Peter's Japan blog

I've also put some pictures of my trip on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hatix/

Have a look ;p

Just got back 4 hours ago, and I'm tired and exhausted. I got up this morning at 6h30, and it's now 23h (but those 6h30 was a 7 hour time difference), so I'm almost 24 hours awake (as I just can't sleep on a plane). Got unpacked, but most of the stuff is still on the floor. I'll need to make a list of all the things I bought ;p

Ayumi Hamasaki:
Asia Tour 2007 Light Fan
Asia Tour 2007 T-Shirt
Asia Tour 2007 Muffler
Asia Tour 2007 Towel
Asia Tour 2007 Tour Book
Asia Tour 2007 Ayupan (with Hello Kitty) x2
Asia Tour 2007 Ayupan (from Secret album) x2
Asia Tour 2007 Ayupan phonestrap x2
Asia Tour 2007 Tour Logo phonestrap x2
Asia Tour 2007 Shopping Bag
Asia Tour 2007 Cookies (yeah ;p)

A Museum '30th single anniversary' dvd

Manga (in japanese, with furigana):
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu 1, 2 & 3
Lucky Star 1 & 2 (both without furigana :-( )
Death Note 1 & 2
Suzumiya Haruhi meets Lucky Star doujinshi

Anime-related:
Voicha Magazine Vol. 2 (+ poster)
Ichigo Mashimaro Art Book (YouTube how can you not love these girls?)
Heroine Magazine May 2007
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu - Hare Hare Yukai (7" record!)
Toyota Corolla '86 "AE86" - Sprinter Trueno Model
some popular doujinshi fighting game at the moment (don't know title yet)

Other:
the Gazette - NIL (cd album)

And yes, I still had money left! ;p Quite a lot in fact. And I can only buy this much I can stuff into my luggage. But now I'm off to sleep...

Wanted to be early out of bed to get back to Tokyo as quickly as possible. I don't like Osaka very much. It might be the less dense transportation system, might be the neighbourhood my hotel was in (it was kinda crowded with homeless people,not that it was dangerous,but it's not nice). So I might have seen the wrong places of Osaka, but I found it a bit chaotic (although that might sound strange as Tokyo is bigger and more people in it). But I'm just so in love with Tokyo. Even my one-day visit to Kyoto was not to my liking. But I really only saw a small portion of Kyoto, so I can't really judge on that.
Anyway, I got back in Tokyo by 11h30, dropped by luggage in a coin locker and went straight to Akihabara to get rid of some money :D. Although that by the time I was finished, I didn't spend more than 8000yen (of the 64000 that I still had...). I think it's mainly because I'm on vacation and I can only put that much stuff in my bags than I can, and it has to go on a plane, so the stuff I can buy is limited. So no figurines, no games, no dvds (as there are no english subtitles), i'm also not really a anime music buyer unless it's very good. So that leaves us with manga (which actually is all in japanese, but since I'm learning japanese it might actually be helpful, especially if text is in furigana (kanji with hiragana next to them), so I can also read the kanji by using the hiragana next to them. And not everything is in kanji, half of the text is in hiragana, so this is also a very good exercise for reading hiragana (and kanji, and to a lesser extent katakana). And besides that, a few magazines (which I only buy for the pictures, and I can only read the katakana and hiragana, the kanji is still impossible). (And I'm still thinking about buying a Nintendo DS though as they are cheaper here...)
Oh, and they predicted 100% chance of rain today, and it did start to rain a little bit before noon, but not too much. But when I was in Akihabara around 13h30, it started to rain heavily, up to the point that it was pouring out of the sky. But by 14h it started to lessen, and by 14h30 the rain was completely over, and it didn't rain any more for the rest of the day.
Went to eat some ramen again (I'm really getting addicted to this stuff, but maybe because it's simple and something that I know what it is, and the rest is still unknown territory). Then went to my hotel to check in (the same as 5 days ago), but I was now on the 5th floor (4th for people in europe). Gonna sleep in a normal bed again, and have a toilet/bathroom in my room.
So now, I'm gonna try to get everything in my bags so that everything gets safely back to Belgium, and then get into bed to get up early to get to the airport (which is still an hour by train). But the advantage is, that I'm 15min on foot from Ueno Station (JR & Keisei), and all trains to the airport come through Ueno. So I don't have to take 1 or 2 subways/trains to get to Ueno Station, and this also saves time.

Pouring rain in Akihabara:

A bit late, but this was my room in Osaka:

When you go to Japan, it is a must that you take the Shinkansen at least 1 time. This train is comfortable like business class and very fast too. People from Europe can compare it with the TGV/Eurostar/Thalys, but the Shinkansens look cooler ;p.
But I've really begun to admire the amazing feats that the Japanese have done for the Shinkansen lines. Yesterday I followed the San-yo Shinkansen line from Osaka to Hakata (from central Japan to West-Japan) on Google Earth and I was totally amazed. The first Shinkansen line was made from Tokyo to Osaka in the 1960s (the Tokaido Shinkansen), but the the extension to Hakata came in the early 1970s.
The route from Tokyo to Osaka doesn't have many mountains so they took the shortest route along major cities. Already on this route many of the tracks for the Shinkansen are laid on bridges, over land, water and cities. (the Japanese really know how to build bridges, as they really build almost every train line on bridges or underground).
But the route for the San-yo Shinkansen to Hakata is truly amazing. They litterally took the shortest route between major cities along the way while also avoiding putting track in dense residential areas. But this route means going through many many mountains, as this part of Japan has quite a lot of mountains. This means building many long tunnels and more bridges in between. This must have been an engineers dream and hell to accomplish this extraordinary feat. Oh, and the route is about 600km long. The total route from Tokyo to Hakata is almost 1200km which can be done at the fastest in 5 hours using the Nozomi service, which stops at the least number of stations. But the Nozomi is of course the most expensive one, and not covered by the Japan Rail Pass. They can only take the Hikari or Kodama (which stops in every station) service. Only the Nozomi does the whole route from Tokyo to Hakata without transfer to another service.

