended up unfortunately missing the train, but were able to catch a late (and expensive) train back home.

1/14-2/16/06: Taiki/Obihiro

So far, outside of touring around southern Japan, I've been generally just hanging out in Taiki and Obihiro (a larger city about an hour from Taiki taking the freeway with really slow speed limits). Here are some fun pictures and observations about both. [photo: Taiki across the street from apartment]




Food.

Fruits and veggies are much, much bigger in Japan. This is a normal green onion. They don't come any smaller than about 2.5 feet long.

But oddly enough, in Hokkaido, sushi is kind of hard to come by. We did find one Marine Boy in Obihiro that sold sushi on conveyor belts.

Also, some products were never meant to be.

Clothes.
There is a hot underwear line called Black Men.

Instead of The Godfather they have The Concrete.

Their jackets are dirty whores.

And I'm quite sure that no samurai ever said his soul was this brand of loincloth.

Stores/Toys/Tire Robots
This is a chain of stores called Hard-Off.

You can buy anything from Tofu Friends and Keychain Poop....

To Keychain underwear and panties.

Don't forget your nose pump.

I love the Tire Robot next to the freeway.

Sex Machines

Arcade Crane for Vibrators, or Time of an Adults.

But for more variety, there are just general sex toy vending machines. A lot of them.

1/31-2/1/06: Tokyo

Tokyo. The first thing about Tokyo is that it is actually a ring of cities all clustered together. Second is that Tokyo is super crowded (of course), which you find when you are wandering around Tokyo Station. Third, Tokyo has the coolest bathrooms with lids that automatically lift when you enter the stall, and 3-in-1 sinks with soap, water, and blow dryer all in the sink bowl. And the fourth is that the people in Tokyo are asshole pimps and bitches (towards me at least). Never have I met ruder people. Not in the week I spent in Kyoto, any of its neighboring cities, Taiki, Sapporo, or on any of the trains, even. I don't know what their problem is, if maybe it's a big city thing or what, but they are so incredibly rude. Example: 1) don't speak Japanese to guy at front desk = "Receipt!" in a loud voice of utter contempt and a throw of both the key and receipt onto the desk before turning and walking away. 2) try to buy an amazing shirt on a dummy (because I can't find it on the shelf) at a store in Harajuku = I ask if I can try it on. Superbitch says no. I ask, then how I'm supposed to know if I can buy it. She glares at me, pulls it off the dummy, magically finds another in a different, better color, and starts to put it on the dummy. I ask if I could try that one on instead. She looks at me in shock and gives me the shirt while grabbing the other out of my hand and pulling it back onto the dummy. I go pay. She very obviously conspires with her co-worker and they point and laugh at me. How is this the way they do business. No matter, I was only buying that shirt because it had some amazing Engrish. They probably think it was cool. Stupid bitch.

Anyway, after I got to Tokyo, I went to Ueno and visited the National Museum of Tokyo, which was small, but incredibly well done. Whoever designed this museum was brilliant; each room was artistic and color coordinated, and every piece had been thoughtfully displayed in context with the other pieces. There were also very clear explanations about each room's theme, such as laquerware (which is gorgeous and used to be called "japan", much like porcelain can be called "china"), kimonos, samurai armour and swords, etc. I also found the museum's size, although small compared to most other museums, to be perfect for me; I was just about to bored/tired when I finished. That night I wandered around Ginza, which is crazy and chaulked full of stores, lights, and people. I also made a special stop at the Ginza Koban (police station): when it was built, the architect had forgotten to take the pin out of the model, and so the pin was actually constructed in real life. So amazing.

The next day was miserable. It was pouring like nobody's business and very cold. I tried to go to Harajuku, but it was too early and nothing was opened. So I wandered around the maze of a mall in Tokyo Station for a while staring at food. I also went to the Sony Building in Ginza, which is full of the latest, coolest gagets and has a floor of playstations that people hang around and play all day. Then, I made my way to Shibuya where the world's biggest crosswalk is. It's the one you see in all of the pictures. It was huge and looked like a sea of umbrellas, but I suspect that there were less people than usual, as it was still raining hard. I went to Harajuku, known for the people who dress up crazily. It would have been a very cool place to hang out with all of the stores, vendors, lights... very young and fun atmosphere. But it was raining. My shoes were filling up, and there were only some normally dressed people out. Also, this is where I met Superbitch.

This was the my last day touring southern Japan before riding the Shinkansen and amazingly late trains (again) back to Obihiro.

1/30/06: Miyajima

This was my last day in Kyoto. I started with Kiyomizu-dera temple, which was nestled in the forrested mountains on the east edge of Kyoto and thus awesome. It was very misty, so after climbing for some time, I stumbled into this bright orange temple surrounded by lush trees and shrouded in mist [photo]. So beautiful. They also had this purification water fountain that fell off the roof into a pond below and you could ladle it from underneath the roof. Then I went to Miyajima, which is about 30 min from Hiroshima. Miyajima was fantastic. A picturesque island full of lush forrest covering several mountains. But the town itself is very small and just butts up against the mountains. There I saw the world's largest rice paddle [photo: awesome] that absolutely no one was impressed with; I had to wait such a long time to take a picture with people in it for scale. And as a consequence, every store has rice paddles of various sizes for sale. What Miyajima is really known for, though, is its water shrine, a shrine that at high tide is on water, and at low tide is on stilts. Most pictures of Miyajima are of the shrine gate, which is farther out [photo]. Since it was low tide, I got to walk out to the gate and take photos [photo]. Apparently, this shirne has been rebuilt something like 12 times. Then I went up in the incredibly overpriced skycars to the top of the highest mountain. Because it was misty/foggy, I couldn't see the other islands, but at the top there were... Monkeys!!! Little knee-high, and apparently sometimes vicious [photo] monkeys everywhere. They generally ignored me, but I had fun watching them eating, grooming each other, and walking around in pairs with one monkey's hands on the other's butt [photo]. Being the lame nerd that I am, I wondered if I could do a study there on monkey behaviour. I wouldn't mind living on Miyajima, I think; it was really a fun little town.



















Picture of the Day: Guardian Dog and me at Kiyomizu-dera










Fun Picture of the Day: For a country so incredibly homophobic, you would think such a drink wouldn't be so popular.

1/29/06: Hiroshima

Hiroshima. Although somewhat far from Kyoto (about 2-3 hour Shinkansen ride), it is a city completely worth going to. Completely. Because it was Yokoso! Japan week, a tourism promotional thing, I was able to catch a free guided tour of the Peace Park. I saw most of the major memorials around the park, all of which were touching and held this momentous atmosphere. Some of the biggest memorials included 1) the children's memorial, dedicated to Sakura, a girl who got cancer after the a-bomb and attempted to fold 1,000 paper cranes to be cured [photo: cranes] 2) Victim's cenotaph, which is opened every year to add names of new victims who have died from cancer [photo: the cenotaph, a symbolic sculpture of two hands held together with a flame that will continue to burn until all nuclear weapons are eliminated, and the A-dome all in line] 3) the rebirth memorial, a transplanted tree that had been completely hollowed out by the blast, but still sprouted the next spring and is an inspiration to cancer victims that have lost hope 4) A-Dome, a building left standing after the bomb drop and has been preserved (although controversially) to remember what happened [photo] 5) the peace bell representing the striking out of all nuclear weapons around the world [photo] . I noticed and really appreciated that instead of being like other memorials that are usually all about the victims, the peace park and museum was about the victims, of course, but also about the overall theme of world peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere. They really emphasized and effectively imbued their message into everything. The museum itself was overwhelming [photo: intro video to the museum]. The east wing started with the mechanics of the bomb: the building damage, the stages of an atomic blast and its after effects, the huge effort Hiroshima has put into pleading with other countries regarding their nuclear policies and practices, history about the war (which although they did not address the Japanese atrocities, did make a few references to them and why they were defeated, which is progress- the Japanese have yet to admit their doings in Korea and other invaded areas in their own textbooks), and the current laws and its flaws. The west wing was this incredibly disturbing and haunting look at the victims and their endurances. There were mementos of every kind, tattered clothing, a finger, lunch boxes, and just everyday things that had been left by the child laborers who were there that day (August 6, 1945 at 8:15 am). Every memento had a story to them, almost always describing a child surviving the blast and crawling home, only to die in the arms of their parents who had been searching frantically for them. The walls were filled with pictures of victims suffering from skin ulcers and missing body parts, and there were video booths of survivors recounting their stories. It was so sad and distrubing I felt sick and couldn't finish the rest of the museum. David, who had come with me for the tour, had to leave early. I think that most of the people there felt that way; it was so moving. After I left the museum, I just wandered around the park for a while. But the thing is, despite the A-bomb and all of its consequences, Hiroshima has really bounced back. I walked around the downtown area on the way to the JR station for a bit, and it was just packed with stores and arcades, and just everything Japan. It was really incredible to see the museum, and then see everything around it.