In Japan, I am

Nikko National Park - Trio of waterfalls

2012-04-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

Up next is Yudaki waterfall. It was cold as hell there so I didn't spend that much time outside =p

More like water-rundownahill. Still very neat, though.

And these are mochi balls, lightly toasted beside coals, topped with a soy/JapaneseOrange+Lemon/somethingelseIforgot.

It looks sweet, but it's actually not. Tastes pretty orange-lemon-zesty. I'm not a fan of such dense carb snacks, but it looked soo good. Other people liked it quite a bit but it was too much carbohydrate for me.

Only if the brown sauce was caramelized sugar.

I forgot the terminology the tour guide used, but this part of the river was called something along the lines of "dragon's back." Armed with your imagination, you should be able to picture it.

Especially down here.

Lastly is Kegon waterfall, which is a 99meter tall waterfall. By far the most beautiful waterfall I've seen. Stood out in the rain for a solid 30 mins sans umbrella admiring its beauty.

This stereo photo is a pretty fun one. There's a little bit of depth to the water too.

This overhang is seriously 5 feet tall, haha.

I was excited to take this picture, then realized that a crap tonne of hotels are way taller than 100 meters, haha.

HIIIDEEEYY HOO!!

Nikko Toshogu - Most beautiful shrine of them all.

2012-04-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

Fuck babies. Or at least that's the mentality with which I started out this tour. This little baby was actually well behaved. She was speaking in baby talk a good portion of the time, which is super cute. She only cried towards the end of the tour, which I don't fault her for.

At the first rest stop. Bear pastries! It was too early and he wasn't ready to serve them yet. Hell I already had breakfast, but I really wanted one!

And here we are at the Nikko Toshogu shrine. I know, at this point you're probably thinking, "enough with the damn shrines." Initially I was thinking the same thing, but I was glad to save this shrine for last. It was the coolest one that I've seen thus far. Most of the individual temples were very intricately decorated, with wood carvings that you could not imagine were possible.

See for yourself:

The stone torii gate (Ishidorii) above survived the recent earthquake due to its sectional construction. All the pieces of it fit together like a puzzle, with shock absorbers built into the joints.

Kinda hard to see, but all the animals of the chinese zodiac (not sure if I'm getting that right) are carved into this 5 story pagoda.

The elephants pictured here were carved by an artist that had never seen a picture of an elephant! The artist at the time carved these out of his own imagination, after having heard stories describing the creatures. Damned accurate, right?

Spell-check police =p

Hallo Yomeimon gate. You are considered the most impressive structure within this shrine, yes?

This building was JUST reopened to the public, it had undergone renovations over the past three years, so I was pretty fortunate to see it in its super-brand-new state.

Don't mind the ladder. This professional restoration guy was applying, or "painting" on the little sheets of gold to the inside-facing part of this doorway.

Can you imagine this thing when it was brand new? (I guess it's pretty brand new at this point)

And below is temple that housed the crying dragon.

Like the Vatican, no pictures were allowed once inside the worship area. So, I will describe it to you. On the ceiling is painted a huge dragon, roughly 8 meters long. This one.

And once you get underneath the dragon, a demonstration is played out for you. The demonstrator guy has two wooden blocks that he claps together; a series performed right underneath the face of the dragon, and another series of claps in a different part of the room. When he's not underneath the face of the dragon, the two wooden blocks slap together as you'd expect them to sound. CLACK!

But, when he's underneath the face of the dragon, the clacking resounds throughout the room with a higher-pitched entity tailing the initial strike. CLACK-CLACk-CLAck-CLack-Clack-clack...

The resounding clack generated under the face of the dragon is said to be the sound of a crying dragon. It did have a mystical ring to it. 0o0o0oo.

POS camera phone disallowed me from taking a better picture of the above. Say hello to Nemuri Neko, which is the sleeping cat. This is a very famous carving crafted by Jingorou Hidari, who is said to have had his right carving hand chopped off. It was said that the other carvers were jealous of his talents, and did not want his carvings to overshadow theirs, so they cut off his right hand. But did he show them. He carved this here motherfucking neko (cat) with his left hand. Assholes. Our tour guide mentioned that this is one of the most recognizable pieces of artwork across Japan.

Note, fat american woman on the left struggling to walk down the stairs. Note the Japanese woman on the right climbing the stairs, with a briskness that could only be matched by the american woman had there been a twinkie prize at the top. Plus, the Japanese woman had a baby on her back.

Truthfully I had trouble getting up the stairs. I did about four sets of squats and four sets of deadlifts, about 6 100meter sprints two days prior and my legs were still hurting on Sunday, haha.

And here lies the remains of Tokogawa Ieyasu, who was the most powerful man in Japan for a good long while. Starting with Ieyasu, the tokogawa shoguns ruled Japan for over 250 years. Bad ass mothereffer, this man was.

And you've seen the see/hear/speak no evil monkeys. But did you know that they originated here in Nikko, Japan?! They're actually featured on this one building, and they serve to tell a story in comic-book fashion. Click the pics to read about the story.

Stupid ass camera phone.

This part was not included in my ticket, so outside-looking-in shot only for you.

Little old ladies keeping the place free of tree debris.

And this is a GIF of me leaving the part of the shrine compound I detailed above. I started taking pictures 1 step apart, then slowing increasing it to 2 steps, then 3 steps apart, and so on, until I was taking them roughly 20 paces apart. I was hoping to make it look like I was moving at light speed =p It's actualy more fun to watch the guy in the yellow jacket, haha.

The GIF is over 9 megs btw, haha. Hopefully your browser doesn't choke.

Rain? Nothing else to do but eat more ramen!

2012-04-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Local ramen spot that I've been frequenting. Right across from TGIF. Beats the shit out of the stupid ramen place right outside of the main gate.

Two soups here. The one with all the little white globules of fat is tonkotsu. Very tasty, blows my mind to think what the soup would like look if it had a chance to sit and cool. The layer of fat overlying the broth would probably scarily thick. No matter. I EAT. LOTS.

The second ramen is miso ramen, I THINK. Haha, after having the other super legit miso soup it's a bit hard to recognize less paste-like (or rather "watered down") miso. Still not bad though.

And lastly, another close up video of the yakitori cart. Just for my reference.

Yeah it rained. I just vegetated in my room. Eat ramen, sleep, watch TV. Aww yeah.

Fujikyu Highlands (Fuji-Q for short) Roller Coaster Theme Park

2012-04-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

And on sunday I was headed off to Fujikyu Highlands, which is the local equivalent of Six Flags Magic Mountain.

We got there pretty early, so I employed the following strategy. Most theme park newbs head to the coaster nearest the entry way, thinking that that first coaster's line will only become more inundated as the day goes on. WRONG, PARK NEWBS. If I were to draw a heat map of patrons of the park, most folks wander into the coasters closest to the entryway upon park opening. The front of the park would be most saturated, "hotter" or redder in color on a heat map relative to everywhere else. As the day goes by, people make their way to the deeper corners of the park, finally reaching a sort of equilibrium. At that point the wait for the rides in the front of the park will actually decrease relative to opening (at least for winter season, for summer season it's all bets off).

Keeping that in mind, I moved my ass to the far corner of the park, towards the one ride where I knew the loading mechanism took forever. So, I get there, the wait is roughly one hour, which is fine. The wait for the first coaster at the front of the line that I skipped was about 2 hours long. After I get out of my first coaster, I jump onto another coaster, only to return to the first coaster. The line at the first coaster had now dwindled to less than an hour's wait. Time well spent!

Ok, ride-hopping details aside, here's the rundown of the rides here:

Above, Fujiyama. It used to be the world's tallest coaster in 1996, but is now the world's 8th tallest, 5th longest, and 10th fastest roller coaster. It reminded me somewhat of a longer goliath without the intermittent-blindness-causing-downward spiral section =p Good or bad thing, I'm not sure, haha.

Below, Eejanaika, which is the equivalent of X in six flags. This one's a fourth dimensional coaster. So you've got the typical up/down and lateral movements of the train, but each row of seats in the train actually rotates along an axis perpendicular to the track. So when you reach the initial drop, that sumbitch actually rotates your seat so that your body literally faces straight down. As in belly and face TOWARDS THE GROUND. Ground 180 degrees, your front side 90 degrees. It's legit.