A "300 Series" and a "700 Series" Shinkansen at Tokyo Station (picture taken from wikipedia):

Overslept a little bit because I had turned off the sound of my laptop, so I couldn't here the alarm clock... Anyway, went to Kyoto today. This was the first that I took the bus in Japan. You get on the bus at the back door, and pay at the front when you get off. But I don't like buses in Japan, especially on routes to touristic places. They are overly crowded...
Anyway, I arrived at Kikakuji Temple, and it is surely a must visit. Except for the ground floor, the building is covered in real gold, and the sight is absolutely gorgeous!
After this I took another horrible bus to the old Gion district. The Gion district was the old Geisha district of Kyoto and still has many old wooden houses and you occasionally still see a geisha walking around. Also many women in kimono do you see here. Wandered around a bit here and went on to other shrines/temples in the neighbourhood. I actually walked around a bit random, but I came across some nice buildings. Also another 5-story pagoda. Then I took the subway to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is the shrine which has over a thousand torii on the path that leads up to it. You remember seeing this in a scene from "Memoirs of a Geisha". But there are many many stairs here, that go all the way up the mountain to the shrine. I didn't get to the top and it was already late. But these torii are everywhere, several side paths full of them. Shrines with mini torii's.
After this I took the train back to Osaka, and went to eat again at "Ippudo", the ramen restaurant from yesterday. I was full afterwards, but when I came out of the restaurant, it was raining a little bit. This was first rain since last week on Sunday, but this was only a little bit. So I checked the forecast again for tomorrow, and it had become worse than when I checked a few days ago: 100% chance of rain... So it'll be a rainy last day in Tokyo... Let's hope the clouds take it a bit easy tomorrow.

See post for pictures:

Read more »

Went to eat some ramen in center of Osaka. Looked up a good ramen place on internet, they said there could be waiting line, and there was ;p. There were 5 people ahead of me. But it was good indeed, took some ramen noodles with a pork-based broth and some rice. Took some pictures afterwards and headed back to the hotel.

I was getting very tired so I slept until 11h and only went to Himeji today. Originally I was also going to Okayama after Himeji but I abandoned that plan. So I could also be back early at the hotel.
So I took the shinkansen to Himeji, and walking out of the station, there was a big wide street leading up to Himeji Castle. After a 10 minutes stroll, I got to the entrance gate of the castle domain. Here already it was a magnificent view. The 600-yen entrance fee was well worth it for this beautiful castle, as you could also go inside the castle all the way to the top. Inside there were some small exhibits of historical pieces of that time. The road leading to the castle through all the castle walls is something very special. It uses many simple but effective tricks to defend the castle. The road goes all the way around and in many directions. Tricks like: the road going down at one time, letting the enemy think it's not the right way to the castle; when entering a gate you proceed forward, but the actually road is around the corner; when there are 2 paths to take, one of the paths seems to stop at a wall, but this is a visual trick, as the stairs actually go left, and around the corner. You see that many times the path is bending around and around, this has the other advantage that there is always one or two walls facing the path which have holes in them for shooting arrows and such, or low ceilings with trap door ceiling at gates.
Then the inside of the castle, there are 5 stories and 1 basement floor. Going higher and higher, the stairs get steeper and steeper. At the highest 2 floors, the you even have to watch your head because the ceiling is so close to the stairs. At the top the view is magnificent. There is also a shrine here, which originally stood on the ground where the castle was built. There is also a red stamp with which you could stamp your information pamphlet as proof that you made it to the top ;p. Going down is sometimes even harder because going down steep stairs is more difficult than going up them.
The castle was actually restored in the 1950s. They took apart many of the structures and huge wooden poles and rebuilt them using only original tools and techniques used when the castle was originally built. But this time also weak points in the overall structure were fixed. Truly a must when visiting Japan.

Himeji Castle:

Read more »

Yesterday it wore a short-sleeve t-shirt and it was a bit chilly, today I wore a long-sleeve t-shirt and it was quite warm... Should have checked the weather forecast :).
So I went to Nara today, which was also quite interesting and had some nice temples. There is one big temple (Todai-ji) with a huge 15m-high Buddha statue. The temple itself is 48m high and 57m wide, and is the biggest wooden structure still standing in Japan. It actually used to be even bigger in the middle ages. There is also a 5-story pagoda with a smaller temple in the area. This is all situated close together in a very large park, with many other small shrines. But what surprised me the most, was that there were deer everywhere! There were there at the pagoda, in the park, some even in quiet streets. The area is a bit hilly, and the distances are a big further, so I was walked quite slow with my hurting feet.
After Nara, I went to have a quick look at a location of another anime "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu" at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi station. Also went to eat some curry rice in the neightbourhood. After that went back to the hotel at 20h so I wasn't back too late.

5-story pagoda:

Deer walking around freely:

Todai-ji temple:

15m high Buddha inside Todai-ji temple: