Today was a very nice day, with a bright yellow sun, and for the first time some blue sky. We started off on a late day to allow Melissa's foot a little while to rest, as it was to be a long day of walking through Ueno Park - Tokyo's largest park.
The goal was to try and view the park's cherry blossom trees, it's semi-large zoo and the very large Museum of Natural history. Of these three we managed to complete one and a half.
The museum was instantly out of the question due to the fact that they are closed every Monday. With all the planning that I did beforehand we finally came across something unexpected - oh well, we'll just see it later on.
The cherry blossoms were not in full effect yet, which I could have figured out if only I paid more attention to the weather reports. You see, the weather girl each morning lets you know: A) What type of weather you are going to have. B) How hot and cold it will be. C) What percentage of cherry blossoms have bloomed. It's a weird thing to show at that time but people seem to take them pretty serious.
Although the blossoms weren't in full effect there were still a lot of great things we were able to see and do.
First off there were lots of temples and shrines in the park. Some of them had gongs you could ring, and incense you could burn. Others had room for you to tie on a prayer. All of them though had a place to wash your hands, rinse out your mouth, and toss a coin in for a prayer.
All the buildings were several hundred years old and looked like they have been preserved in great condition. Friendly monks waited inside some of them to sell you prayer scrolls that you could tie outside of the building, or a wooden plate that you could use to ask "the gods" for luck.
Oh, and as an odd side note we were approached by a "Japanese" man from Buffalo, NY. He wanted to know if we had heard of, "The Family International." Guess what, random knowledge prevails, and I did happen to know about them. They are a cult - a cult that kidnaps the children of those who try to leave it. I promptly rejected him and left as fast as possible.
After receiving our fill of water features, temples and shrines we headed into Ueno Zoo to see what they had to offer. In general there was only the standard fair, with the exception of a couple of rare birds, a red panda and a armadillo on steroids. It was a nice zoo though, with lots of little kids running around. Japanese kids really are the cutest.
Good views, good weather, and a good vegetarian dinner made for a very good day. Click here to see a small sample of all the pictures we took today.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Uppercut!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Harajuku Girls
Today's post shall be rather short, as I find myself to be rather tired at the moment. It's weird being tired at 7:00 at night, but I guess if you think about it, we really have been messed up by the 8 hour time change.
This morning we woke up and had yet another wonderful breakfast at Starbucks, which I found out serves pancakes here. Seeing how it was a Sunday morning, which is a non-work day for a large portion of the city, they were actually pretty full. Fortunately we were able to your superpower of blessed timing to get in just before they ran out of seats.
With food out of the way we headed on over to the Yamanote line as we had before, but this time we were going to travel couter-clockwise and head on over to Harajuku, supposed home of the Harajuku Girls from Gwen Stephani fame. By the way, somebody really needs to give her a call and let her know that Harajuku Girls don't really exist much anymore. They aren't all gone, but there certainly aren't many.
As you will note from this photo there is a lot of people...a whole lot. It seemed like everywhere you turned you were either cutting so
mebody off, or you were being cut off. The stores were about 15 feet wide and usually had three or four stories jam packed with 5' tall tweens. Lining the walls were a copious amount of clothing with horribly incorrect
English sentences, as I will post below.
By the time we reached the end of this main street, known as Takashita Dori, it was apparent that a break was needed. Melissa's foot had been hurting her rather bad, so we decided to turn around and head back to the hotel to wrap it up.
Eventually we managed to wrap it up and get some lunch in our bellies, from which we decided to try and set out again. This time our destination was Shibuya to go to the flagship store for Tokyu Hands.
Thanks to Google Street View we were able to easily find our way, but not before smashing into an intersection with made Harajuku look as if it had tons of space. The store it'self was even more massive then I had expected, with seven main floors, and three sub floors each, for a total of 21 stories.
After shopping we stopped on by a place called "Shakey's Pizza" - and yes, I know, we are in Japan, we shouldn't be eating Pizza, but I don't care. The place was dead, well until this teeny bopper girl stepped in and talked with the host. Somehow she signaled that she was going to be brining in a party bus full of people, because out of nowhere there were about 30 people coming in the door.
And this ended our day. Melissa's foot was in horrible pain and we decided it best to call it a night. As I leave you though I inite you to enjoy a lot of really fun pictures from our day out: click here
Read More...