I was always wondering how it worked, and I figured that it would use some method similar to how the valves in our car engines change depending on how they rode on a camshaft, and I was right! X at home is behind the loading station, so you can't really get a good view of how the track works. Eejanaika was out in plain view so I had a chance to view the track and I noticed an extra set of track guides that would work as the equivalent of a camshaft, when they're nearly next to the main track you'd be facing forward. Once you the track guides separated from the main track, you'd rotate backwards. Anything in between would allow for other positions.

MUST WATCH THE VIDEO.

You can see the seats invert about 2 times in this video, once at the top to position you face down for the drop, then again right before the lowest point of the drop.

'merica, FUCK YE....wait, WTH is that supposed to mean?! =p

Below is Dodonpa. This is the 3rd faster coaster in the world (it used to be fastest in 2001). BUT, it still has the world's fastest acceleration at launch time. And THIS fact, my dear readers, was infuckingcredible. Pneumatic pressure was used to launch your ass from a standstill to a OMFGMYFACEHURTS in 0.00000001 seconds (ok I made that up).

Here I recorded the music played while waiting in line. Huge contrast from themed techno music in Six flags. It was like elevator music everywhere, haha.

I couldn't get any videos of the launch because it occurs in a tube. And look, the camera that takes your photo is actually shaped like a BIGASS camera. You can see it in the picture below, to the left of beautiful Mt. Fuji.

Below, Takabisha holds the record for the steepest drop, which is 121 degrees. It sounds bad, but it's not too creepy. The damn thing hangs you way over the edge before it decides to drop you. I'd prefer a whole kinetic freefall, but maybe the track can't hold onto the train?

Takabisha has a teeny little cart though, so it reminds me of the little rollercoaster penguins that mom used to sell at her toy store.

Very fun day!

Ramen in Yokosuka, cont.

2012-04-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

New ramen place!

Ok, so per a recommendation of one of the office workers, I decided to head out towards this new ramen restaurant. But, once I got there, I noticed that there were TWO ramen restaurants right next to each other. The one the coworker recommended was empty, whereas the other one had about five Japanese folks in it. I took a few minutes to look over the menu when I noticed a group of americans walking towards the recommended restaurant, and in they went. One thing I've learned thus far is that if you see a group of americans in a restaurant, chances are it'll probably suck. Trust the japanese patrons. So into the non-recommended restaurant I went. Sorry coworker, nothing personal =p

So, inside the restaurant, I shoot for gold, ordering their 1000 yen super miso special. Figured I might as well go all out. While waiting for my food my table mates, a Japanese man and his wife, struck up a conversation with me. They spoke english quite well, and I managed to ask them if they had tried the restaurant next door. They mentioned that it used to be good (years ago), but that the chef has since cut back on the quality of ingredients. ZING! Haha, my choice was justified.

And so here comes the miso ramen. HUGE. Shit, there was nothing to help you gauge the size of the bowl.

Introducing my hand VS big fucking bowl. I've always considered large bowls of ramen to be roughly the size of a basketball cut in half, but this bowl eclipsed that. This was roughly 15-20% larger than the size of a basketball cut in half.

So is it all quantity over quality? NO! Soup was VERY rich, very very miso rich. It was almost paste-like, a super thick broth. I've read about how miso can definitely leave you feeling full, almost like eating a heavy pasta-rich meal. Didn't know what people meant until I sampled this ramen. So rich. So thick. So_damn_good.

As for the meat, there were two large sheets of char su, each roughly about 3.5inches long by 2 inches wide. Real tender and tasty. Along with the two pieces of meat came another piece of pork that had been slow-cooked to rediculous tenderness. This piece was about an inch thick :O.

Don't even need to ask, hell yes I'll be back. It's south on 16 from the base, it's right across the street from the wannabe Denny's. It's the one without the red lanterns outside.

Ramen Oyaji in Machida and the invisible 5-story Daiso

2012-04-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

Quieter sunday. No tours planned. I found out the exact directions to the 5 story Daiso AND I wanted to eat at another ramen restaurant on this list. I realize that you guys are most likely reading this backwards.

So, I got onto the Yokosuka Chuo station, transferred to Yokohama by way of the Keikyu line, then transferred onto the JR Yokohama to land myself in Machida. This was where I visited the Round 1 the first time.

Walking towards the ramen place I was held at an intersection where we had to wait for the trains to pass. This was an odd experience because everyone was kind of just frozen in this weird state. It was like standing on an elevator but not on an elevator. Usually when my car is stopped at the train tracks it opens up the possibility of picking my nose or scratching my butt, but not not being able to do that here was just...weird.

And here we are, Ramen Oyaji. 1-19-1 Nakamachi, Machida-shi, Tokyo.

The specialty here is their miso ramen, which is supposed to have originated from their location in Sapporo. If you are a ramen fan, you will note something different about the ramen I pictured below.

IT'S NOT FUCKING MISO. I ORDERED THE WRONG THING, ARRRGHHHHH.

I read that the thing to order was the Oyaji set, which runs 1000yen and includes gyoza. The menu didn't have pictures, and there were only two items that were 1000yen, so I figured the topmost one would be it. I WAS WRRRRROONNNNGGGG.

Even though I got the wrong one, I ended up with the shoyu (I think), and it was still very good. But, it's only as good as shoyu will allow it to be. I just don't think that there's as much depth with shoyu broth. There aren't any little fat gibblets floating in the soup, none of the heavier miso broth, aye! It's ok, at least it was good. It just wasn't mind-blowing miso good.

It's normally not that big a deal, but the problem is that there's nothing else to see in Machida, and I've already been out there twice already, so I don't have much else of a reason to head back. It takes about an hour and about 14 bucks just for travel, so I don't think I can justify another trip back. Maybe. We'll see. FUUCKKKKKKKK.

And practically everywhere you go are pachinko parlors. They're like a combination of a slot machine and a pinball machine. You load in all these little metal balls and depending on where they fall you get to spin the reels. At least how I think it works. The music coming out of the machines was deafening, I couldn't hear myself cough. It was as loud as a rock concert, no lie.

I've seen a lot of these, but this particular one caught my attention because of the special promotion.

How do people not slip and fall, these bearing balls HAVE to get get loose every once in a while...

And it seems that the Daiso has really REALLY closed down. Even with the exact directions it was nowhere to be found =(

On the way back home I decided to take a video of how fast these local trains run. I don't remember them moving this quickly in NYC.

I had some to-go curry for dinner, but it was nothing crazy special, so no pictures. And that concludes this quiet sunday.

Ippudo in Ebisu for Ramen and Ueno Park for Cherry Blossoms.

2012-04-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

On a mission I was. Try out as many places on this "Best of" ramen list:

10 Ramen Shops in Tokyo Worth Visiting

I was headed to this place called Ippudo, which is in Tokyo, a 5-7ish minute walk from the Ebisu station off the Yamanote line. The address is: 1-3-12 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.

Cherry blossoms as of Saturday were 50-80% fully bloomed. This weekend will be really nice as most cherry blossoms in the part of town should be in 100% bloom. I'll be heading to check them out on Saturday.

And here is Ippudo. I was excited, super excited.

Hells yeah, english menu! I learned how to say "Nihongo ga wakarimasen," which means that I don't understand Japanese, but I'm not sure how well it's going over, haha.

I was gonna try the classic Shiromaru tonkotsu, but then I saw the newschool Akamaru one and knew I had to get it. You should be able to read about the differences once you click the picture.

And they also ask how firm you'd like the noodes. I went with soft, which is still slightly al dente.

And here we are, you can see the separation of the three different elements of the soup, the base tonkotsu with all the floating bits of fat (SO DAMN GOOD), the "fragrant oil," and the "savory ball." I'm not sure which is which, and I sure as hell didn't care. It looked great.

This is what it looks like after you mix everything up. Remember the "lieu" I was talking about in the previous ramen outing? This has lieu to the MAX. You know it's good just by looking at it.

And I have found the best ramen I've ever tasted. Here at Ippudo. The broth is so rich, but it's not overly salted, so it's not "cheating" to get to its super flavorful state. The noodles were of the lo mein variety that's typical of tokyo, but hell if I cared. You could have served this broth with spaghetti noodles and I wouldn't have complained. The char sui was 8/10, very good, but still not better than the once place I tried at the ramen museum. Easily forgivable though considering how tasty the ramen was (I think I've mentioned that at least 5-6 times by now!

AND this place just opened up shop in NYC so Ellen and Jason, you know what to do!

It was windy on way back home. I will be back!

