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:

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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.