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Akihabara - Electric Town
Today was our real first day getting to travel about Tokyo, and our first stop was to be Akihabra - the Electric Town.
Bright and early around 8:00 we set forth from our hotel to catch the Yamanote train line. Much like everything else here it was a breeze to find, and very simple to catch.
The biggest surprise actually was the fact that there was practically nobody around. Nothing like the videos at all.
We traveled from station to station, each about three minutes apart, all featuring their own song when you arrive until eventually we made our way to Akihabara.
The station here, like the others, was well labeled, leading us in the right direction to our first store, Yodobashi Camera. On the outside the store looks huge, but once you get inside of those 9 stories of goodness you really realize just how big it is The store was full of everything you could ever want, rather that be a hand-made minture piano, or a bicycle made by GMC, it's all here.
Below is a small sample of some of the more bizzar things that I found while looking around, you can view the rest at the bottom of the page:
With a nearly full day spent walking around this district we called it good, packed up the horses and set out on the Yamanote for home. Remember how I said before that the train wasn't busy? Well guess what? That's right, in the afternoon things seem to change quite a bit. Not only was it packed, it was packed full of a wide variety of people.
There were children wearing outfits from the Newsies, young girls with socks and open toed high-heel shoes, older women in kimonos, and last, but not least, there were lots of old men who seemed to like to glare at me. Thankfully it hadn't managed to get to the height of crazyness that youtube would show you, but it still was a little too close for comfort.
In fact, all the time I feel as if things are too close for comfort. I'm not a giant here, but I'm still much larger than 90% of the people. This has caused me to get use to using the phrases, "sumimasen," and "gomen nasai" a lot (that's "excuse me" and "sorry).
Constantly I'm bumping into people, and in fact I elbowed a lady in the face today. I felt horrible and before I could manage to think about what to say she appologized to me and went on her way.
So, besides smashing into people, finding little to nothing to eat, and almost getting lost finding a market, today was a really fun day. I just love everything here makes me laugh, rather it be the advertisments or the doorways that are too short for me, it's all a great laugh.
If you would like to continue laughing with me I suggest you check out this link to all of our photos from today: CLICK HERE
Food Sucks
First and foremost I must ask everybody to pray for Melissa. Today when walking through a store she stepped on a weird metal plate which caused her to have some pretty bad pain and a little bit of swelling. Right now walking is difficult and causes her to cry. I hate that. So, our hopes are that she will be healed in the morning.
Second most, you may also want to pray for the both of us to find some food. Seriously, the food here all seems to look like it could be edible but for some odd reason they have decided to throw in one really odd ingredient, and a whole lot of really odd smells.
From starters, they don't really serve breakfast here. The same resturaunts which were serving dinner last night were open bright and early to serve it again in the morning. As a result this we decided to stick with a great American staple - Starbucks - where we enjoyed White Mochas and lemon poppy seed pound cake.
Lunch was a different story all together. Above I give you exibit A. This is the menu for a lovely resturaunt that has decied that food safety really isn't something that you need to take seriously, as can be seen from the fact that it serves all of it's meats raw. Yum!!
It seemed like everywhere we went there was either some odd twist on the food rendering it rather ditasteful. Maybe with time we'll learn to cope, but for now it looks like we are stucking trying to find american food chains that don't force you into eating something with eyes still attached.
Oh, and as side note, you prolly won't belive this, but McDonalds ran out of food today. You actually couldn't eat order anything that used standard beef. Crazy huh?
Friday, March 27, 2009
Look around
Want to really see what it is like here? Make sure you have the flash plug-in installed and then check this out in full screen by clicking on the "full screen" button in the image. Once it is open you can drag the mouse around to see things.
Shinjuku Station south exit in Tokyo
Pretty cool huh? This is the south exit of Shinjuku station, which is the busiest one here in Tokyo. It is just a stones throw (if you are a Nephlim that is) from our hotel.
We're here...
Hello again everybody. Let me start by saying that today has been a very exciting day. This morning we woke up bright and early, ate a healthy, dietitian approved, breakfast of sugar free raisin bran with 1% milk, threw our luggage over shoulders, and headed off for the Portland Airport.