I keep forgetting that cider more or less = soda. So I thought this was gonna taste special, but it tasted like cactus cooler, haha.

And so I jumped back on the Yamanote line to circle all the way back around towards Tokyo proper to arrive at Ueno park, where the cherry blossoms were nearly in full bloom. Take a look.

And here you can see "hanami" which is cherry blossom viewing. It's basically a day at the park, underneath blooming cherry blossoms. People come out and reserve these spots early on, I heard as early as 8am in some cases. Here it's like a picnic, where they bring food/games/alcohol and just have a fun time. I saw some mahjong going on too.

Those Japanese and their creative makeshift tables...

...and their attention to detail with just the recycling containers for this specific event.

This is some wile e. coyote shit right here. I see what you did there! Not fooling nobodyyyyy =p

It's Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple!

Influenced from the WW2 days? Or was it WW1... no history buff, I am.

These looked like those yellow pancake things that mom makes with the sprouts, onions, and shrimp. I'm not that big a fan of mom's creation, but this place looked super tasty. Unfortunately I didn't try it though, I was still stuffed from the ramen, haha. I didn't wanna wash down the residual broth from the corners of my mouth, not yet anyway.

Traffic jam with pedal boats, hehe.

I designated the weekend as a Ramen weekend, so I needed to follow it up with something decent. I didn't have any specific place in mind, but I recalled that there was a tasty-looking ramen place near the base. Specifically right across from the TGIFs and right next to the yakitori stand I frequent.

Booyah, more tonkotsu. This place was good. Not orgasmically good like Ippudo, but still pretty_damn_legit. Forget that other stupid place near base, that place sucked. I'm coming here. Not an American in sight (which is usually a good sign for good Japanese food), so it's legit.

Broth was very good, there was depth to the broth, ramen was the familiar type, and egg was free (it's usually not).

Post-Baby-Tsunami eating

2012-04-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

It was the middle of the week when out of nowhere I noticed that the wind really started to kick up while I was at work. I noticed because I normally crack open the window a tad in my exam room to keep things a bit cooler as they set the heater on way too high. It must feel warm to me because my new muscles are jumpstarting the old metabolism again! Forget 27, 21 year old Eric here I come! Haha.

Back to the subject. Anyways, the winds picked up because there was a potential tsunami headed our way. Fast forward a few hours, and most people who don't live on base tried to get the fuck off of it ASAP just in case. It wasn't that big a deal, otherwise I figured they would have evacuated me, being on damn near waterfront propertly and all.

After a night of howling winds (they had enough gusto to lift the super heavy big trash can lids outside), the next day was calm, to reveal this:

It was slightly difficult to capture, but the ocean water was exceptionally blue. Aquamarine to try to be more precise. It's normally a lot darker in color. And that's ruling out it being a sunny day too. It's weird what crazy weather is capable of.

Weather aside, the middle of the week means one thing: 94yen sushi! This time I tried a few new things (in addition to the previous goodies that I've posted pics of).

I also bought a couple things from the local 7-11 like place, called Lawsons.

This white chocolate, not so good, haha. Packaging was cool though. All the chocolates are angled sideways, ready to be pulled out of the box.

This Meiji ice cream was super tasty. It was so pretty I needed to take a picture before going all n0m n0m on its tasty ass.

And right before I got back to my room, look here! I've got a new placard on my door. Apparently my door is metal, so now I'm wondering if I could find any other cool fridge magnets to stick on my door. Something like," 'Merica, FUCK YEAH!" =p

Surprise of the day and Shiraito/Otodome waterfalls

2012-04-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

After we left the temple, I wasn't really sure where we were headed. I knew that we were heading to a pit stop area where we could buy lunch, but not much else.

Bought myself pork katsu. Apparently there is a farm nearby, so everything is produced here locally. The katsu was made with a VERY thick pork chop, which was surprising. I never knew that this was how it was meant to be like =p Very tasty. The third most annoying kid of the day was sitting next to me while I was waiting for my meal. This little shit stick was unwilling to eat the food, just being a brat because it wasn't what he was used to. The first thing that came to mind when he opened his stupid little mouth was what Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In the Rye would say, that he was a lousy, "crumby" kid. Third child I would have gladly thrown off the bus.

With a farm comes cows, with cows comes yummy ice cream! Very tasty, the ice cream was very rich, creamy, just almost velvety. This was a cream/green tea mix. I'm glad I didn't just get green tea. As I mentioned, the Japanese like their green tea strong. This ice cream was no exception.

Hai world's most useless and uncomfortable bench that nobody was willing to sit on.

And BAM, here it was, the highlight of my day. Mount freakin' Fuji! I'm sorry to say, but my crappy phone camera couldn't capture how magnificent this mountain truly was. It just rose out of the ground so majestically, I had never seen anything like it. I was in awe. It was actually much closer than these pictures show.

As I was snapping some pictures, this family decided to follow suit. I then saw this cute little bastard striking some awesome poses. I couldn't run around fast enough to get the angle, but look at that toe-point! Work it, son!

Hah, look at his face, he'll do what he wants!

And here we are, leaving Mt. Fuji. Bye bye beautiful mountain. Mountains back home aren't nearly as impressive.

Next up was Shiraito and Otodome waterfalls, all within the same Shizuoka area as Mt. Fuji.

This storefront reminded me of the kid that I took pictures of, the one up above.

Local street vendor with all types of seafood-y goodness: fish, clams, squid, etc. I knew that I still had a 4-5 hour bus ride back so I didn't chance it =p

Sorry, with no pepto in hand, eating these things was out of the question, haha.

And boom, Shiraito waterfall!

100% certified Japanese rainbow. It might be smaller than your average rainbow, but just look at the accuracy of the color representation. Seriously.

And here I am leading you down to Otodome waterfall...

Beautiful, yes? Looks kind of like a movie set. Something you'd expect the protagonists to accidentally stumble upon, like finding a lost world of sorts. And look at how clear the water was:

One of the stores had a weird assortment of classic apple goodies. I'm sure these would net a good amount on ebay...

And here is dinner. We only had 20 minutes and I couldn't make up my mind, so I gotta some of these fried beef/fish ball thingies. Tasty.

And this one drink is very similar to those small little peach-colored drinks that come in the small little plastic bottle with the red foil. Similar, but with more of a fruity aftertaste. Very good!

Take a look at his shoes. The male bus drivers here have a weird tendency to wear those gladiator-ish type of shoes. And I should add, these guys drive the buses EXTREMELY well. Sometimes I have no idea how they manage to put the bus around corners at the speeds they do without any tire screeching or uncomfortable tossing around of occupants.

That's it for this weekend. Good fun.

There was just one baby that would not shut up during the whole 9 hour drive. I'd lie if I didn't say that I inadvertently devoted about 30 mins or so of coming up with ways of shutting it up. Method #1 by far was to throw it out the window. Method #2 included bringing a spray bottle filled with Benadryl-laced water, which I would spray into the mouth of the baby. Method #3 was to throw it out the window. Yes, I really did give it some serious thought.

I was subjected to probably ~1-1.5 hours of crying after summing up all the crying throughout the whole 9 hour drive. Today when a baby cried in the patient waiting area my knees felt weak.

Ah yes, a shout out to inconsiderate/selfish parents, fuck you.

Minobusan Kuonji Temple on Mt. Minobu

2012-04-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

We started out with a trip to the upper temple. Here you can see the little cable car on its way down towards the station. Note the slope of the mountain, it doesn't look too crazy steep from this angle, right?

That is until you get on this sumbitch...

Felt like a 45 degree climb to me...

And here's baby #2 that I wanted to throw out of the cable car.

Beautiful views 360, it was probably the nicest day I've experienced thus far in Japan.

[Arnold] It's a TOOMAHH [/Arnold]

Hell, on second thought, it looks like it's more than 45 degrees in this picture. At this point we had all descended from the upper temple towards the lower temple, where most of the fun was happening. The upper temple was serene, but kinda boring =p

I decided to wander around this one temple for...well...not sure why. Anyways, I started to walk around the back of it, seeing if there was anything else cool to see. I step in through the back entrance, only to notice that I'm directly BEHIND all the monks doing their prayer ceremony thing! "OH SHIT!" I silently exclaimed. Needless to say, it only took a split second for a monk to spot me and escort me the fuck out of there. On my way out, a head-monk looking fellow leading some prayer was walking down the hallway where I had no business being. I stuck myself up against the nearest wall like sashimi on rice.

Next up was the tea ceremony. There were two rows of chairs, both covered by red cloth. You started out by sitting on the rear rows. The kimono'd ladies would then come by and hand you the little cherry blossum pastry seen below:

This cherry blossom pastry:

After you ate that, you advanced to the first row of red cloth-covered benches. Here you were served green tea in a bowl. The Japanese like their green tea STRONG. Like holy-shit strong, strong.

Minobusan Kuonji Temple is well known for its abundance of cherry blossoms, but I guess it was still cold out, those pretty little flowers weren't feeling it, at least not in full effect. Some were in partial bloom. Example A.

Say hello to the temple's 420 year old weeping cherry blossom tree. BLOOM DAMNIT BLOOM.

The roof of this building reminded me of sushi for some odd reason.

I was gonna turn these two pictures into 3d images, but I think the angle of separation was too great =p That and I took the picture too far away to realize the unique shape of the flowers. Sorry! They were teency weency cup-shaped little flowers. Very pretty.

Ok, so the halls of the sushi-roofed building were lined with these. If heading to temples with mom has taught me anything, these are all reservations for dead people. Reservations in the sense that all the people that have purchased a "plot" at this specific temple will be served in the afterlife. The monks will typically pray/burn whatever is necessary for them to live a comfortable life in the afterlife. I only have one picture, but there were MANY halls that looked just like this one.

OH HAI! This was gonna be the starting picture for a stop-frame animation, but none of the other pictures worked out because of the fluorescent lights set right atop each picture. All the cool pieces of art were washed out by the too high an exposure.

You're looking down at 287 steps here. Not 287 normal-sized steps. Each one of these steps is about 2-3 inches higher than your modernized stair step. This picture was taken at 1047am. The bus was planning to leave at 1100, so I knew that I had to get the eff down there if I was going to attempt making it back to the bus on time. My hands are getting sweaty just thinking about this stupid stair climb =p

Note, from the picture above, I don't think you could even see this second half of the descent.

Ok, about a minute later of going down all the stairs, here's the bottom. Going DOWN the stairs was a little tiring. But it really didn't seem like it was gonna be that bad from what I saw going downhill.

Until I decided to look up at what I had just descended. You can't even see 3/4 of the rest of the stairs, that's how steep it is. That guy up there, if he were able to speak english, I'm pretty sure "fuck me," would have been very appropriate.

Whew, fuck me. 1/4 of the way done. I think that's the top. At least I was hoping.

About 7 minutes later I made it all the way to the top. By then I had taken off my peacoat, my scarf, and I was sweating like a mothereffer through my tank top and my thermal undershirt. This is from someone who rarely ever sweats. AND considering I've been diligently working out my legs through these past 5 weeks, the climb still kicked my ass.

Still, totally worth it =p

Food outings - Mexican and Ramen

2012-03-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

It was Friday night, I just had finished working out at the gym and I was hankerin' for some mexican food. There's one mexican food place near base that I hear people talking about all the time. I've heard that the mexican food is pretty decent and that their margaritas are good.

So here it is, Mike's Mexican Restaurant. This one's easy to find, you cross the street at the main gate, and walk about 100meters to the right. It's on the second floor. The easiest way to spot it is to look upwards, you'll see their window decorated with the Mike's Tacos branding.

Mike's offers up mostly combo plates, you'll find that most average Mexican dishes are offered: burritos, tacos, tostadas, enchiladas, nachos, etc. Unfortunately no pina, horchata, or orange bang. Shit, wannabe Mexican place, get it right.

Anyways, knowing that I'm overly critical when it comes to Mexican food, I decided to not go for a large meal like a taco and burrito. Instead I opted for a "beef taco" and a "beef enchilada," seen below.

I was expecting carne, but it was shredded beef. The shredded beef was acceptable, I prefer marinated carne, but that's ok.

Score Card:

Presentation : 7/10 - It's in line with most other sit-down Mexican restaurants

Cost : 7/10 - This meal was ~950ish yen, not much meat though

Emulation of Los Angeles Mexican Food : 4/10, the food kinda looks like what you'd expect from a super white-washed "Mexican" restaurant, but the details are just not there. The tortilla wasn't grilled. There's lettuce in the taco. There's no special salsa (I'd argue that the best mexican places don't even use a salsa in the traditional sense, they use a very special thick sauce that does not use tomatoes as the main ingredient).

Taste not based on emulation, but on its own merit : 6/10. The food was fresh, but it was just lacking in flavor. Imagine trying to emulate traditional Italian cooking by using Ragu poured over spaghetti noodles. It's kinda like that.

The next day I decided to go back to the Ramen place right next to base, to try out a different soup. Here I got spicy miso ramen with chicken karage.

The spicy miso broth definitely had much more depth and richness to it compared to the shio ramen that I had tried prior. But, compared to the ramen restaurants at the Ramen Museum, the broth was lacking all the little fixins. In cantonese, the word I'd use is "lieu," basically all the constituents of the soup. Plain chicken stock is free from "lieu," it's more or less kinda like flavored water. You get the plain chicken stock, boil it with a whole chicken, some pork bones, and the congealed broth will contain the "lieu" that I'm talking about. It adds depth to the soup, depth you can literally taste AND see.

Stingy bastards also only gave me ONE piece of pork. Last time I thought I had accidentally ordered the small size bowl because I got one piece as well. This time when I saw that one piece I knew they were cheap sonsofbitches.

Chicken karage was good! I found the pickled ginger, which paired perfectly with it.

This restaurant specializes in shio, shoyu, and miso ramen, but not tokotsu. That being the case, I be done sampling their ramen! Onward!

HAMAZUSHi, 94yen per plate sushi!

2012-03-28T04:14:00.000-07:00

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And here we are again, Wednesday afternoon, where I get the second half of the day off. I fully worked up seven full patients in the first half of the day, so I was glad to have a little break. ~~Wanting~~ Needing my weekly sushi fix, I read up about a local (and when I say local, I mean it) sushi place that offered a flat rae per plate. Hamazushi was it. 94 yen per plate on the weekdays. NINETY FOUR YEN!

As for local, it was retardedly local. Not walk 45 minutes like an idiot local, or spend 5 dollars in train fees type of local, but literally a 5 minute walk from my room local.

Just walk down blue street (coming from the base), and on the 3rd intersection, look left. You'll see this huge yellow building, Hamazushi is at the foot of the building. If you look right at that intersection you'll see Pepper Lunch and Mister Donut.

Aforementioned foot of yellowbuilding:

Ok, so when you get there, there's this one machine that gives you a number. There was no english translation, so I had to ask a lady how to work the machine. First, you choose how many are to be seated. FYI, ou have to press kinda hard, it's a weak capacitive LCD screen. Then, if you're by yourself, hit the middle of the three options, that one's for a bar seat. I think the first one was a table, but I didn't concern myself with that because I was eating alone. The machine will issue you a number. Considering the hostesses announced the 3 digit number at the speed of light, my number was useless. I just responded to their calls after the person before me was last called, haha.

Here the LCD system is newer, so it's much easier to see what you're ordering.

And they offered me an english menu, too. This one is full sized so you could check out the details when you click.

I always start out with 2 quick orders because these places don't give you separate plates for soy sauce and wasabi.

The musical little note they play here is much less obnoxious than the one at point 100 sushi.

How you're expected to prepare your own tea:

Fresh wasabi kicked my ass. Apparently there IS a wrong way to eat sushi laced with super powered wasabi. Just make sure you don't have a habit of separating the fish from the rice in your mouth, pressing the little ball of wasabi up against the soft palate of your throat.

Still one of my favorites, although I shamefully feel a little too american for liking this plate =p Must be the fact that it's got cheese and it's toasted.

Marinated tuna AKA the oldest tuna we've got. I knew what I was getting myself into, but I knew the marinade would be tasty. And it was!

Again, this toro's got nothing on Kats at Wasabi. But reminder, it's 94 yen. And that's AFTER taxes, yo.

All in all, made out like a bandit. 11 plates for ~1034yen, which is like 12-13 US dollars.

I'm sorry Point 100 sushi, you're just too damn far and this place is just as good AND cheaper.

Japan County Fair and Shibuya

2012-03-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

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On Sunday I woke up to this:

As I later found out, the base opens its doors to the public 2-3 times a year. Japanese people LOVE visiting the base.

...and now I know why. That fat slab there cost me 10 bucks! This place was like the LA fair. There were ribs, steaks, those big turkey legs, cotton candy, beer, etc. It was funny because quite a few people were there for "american" pizza. Japanese folks have their own pizza, which looks kinda too healthy for its own good =p

This place was like Disneyland. It's odd because the base is usually so quiet.

Much like how the Japanese variety of items offered at Mcdonalds intrigues me, these folks were also interested enough to snap a couple photos.

Street performers don't their diablo-thing. Reminds me of Jason back in elementary school.

And now I've arrived at my intended location, Shibuya in Tokyo, which is one of the local places to go for youth fashion. Here you'll find all the super high end stores all juxtaposed next to the ghetto-looking hip hop stores =p.

This is the famous Shibuya crossing that's at the outlet of the train station. It reminds me of Time's Square, but the difference is that this thing is PACKED ALL_DAY_LONG. Traffic is stopped in all directions and the street is fully opened to ped crossing.

Whatcha got on that, 3 story Montebello mall Forever 21?!

You'll never be left wanting of a good steak, haha. Outback's got you covered.

"Ok, so for this next shot, give me your best I-just-shit-my-pants look"

It's Hermeeeees!

The batter had hints of ginger in it, very unique! Fried chicken doesn't taste like this back at home.

And my turn to reciprocate, the stupid American taking pictures of a Japanese Mcdonalds.

The "Beverly Hills" burger as it's called. Looks pretty good. I think it'd be like a 6-7 dollar burger after the exchange rate though =p

Dayna would have shit her pants if she saw this.

Much prettier at nighttime!

A downward look at the Shibuya crossing at nighttime:

And for dinner, Coco Ichiban, or just "coco's" as it's called by most on base. There are two Coco's near base, apparently this one tastes better so I gave it a try.

You specify the type of curry you want (pork or beef), the type of meat, the spiciness level (1-10, 5 gives an itty-bitty bite), and how many grams of rice you want (100+ grams).

Topped with egg! The curry here is wonderful, very rich and flavorful.

Wandering about Yokohama/Machida area

2012-03-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

I didn't have any plans for Saturday, so I decided to head back to Yokohama to round out my ramen trials at the Ramen Museum. I found out that the ramen I'm most fond of, tonkotsu, is specific to one area of Japan, specifically the SOUTHERMOST part! Damn, because Yokosuka is wayyy far from the southern region of Japan. Oh well, didn't keep me from trying the last two tonkotsu vendors...

Ok, so here's the floor map of this place:

The first tonkotsu place I tried on my first visit the museum was #6 (it had great bbq pork). On this visit I went to #3 and #4.

Instead of providing pickled, puree'd garlic, this place gave you a garlic press and fresh garlic! Interesting twist on keeping this super fresh, huh?

Soup was good, relatively flavorful, I'd peg it at a 6.5/10. Noodles were again the same type of lo mein, still not much of a fan. As for the meat, it's average now that I had my mind blown by the #6 place up there)

This is a menu of #4. Since I don't read any Japanese, I have to cross reference pictures with the Japanese terms. Most places have one picture per button, but these america-hating noodlers thought it'd be funny to have one bigass picture sitting atop four ordering buttons. I end up choosing the most expensive of the "mini" versions, haha. I figured it's the priciest for a reason, right? Anyways, the red buttons on the right side are the for the "mini" sizes. No sight of the chinese word "xiao" on there to represent "small." Weird, I thought.

Ok, this next place had pretty crappy ramen, not gonna lie. My 680ish yen went towards a pretty cool show though. I was relegated to the bar, where the rest of the other single noodlees (receiving end of noodler?) sat. There I was able to see the cook pull off his ramen preparation. I didn't get a chance to make a video, as by the time I realized it would have been a cool video it was practically over.

Anyways, he would line up about 5-6 washed/cleaned ramen bowls. He'd then individually wipe them all down to ensure they were dry. He'd scoop in 1 scoop of this special sauce, then follow it up with another scoop of a different special sauce. Next came the broth. But the broth wasn't introduced to the bowl via a huge ladle. He had this big mesh scooper (imagine what you'd use to cook a bunch of vermicelli) sitting in his tonkotsu pork broth. With one sweep of the hand, he'd pull the big mesh scooper out of the pot, with all of the gooey/tasty-looking sinew, and "splash" the bowl with it. That imparted a good amount of the tasty bits of the broth in addition to the watery-parts.

Next would come the ramen. A separate chef would prepare it in a separate area, and when it was ready, he'd lay it in the bowl. But, he wasn't done. He'd make sure that the noodles were all oriented due north before..ahh just kidding, haha. Anyways, he'd make sure that all the noodles were sitting neatly. When he parted the noodles to clean them up, it reminded me of those stupid emo kids fondling their stupid fucking parted haircuts.

After the noodles looked neat, he sprinkled on chopped green onions, and set down a nicely folded piece of seaweed. Unfortunately, he also threw in too many pieces of dried, cubed garlic. That made the whole broth super bitter. It ruined the whole thing. Ahh well. As I said, I paid for a show.

Ok, that was it for ramen. I top out at two mini sized bowls.

Next up was the Machida shopping area, which is a few exits down from the Shin Yokohama station. The reason I headed down here was to find the 4-5 story 100yen store! Unfortunately, I think the store closed down and was replaced by crap like quicksilver and other stupid clothing pac-sun wannabe stores.

Luckily, I found these while wandering the streets: Fried xiao long bao's!

The little kitchen probably took up about 6-7 square meters. It was amazing to see five people working this efficiently in such a cramped area, churning out these dragon dumplings like mad.

This next store was a food preparation class. I took these pictures because I had some super sexist comment that had to do with baking me a pie, but I can't remember what it was =p All I know is that I was giggling to myself for a good five minutes after having thought of it, haha.

All the Japanese wimmenz doing their cooking thang. Don't mind the giggling creeper taking your pictures >=]

And here's the Japanese equivalent of Dave and Buster's. For those that haven't been to one, it's called Round 1. Incorporates all the things below into one place..

...into seven floor's worth of entertainment!

In the US we've got stuffed animals and superhero action figures and the claw machines. Here they've got non-pose-able action figures with tigole bitties.

Razor scooter game!

These merry-go-round looking things are actually coin dozer machines. They're huge, aren't they? Very elaborate compared to the coin dozers we have at home.

Round 1 is different in that there aren't as many shooting games as compared to the US. There are a lot more music-oriented games that require crazy stupid-fast reflexes. Kinda like guitar hero on crack.

That's it for Yokohama. It was time for dinner, and a patient recommended this place called Pepper Lunch. This place specializes in sizzling beef and chicken plates.

I had Denny to thank for this meal. He was nice enough to treat me out to dinner for my birthday!

...and here it is fully sizzled out. You have the option of cooking it with a spicy or a sweet sauce. I combo it up, super tasty!

If you're heading from base, head down Blue St, I think it's the 3rd intersection on your left. It's to the left of Mister Donut.

Random Wednesday updates...

2012-03-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

Even though I live about 20 meters away from Tokyo bay, it is VERY dry out here, almost Riverside-dry. It's odd, I'm thinking it's because of the constant need to have the heater running.

Anyways, I was looking around town (both Japan and the base), and I wasn't able to find a cheap and decent humidifier. The ones from Japan are cutesy little ones that spew a light mist, but those sonsofbitches were expensive, not even counting the exchange rate. And oddly enough, the base doesn't even carry humidifiers. The crazy-humid weather during summer necessitates a dehumidifier, so I guess people just put up with dry skin in the winter. I, however, cannot. I tend to wake myself up by scratching at dry spots.

On my second visit to the "target" in two days (second visit because I was hoping to hell I just happened to miss seeing the humidifier the day prior), an epiphany hit. It was one of those, "DUH, IDIOT!" moments. Humidifiers don't do anything special but put water into the air--I didn't need a "humidifier" humidifier. So I started considering the following: rice cooker, water heater, vegetable steamer, electric oven + pot. Then this little $24.99 gem caught my eye:

Hells yeah, vegetable steamer. This thing can steam up about a gallon of water in an hour. It's annoying as hell because it's got a built in timer (tick tick tick, DING!) but once the waters boiling at full tilt I can't hear the ticking anyhow.

Humidity? FIXED.

And I was fortunate enough to receive a package from the lovely girlfriend. I spend four weeks trying to get friggen SWOL and she's conspiring to undo it all =p

And by chance, remember where I mentioned that I had this tasty meal?

Finally got around to taking a picture of it. No idea what it's called, but from base, all you do is walk down Blue St, and I think it's at the first intersection, on the right side. I think that 100yen thing means that all prices have been discounted 100 yen for the month of march.

So, on Wednesday, I was hankering for some more Point 100yen sushi! The only difference this time was that I figured that I could take a train out there. Cut the damn 45 minute walk to a 15-20 minute walk+train.

The toasted mayonnaise-looking white stuff on the shrimp reminds me of how Matt and his family makes their salmon. So goood.

Surf clams not so good =p 100yen can only get you so far with some sushi, haha.

My experience at Point this time was slightly soured by the lip-smacking motherfucker sitting next to me. His eating habits caught me off guard, as the Japanese people I've encountered so far aren't rude assholes when eating. I'm about 90% sure he was a mainland Chinese guy, (1) because of his stupid-ass eating habits, (2) he didn't order anything from the LCD ordering system, (3) he didn't dress like most older Japanese folks.

I think Ellen would agree with me when I say that I hate fucking chinese people. Mainland chinese at least =p

I'm not gonna water this down with an apology, stop being disgusting chinese people.

Visiting a sacred shrine via...piRRRate ship.

2012-03-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's almost like a pirate ship. Kind of. So, we left Owakudani by bus to arrive at one end of Lake Ashi, where we embarked on a 30 minute ferry ride across the lake on one of these pirate ship-looking boats.

You know the drill with the 3d pictures.

Mind you, this video was taken at the very front of the ship. I stood there for a solid 25 out of the 30 minute trip, and it was cold as a mothereffer. Thank god for thermal pants and thermal tops.

Moving water creates a neat "there's a glitch in the matrix" effect when making panoramic photos:

After crossing Lake Ashi, we took another short bus ride to the Hakone-jinja shrine. This specific shrine was meant to replace 3 separate shrines in Hakone, essentially unifying them all into one Hakone super shrine (my words, definitely not theirs, hah). This particular shrine is 1250 years old!

Here are folks participating in the cleansing process we saw at the Meiji shrine. Wash right hand, left, take a sip, and spit it out.

This shrine is surrounded all around by forest, and it is at the base of Mount Hakone. I THINK these trees were cedar.

This one specific torii gate is special in that it's actually sitting in front of the shrine, IN Lake Ashi. It's a very pretty gate. We were able to see it on the boat ride, but my camera phone wasn't able to capture it in any meaningful detail. Cross your eyes!

This shrine wasn't as packed as the Meiji Shrine. That in combination with being in a forest, with a light overhead drizzle, and being next to a large body of water all made for a very serene experience.

Betcha didn't think this was coming, vertical panorama! At the wee bottom is the lakefront torii gate.

On my way home I finally had the chance to try this one restaurant that I had been eyeing every time I passed by. The front of the restaurant (no pics, I was hungry!) mentioned something about steak for 100yen, so naturally I was curious. After looking at the menu, I still had no idea wth the whole 100yen thing was about, but the pictures looked super tasty so I was all in. 880yen later (10.50 US dollars) and I had this:

Four pieces of properly marinated, medium steak, juicy/crispy chicken, super thick bacon strip, and a marinated hamburger patty. All that along with miso soup and a salad. I'll definitely be going back. Now I've got six options for Japanese food, ramen, sushi, curry, udon, yakitori, and this place.

Something about the restaurant's sink seemed extra special to me. Maybe it was the cleanliness, the positioning of the spouts, the high-powered gush of soap... I'm guessing it was the soap.

Owakudani in Hakone - in a friggin' volcano!

2012-03-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

After leaving the open air museum, we were headed off to Owakudani, which is the mouth of the dormant volcano, Mount Hakone. In order to get up there, we took the Hakone Ropeway, which is 700 meters to 1000 meters above sea level (depending on the Ropeway's final destination). On clear days Mt. Fuji is visible. But not for us, the clouds rolled in too densely for us to get any sort of clear visibility. Otherwise, check out the views from the cable car!

At this point we're passing over the huge crater that is the mouth of Mt. Hakone. It looks like there's a lot of construction going on, but it's construction to prevent landslides. There's a picture below that describes exactly what's going on.

Ok, so this is what my view shows. I'm standing at the very top of the exit of the cable car building, looking down at the mouth of the volcano on the left hand side, with all those concrete reinforcements. To the right of the crater are the food stands and site-seeing areas, all concentrated around that one roofed building. Above the roof building in the wee-background is where you have to hike to in order to see where the black eggs are made.

These are clickable, they describe why they're building in the mouth of the volcano. Cliff notes: to prevent landslides from affecting the downhill river.

Once you get off the cable car, it hits you, the smell of sulfur. If you're not sure what sulfur smells like, think of hard-boiled eggs that have been peeled and have been sitting in a warm room. It's not like standing on a pig farm in Chino, but more like standing a mile away from a pig farm on a windy day.

On my way up to where the black eggs are made...

Getting closer...

And here we are! The eggs are bathed in the sulfur-enriched hot springs, turning the outer shell black in the process. It is said that eating one of the black eggs from this area will add seven years to your life. I ate three, with two more in my fridge! You had to buy 5 eggs for 500 yen, hah, I had no choice.

I would have loved to make a stop-motion GIF for the trip up to the top, but there were too many people and the steps were very uneven, so it would have been unsafe for myself, others, and my phone!

For all I know, it says "big fucking volcano used to be here" I know that the "big" part is spot on, ha.

My five black eggs with the little packet of salt.

I'm thinking that the hike that I was about to explore was meant to be more of a sacred journey. I didn't connect the two until I saw this picture here. Like the shinto shrines, you were supposed to cleanse yourself before going onto the hike. I think. No english guides here so I'm doing my best!

At the start of the real climb.

And now, time for a snack! Squid on a stick! Imagine a huge squid ball, but in a large, flat, hash-brown-on-a-stick form. Very tasty, but also a very odd place to be served.

That's it for tonight. I have the last update for March 18th's trip, but it's getting late and the rambling WILL ensue if I don't stop now.

Back to Hakone, first up, Open Air Museum

2012-03-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Per recommendations of Marcos, I finally found a Suntory drink to try. You know the apple juice portion of this contains real apples when the expiration date is within the year! And the place where I bought this has a LOT of foot traffic, so I highly doubt it was old product. I hope, anyways.

Here it is, it was super tasty, it had a apple-cidery richness to its aftertaste. Very different from the super-sweet high fructose corn syrup shit we have at home, blech.

Suntory drink in hand, we were off to Hakone, which is one of the towns bordering Mount Fuji. Hakone is very well known for its hot springs. Yunessun, the hot spring play area that I went to earlier on this month, is also in Hakone. The first stop was to the Hakone open air museum. There's a special hall based on Picasso's life and work, and also works from some folks I think I may have heard of (Rodin, Bourdelle?) Where you at, Mike?!

This next piece is entitled, "gotcha, bitch!"

_ ha - _ ha - _hia!

And here was something kinda fun. You enter in through the black box-looking room in the background, you go underground, through some winding passages, to end up coming out of the glass cube. I was taking some of those stop-motion GIFs for passage through this thing, but some fucking kids ran down there while I was taking pics and effed it all up.

The grass may be greener on the other side, but this here chunk of grass looks like cawk and balls.

Ok, no more penis jokes. This is what happens when I'm at a museum without a tour guide like Mike!

Japanese Jenga makes American Jenga look like a pussy =p

Artfully framed photo, check.

These tulips (?) were more striking than the ones I've seen at home, the part with the seeds (stamen?) were more colorful than I recall.

The inside of the symphonic tower, 5-6 stories of stained glass. Very pretty, even on a super-overcast day.

I had a double-spiral staircase, which I thought was pretty awesome.

Hakone is famous for its hot springs because of its underlying mountain, Mount Hakone. Mount Hakone used to be an active volcano, but has since fizzled down, releasing pressure+water instead of farking lava.

The open air museum is situated right over some of the hot springs, so they "lease" some of their hot spring water to some of the surrounding areas. Not to be outdone by their leasees, they have a free foot bath! This was an extra score for me, as I was worried that my pants would be too tight to pull up, disallowing me from dunking my feet/legs! Thankfully my pants made it up to my knees, barely haha.

The symphonic tower from the outside. I was trying to make a reference to a retired eye of sauron, but couldn't think of anything, haha.

Akihabara Electric Town in Tokyo

2012-03-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I kinda farked up when it came to taking pictures in Akihabara. One, it was raining a shit-tonne so it was hard to take a shot with one hand while holding an umbrella with the other. (2) There were huge crowds and some of these Japanese folks are taller than you'd think. (3) I'll get to the third reason shortly.

My goal on this particular Saturday:

- make it Tokyo without getting lost - CHECK!

- buy a DD-WRT hackable Linksys router (preferably used) - FAIL!

-make it back to base without getting lost - FAIL!

Ok, so Akihabara (official name is Akihabara Electric Town), is the official electronics "borough" of Tokyo. Imagine a whole mini-city that is filled with stores that range from your mom and pop electronic stores to your Fry's electronics, all crammed on the same street. Notice the use of the word "imagine" as I don't have that many good pictures to share =p

There's a few Fry's equivalents, but they're set up a little differently. Instead of the huge square-footage that we've all grown accustomed to in Fry's, divide up each major department and stack it on top of one another. For most large akihabara stores, the lower floors are dominated by cell phones, tablets, and their respective protective coverings. Floors 2 and up (maybe up to floor 6-7 for some) are usually computer parts, laptops, displays, video gaming, movies, etc.

So that is why I didn't take many pictures. Pictures in an electronics store in Japan are essentially pictures in an electronics store in the US/anywhere.

As for my search for a linksys router, I came up empty handed at the Fry's equivalents. Apparently linksys doesn't have their hand in computer networking in Japan.

Ok, so when you're not in the large electronic chain stores, you're walking down the main street, right out of the train station, seen here.

Picture one out of two total for Akihabara. Savor it =p

And on the street just adjacent to the train station is where you find the swap meet-looking area, where individual vendors sell their goods. Most of the goods offered here are similar to what you'd find in a Radio Shack, more specifically the electronic component drawers that you probably haven't perused, hah. You'll find things like soldering irons, resistors, switches, wiring, sensors/motors, etc. It's basically all the type of nerd stuff I wish I had at home when I'm toying around with electronics. What makes me wonder is how these vendors stay in business. Most things are not high profit-margin type stuff, so I don't know how they pay their rent. I didn't take any pics of an actual storefront because they all just kinda stared at me while I walked past.

And that's the end of the picture series of Akihabara. Don't let my lack of pictures paint an unenjoyable or boring picture of this part of town. The absence of my beautiful, artfully-captured stills (=p) were only secondary to the rain and to my goal of finding that damned linksys router.

Akihabara has undergone some change over the past decade or so, from what I understand. It was mostly all PC/computer-centric, but with the decline of PCs and the ascent of mobile computing, a lot of the stores have shifted their focus and/or closed down. Those that closed were replaced by anime-related stores. I no care about those, so I didn't go into any of them. It makes me wonder what'll happen to all the individual vendors that I pictured up above.

The Japanese found it appropriate to take our love of fat brick toast and turn them into goddamned cakes!

I find myself in a predicament on most Saturdays and Sundays with regards to food. My local options: ramen, curry, sushi. I know that Japanese people love soba and yakitori too, but shit, I run out of options when there are realistically only what, FIVE?! Anyways, I found this ramen place, right out of the station. I ordered a spicy miso ramen, which was pretty good. The broth was excellent, very rich, which became more flavorful after I added in the puree'd garlic. The bbq pork was avg. As for the noodles, I'm guessing this part of Tokyo uses the lo-mein type of ramen, which I'm 2/3 not a fan of. Overall not bad. I'm totally a sucker for good broth.

Below you'll find MOCHICREAM, a combo of mochi and ice cream? I don't even really like mochi, but damned if the displays didn't look tasty! I ordered a green tea mochi donut-thingy and an caramel mochi (they ran out of the apple pie mochi's!). The two were good. But, still not a fan of mochi, haha.

Lastly, on my way back home I found this little Yakitori stand in one of the alleyways north of the train station. If I recall, if you're heading towards the navy base on Blue st. from chuo station, it'll be one of the first alleys on your right side (it might be across from the TGIFridays. Anyways, 70yen per each yakitori! Super tasty, there were things like cow tongue, chicken hearts, and chicken tails among other assorted weird and normal snacks.

Point 100 yen Sushi in Yokosuka

2012-03-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

I was reading a food blog focusing on Yokosuka and they recommended this good, budget sushi place. The kicker here is mostly everything is all 100yen, the exception not being fish, but things like tempura, drinks, soup, etc. Sooo, the good stuff is actually the cheapest stuff on the menu!

Just like the other sushi place I went to, it's a conveyor belt place. But, this place was a super-automated conveyor belt restaurant. Once you get seated, you don't need to speak to an attendant until you want your check (it might be more seamless, but hell I the ordering/checkout system is in Japanese).

So, you get seated, and there's a wet nap on the table, but no napkins (napkins seem oddly optional in Japan). Then you witness this:

That little screen up there is the ordering screen, you share the screen with one other person if you're sitting at the bar. So you scroll through and if you don't know Japanese, or can't decipher faded-ass LCD screens, you cross reference the name of the fish with the monitor. You submit your order and p00f, when the dish nears your seat, the bastard will start beeping to let you know! Once you finish your food, you then slide them into the plate chute that sits straight ahead of you.

The scallops were excellent! Very tender and also very sweet. I know that Michelle would like them since they had very very trace amounts of wasabi in them.

The tempura was extra light, flakey, and crispy, which contrasted with tempura from home, which usually isn't as light and flakey.

Chopped toro still doesn't compare to Sushi Wasabi's, but hell, it's a dolllarrrrr.

Ten plates proud!

Final bill was 1050! That translates to about 13ish dollars. I ate a LOT more at this place than at the previous place (took a lot of exercise to get here).

It actually took about 35-40 minutes to walk from my place to Point, which was totally worth it. Given my pace, I'd estimate this place to be about 2.5 miles away. Apparently there is a better place down south, but it's nearly double the distance, and I am not attempting that walk!

Directions to Point 100 yen sushi:

The one thing that drove me crazy about all the food blogs is that none of them described exactly WHERE this damned place was. I kinda knew the general vacinity, but being on foot, it was kind of a bitch not knowing where I was walking. And boy was I walking...

Just for reference, hopefully some other foot-bound wanderer might find this handy. Walk out the main or secondary gate at the navy base, go left towards the 7-11. You're gonna stay on 16th the WHOLE way, do not deviate! Anyways, follow all the signs to stay on 16th, you will pass about 2 Honda dealerships on this walk. Once you're about 25 minutes into the walk or so, 16th will split to the left. If you continue straight you'll find yourself on the 134. Stay left, the street will curve to the left only to run alongside the street you were previously on, now the 134. Another 10 mins or so on 16th after it straightens out and you should see Point on the left, it's a big 3 story building with a bunch of sushi pictures plastered all over it. It's the building right BEFORE PC Depot. From the smaller gate of the base, this walk should take you about 30-35mins.

Back to Minato Mirai!

2012-03-12T06:51:00.002-07:00

On a mission, I was. The weather was really nice that day (not as nice as it was today though), so I figured I'd get a ride on the biggest freakin' ferris wheel in the WORLD. [EDIT-ok, I found out it's not the biggest one in the world =p] And I think it was the biggest digital clock in the world, too [EDIT-this one's true though, hah].

And a formidable ferris wheel, it is.

From inside:

The rooftop of that building has a mini-golf course! Minigolf in japan is so different, it sounds stupid, but it's REALLY miniature. No large curved areas, or huge houses with multi-level ball-drops. On second thought, golfland arcade at home just got bulldozed, so I guess socal doesn't have it either =((((((

This building was a spa, with a rooftop foot bath.

Just walking through the arcade I noticed this game, it was similar to the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disney, except with technodragon-thingies!

And look here, this cold stone actually has people in it. Weird huh? Always so empty at the socal locations.

And lastly, 3d taiyaki! What is taiyaki you ask? It is a like a fish-shaped enclosed waffle-cake-thing. They usually come fill with things like red bean, green bean, chocolate, peanut butter. Here I got one filled with red bean, but topped with vanilla and caramel.

Ramen Museum in Yokohama

2012-03-12T06:39:00.002-07:00

Once I arrived at Japan, I visited one of the local tourist offices to pick up brochures to find things to do. In one brochure detailing the cool hings to do in Yokohama, I found this fun little museum.