Besides having air blown up my trousers the whole check-in process was actually rather bland, but hey, less is more when it comes to airplane check-in's; right?
From there we had a rather uneventful flight. To my left I had Melissa, and to my right I had a frail Japanese man with a yamaka on.
After landing the check in process was smooth sailing. No questions, no search, no hassle. We even kindly received directions to our the train station office where a man with a high degree of stamping ability smashed through all the paperwork for us. It was great fun.
The train arrived on time. We arrived at our destination on time. We found the correct exit the first time, which is an amazing feat seeing how there are 700 of them, and we easily found our hotel. The check in process took about 5 minutes and the room is very nice.
So...if everything was so easy and bland, what made it exciting?
It's actually rather simple. You see, although everything is prompt, on time, and easy, all of these things are filled with a weird quirk that makes them like a micro adventure each time you do them.
Let's being with the train station exits. Today we arrived at Shinjuku Station, the busiest hub in Tokyo. After exiting our train we see a lovely yellow sign which states in plain english "Shinjuku South Terrace Exit." Great - just what we needed. When we actually arrived at the exit though there were these small bars that allow one person to at a time to pass - and to top it off everybody is going in instead of out.
Confused we decied to watch for while and finally we spotted a person who exited through of a gate with a green arrow pointing out. It looked easy, walk up to the gate, walk through, call it good. When I tried to perform this simple task of walking, two sets of bars close down in front of me - denied. Eventually we noticed that it takes a pass to exit. Fortunately for us though a nice man in a train station outfit decided to let us exit through his gate.
It's not just the entrexits that are same, yet different. Take this McFlurry I 
bought for example. The McDonalds that I purchased it at had no walls, just a roof, and it's open 24 hours a day. It looks like guacamole, tastes like fake green tea and could be fed to cows during the dry season.
When I went to pay for it I handed the worker a 10,000 yen note ($100 USD - which is the only amount the ATM gives out on American debit cards). He looked kinda confused at first, which in turn made me confused. After we received our change he moved onto the next customer who when paying placed his money into a small tray on the table and pushed it towards the worker. So, now I know - use the tray or get stared at.
The list could go on for quite a while, from the fact that my toilet has three water spray types and a power setting to our TV which is currently displaying QVC, but it's called QVC-TSV and the stuff they show doesn't look like utter garbage.
This is only the first day, so I can imagine that as time goes on things will only seem more the same, yet even more different. So, until then I shall sit here and drink my orange drink which translates into English as"Cat Milk" and has a picture of a rabbit and a raccoon on the box. Since you are unable to enjoy the same I offer you just a few pictures for now:
Monday, March 23, 2009
Way to go!
It’s finally here. In just a few short days we will be taking off from Portland Airport around 2:00 pm (PDX for those who are fans of FlightTrack on Google Earth) and will be arriving at Narita International (NRT) around 5:00 pm their time.
From this point forward we are looking at posting daily with a summary of what’s going on, a map of the days events, hopefully a few good photos and maybe a video or two.
People keep asking if I'm exited, and I have to continually answer both "yes" and "no." I think I'm excited, but I can only imagine that I'll be ten times more once we are on the flight. Around that time I can only imagine I'll either:
No matter the outcome it's goign to be great. Well, unless I actually do wet my pants. That really wouldn't be that cool, nor exciting.
Well, sorry to keep this short, but we’ve got packing to finish up. Talk to you on another side.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
This how we're going to do this...
View Larger Map
Hello once again, and welcome to the second installment of our pre-trip posting. Today's focus will be on highlighting the route for which I've been working on for some time now. Despite months and months of dedicated procrastination I believe that we have reached a point where a nice track has been laid ahead of us, albeit a track shy a few pieces, a nice track none-the-less.
So, without further a due let's get started.
If you will so kindly please focus your eyes on the image above. As an American you may not know this, but that is a map of Japan and I highly recommend clicking on the "view larger map" link as it opens a world of better detail.
Once inside of the larger view you will note that there are a lot of letters with flags attached to them. Each flag is where we plan on spending a day of our trip with a very inaccurate path drawn in-between them. We can thank the good people at Google for the inaccuracy, because you see, if you want to plan a trip with a stop along the way you have to select "car" as your mode of transit, but the even gooder folks at Japan Rail have been quite gracious to hook us up with full country train passes making the the use of a car obsolete.