There are two floors, we'll start with the bottom floor first. What you'll find here is a recreated 1950s town in Japan, with the top nine most famous Ramen houses throughout Japan. Each of these ramen restaurants puts a different spin on ramen and their soup (shio/shoyu/tonkatsu/miso). Once you get there, you order from the vending machines outside, then they seat you. The cool thing is that they offer smaller versions of all their ramen bowls so that you get the opportunity to try out multiple bowls. I have a pretty small appetite, so I opted for a 3 month membership so that I could go back at a later date. It was a 2 dollar premium OK?!

This is from the top of the stairs, looking down at the venue. Cute.

Even the security guard was dressed up in costume, with circular blush marks to match. He was playing some johnny-can-poh game with folks, I'm guessing it's some Japanese spinoff version.

You order from one of these. No english whatsoever on these damn things. It took me a while to figure out which one was the "mini" size. This one was from the first ramen shop I went to. The noodles were fine, the tonkatsu broth was average, but the meat, IT WAS ASTOUNDING! The pork was so tender, it was such a thick cut, it melted in my mouth!

I LOVE YOU THICKLY-SLICED PORK <3

This was the second restaurant I went to. I got a little too excited and I forgot to take a picture, sorry! I'll get to it next time! The ramen at this place was average at best. I just don't think I'm a shio soup fan.

And here's a GIF walk-through. Halfway through I figured that a vertical shot would capture more of the details as the hallways were pretty narrow. Woops.

And here's the first floor. It wasn't as fun because it was all in Japanese =/ I figgur these things were teaching you about what it takes to make good ramen and such...

Oddly enough they also had this little toy car exhibit. Why, I dunno. What I do know is that this poor lad here has the worst job in the world. I don' know how he could hold a smile doing this the whole day!

Anyways, ramen museum, I will be paying you a visit in the near future. If anybody plans to ever go, get there before 12-1230 ish. The lunch rush is nasty, even on sunday.

Snow monkeys in Nagano prefecture!

2012-03-12T06:24:00.001-07:00

Snow monkey figurines. Looked a lot like hello kitty =p

What this place really was was just a lunch stop for us. Nagano is well known for their apples, so there are apple trees everywhere! One of their specialties is apple-flavored ice cream, which was tasty considering it was freezing cold out. It looked better uneaten, but this was one of those "oh shit" moments where I forgot to take a picture before I started pigging out.

Ok, back to the real snow monkeys. So we're still in Nagano, but now we've driven deeper into the hills. Picturesque right? If you had shown me this picture prior to visiting Japan, I would have thought you'd be crazy to tell me this was Japan.

From the entrance to the final hot bath area of the snow monkeys was about 1.6km, which takes a good 30 minutes walk. I made a stop motion GIF of the whole 30 minute walk, which I attached all the way at the bottom of this post. Not including it right after this picture kind of kills the continuity, but the thing was 15megs and took forever to upload it, so it's staying at the bottom of the post! Anyways, taking pictures every 10-15 seconds for 30 mins straight wasn't difficult at all. I didn't mind as everything looked more or less the same until you got to the snow monkey part of the trail.

About 2/3 of the way up the trail you get to see a natural hot geyser! The amount of steam and the force by which it was propelled out of the earth was amazing. I was thinking in terms of jet-engine strong. If only I had some dumplings and a really really long stick...

The first monkey I saw was really far away from the bath, and he was far up in a tree, so I couldn't get a good picture. This is the second monkey, who was just chillin'!.

Hah, this next one speaks for itself. I had to hurry and take the picture so that no one else noticed =p

Third monkey for the day:

And an intro to the monkey area, with baby monkey featured at the end:

And this one was the little baby monkey that was still very curious.

"Rolling down the street, smoking endo, sippin' on gin n' juice...." These monkeys were straight G, they didn't give a crap about what you were doing.

There's a permanent webcam affixed to that post which takes hourly pictures of the bath. It's unfortunate though, the pictures from the camera from when I was there were corrupt. Anyways, you could grab the URL from the full-sized image to look at some monkeys!

The bath is artificial, but the heated water from that geyser up above is piped up to it. These monkeys are just hanging out on top of the heated water pipe.

Here's the same little guy from earlier. He climbed up to the post where I was standing, then he reached out with both his hands, grabbing onto my coat. He was almost making a little bridge from my body to the post. He then turned around and put his feet on my coat, haha. If I had gotten closer he may have jumped on me, but I had to pull back because we're not allowed to touch them. AND they've got a bunch of fleas =p

Hehe, they're monkeying around! It was coming... =p

Remember, that was 30minutes worth of a hike condensed into a minute's worth of GIF. Not bad, right?

This snow monkey (or macaque) was my favorite trip so far. The scenery was beautiful, and having the chance to observe wild monkeys without any barriers was something truly special.

My first visit to a castle, Matsumoto Castle in Nagano

2012-03-12T05:53:00.001-07:00

On my way to my first castle, which is in the Nagano prefecture. Nagano might sound familiar because it was the site of the 1998 winter olympics (not sure who watches the winter olympics). So, being one of the official sites of the winter olympics means that the cold experienced in this part of town is LEGIT. Luckily I had a full body thermal to keep me warm (although I didn't have a beanie, stupid packages from cali to japan are taking a damned long time to arrive).

So, back to this castle. This is Matsumoto castle, which was nicknamed "Crow Castle" due to its paint job--it's mostly all black! The castle was erected in the 16th century, and besides for minor renovations and repair (secondary to earthquake damage), it mostly looks as it did way back when. It's considered one of Japan's national treasures.

After a four hour long bus ride, this was my view upon exiting the bus:

Lovely contrast of the red bridge on the white and black castle, yes?

I thought these were goofy. They're just small posts, but the ones on the right were untouched, which made it look like they were balancing little snowballs.

The pictures are clickable. This one should be readable once it's all loaded up.

Because Matsumoto castle is not built on a hill, there were numerous areas on each side of the building which allowed for bow+arrow and musket defense. These elongated windows were intended for archers to take down advancing troops from afar.

And this stubby window was used with those musket-looking guns instead.

A view from the main keep into the moon-viewing room.

Look at that sum'bitch, it could shoot golf balls!

The castle was deceptively cold as there were windows all over the place. Oddly enough I didn't see any areas for fireplaces either. They didn't mention how the occupants kept warm.

The stairs in the castle are unlike the normal stairs you'd find...hell, anywhere. They vary in steepness, with some steps nearing about 8-10 inches in height, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're faced with 10-15 of them, you're practically staring at a tilted wall with mini ledges.

This is the roof of the tower, with me looking directly upwards, showing the dedication to the goddess described in that last picture. It's supposed to be the reason why the castle is still standing to this day!

This was the warning posted at the TOP of the steepest stairs in the whole castle. Note, AT THE TOP, as in, you've already made it to the top.

The big overhang that one does not see, thanks to the graphical warning picture being located in the wrong place. I was met with a largely wooden resounding fuck you as I bashed my head into it. "Fucka you," is what it would have said if it could speak.

The room below, the moon viewing room, was my favorite room in the whole castle. One can imagine that at night it would really offer a beautiful view of the night sky.

Sorry about the white balance, my camera phone is slow to adapt.

Thanks to michelle for finding these on zappos. They're PVC shoe-covers that I slipped over my keep's. Allowed my feet to stay dry AND they provided extra grip.

Menacing, pretty? It's like the trent reznor of freaking castles.

It was so cold out that I didn't have good control over my own facial expressions. In my head I thought I looked a lot cooler with the blade in hand. Hah, stupid cold weather.

Calories in liquid form please!

2012-03-11T05:26:00.002-07:00

Quick quip here.

The Japanese don't like to drink their calories. Yeah, there are coffee shops, but coffee is coffee, I don't really see it as a dessert-type of drink. There are no Jamba Juices, no Half and Halfs, but most importantly, no AU green tea shops =(

I definitely miss my AU green tea and my pink boba. There's this one stupid store that makes things even more difficult:

They sell cell phones, though. *Shakes fist.

On a brighter note [PUN], I'm starting to think that the lack of green tea is allowing my teeth to regain their prior-to-discovering-how-tasty-green-tea-is shades of whiteness. Well, it's either that or my bathroom mirror's fluorescent lighting is playing tricks on me.

-edit - I haven't had a chance to add in all of this past weekend's updates, but it'll be done by tomorrow!