So as a whole we are planning on visiting each lettered flag using the remarkable Japanese train system. Want to see how remarkable? Sure you do, so click on the following links, and as always, it's best to have the volume turned up on your computer.
Looks like more fun than a barrel full of monkeys huh? Thought so. And think, we are going to be stuck on them for approximately 4028 miles (if you subtract out the errors from Google and then add back into consideration that we have to return to our hotel each night.
With so many places to describe already I figure it best to give a synopsis of what we are doing instead of giving the full play by play, which will actually be posted daily as said plays are being played - which in tounge twister format is: full play by plays will be displayed on the day of the plays are being played. Say that five times fast and I'll make sure to give you some sort of souvenir*. Until you complete that here is our quick run-down of cool stuff we're doing:
Well, this should hold us over for now. Sure, we'll prolly change these plans up three to four thousand times before we are done, but for the here and now that is what we are trying to stick to.
Join us later for more antics just before we take off on my first flight ever. Delightful.
*souvenir available only with photgraphic proof of tounge twisting. That's write, photographic. I suggest taking a picture every few syllables.
Come Sail Away
Hello everybody, and welcome to my blog - Two Pirates in Japan - a magical place where anything can happen. Well, okay, so maybe "anything" isn't able to happen, but if all goes as planned then a lot of wacky things should.
My name is Camron and as it would so happen, I am the boy pirate up in the header - the girl is my wife Melissa. Now, before you ask, no, I'm not literally the drawing of the pirate, come to life to write a blog. That's just a drawing.
In the event that you can't distinguish art from life I highly suggest that you turn back, for the humor and sarcasm that is about to ensue my likely cause your head to implode upon it's self from the shear weight of confusion.
Now for those of you who understand quite well the differences between reality and not, I highly suggest you join us on our maiden voyage to The Land of the Rising Sun.
Before we get going though I thought it would be best to give you a little bit of background info on why this blog exists in the first place, but to do so we must travel back to simpler time, one filled with bright colors, flashing lights and far too tight of pants - usually utilizing both bright colors and flashiness.
The 80's were a mystical time filled with some of the greatest things this world has ever seen. CD's, Rubix Cubes, Glow Worms, Michael Jackson's nose, Melissa, and little Japanese company by the name of "Studio Ghibli."
Around 1988 my dad introduced me to the latter in the form of a "Sci-Fi Cartoon" by the name of "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind." The reason for the quotes around "Sci-Fi Cartoon" is for the simple fact that he called them this not realizing that these were actually Japanese Anime dubbed over for an American audiance.
Instantly I attached onto this new medium finding myself each week asking our local video shop owner if he had received any thing new. Unfortunately growing up in a town of 600 people doesn't make for a good selection, especially when you tastes fall into a minority.
Days into weeks, weeks into month, months into years. I was slowly deprived of all things Anime. Then one odd day in 1997 my family decided to gather up the wagon (figurative of course) and move on over to the Will-a-mett-ee Valley, where with that move came some of the most life-culture changing moments in my life.
With a new city and far greater access to things that most take for granted (such as a library, cable television and the internet) I quickly found out that there are quite a few people like me. You know, those weird kids at the back of the class who love science class, have a tendency to read comic books and for the most part couldn't get a date to save their life.
In Japanese there is a word for this type of person, and that word is Otaku; or as we know it, "geek." Yep, I was an outsider and I liked it just fine. Eating my noodles, attending the Anime Society at Emerald City Comics, playing Risk all night. It was a simpler time in my life, and one which helped shape my love for the Japanese culture.
Now let's flash forward 6 years to where some things have changed - such as the fact that I was obviously able to find a girlfriend - while other things are much the same - such as the fact that I spend a lot of my time playing board games.
Deep down I'm a nerdy kid with a love of Japan and I think I always will be, which brings us to our current state. On March 26th, 2009 I will be heading off to Japan with my wonderful wife Melissa to live out a dream from my childhood.
This will be a time of firsts for me and I plan on blogging it all along the way and hopefully on into the future when I get back. As we head on from here this is how things will go down, along with a few tips:
So, with this little slice of history I must bid you all adieu until my next post where in which we'll go over our itinerary. Yay!
