Darren Holloway

From Okayama, I made my way to Osaka, with a six-hour stop in Himeji to visit the castle and take pictures. I don’t have any to upload right now, as they’re all in the hands of the Japanese postal service right now.

Overall, I have to say that Osaka has very little to recommend it, other than the really cool ryokan that I stayed in. When I arrived and was shown to my room, there was a teaport, a container of tea, a thermos of hot water, and some Japanese sweets sitting on the table.

Oh, and they have just as much neon as Tokyo, but at least they do interesting things with it. This was taken about 3 blocks from my Ryokan, which took me from the “wall to wall girlie club zone” I was in to the “overpriced European brand name shopping zone.” They’re beside a bridge over a river, or at least they are now – it appears they’re trying to pave over the river or something.

Neon signs in Osaka, Japan

I left Osaka this morning, and headed to Yoshino, which is another Japanese World Heritage site, which means temples galore. I even got to see a procession of monks on their way to chanting time.

I saw lots of pretty things in Yoshino…

Darren with Cute Girls in Yoshino, Japan

And there were lots of Sakura as well – not as many as in Tsuyama, but still plenty.

Sakura Blossoms in Yoshino, Japan

I’m in Kyoto right now – My lack of advance planning has me staying tonight in a $200/night hotel, and tomorrow moving to the $25/night hostel.

On the train from Yoshino to Kyoto, there were a pair of girls sitting across from me who kept looking at me, then glancing away when I caught their eye. In good fun, I pulled out my notepad and pen and wrote 何を見ますか :), which means, or was meant to mean, “What are you looking at?” I then looked out the window, waited about 30 seconds, then flipped over the notepad so they could see it and looked back to see them collapse into a frenzy of giggles.

Once they had recovered, one of them pulled out a notepad and wrote Where are you from? in English. I replied (via my notepad) in Japanese, and for the next 20 minutes or so, we had a conversation in each other’s native tongue across the aisle.

Anyways, now I’m in Kyoto, and my first impression is “wow, there are a lot of white people here!” I’ve gotten used to seeing two or three other white people a day, and all of a sudden, there’s packs of five to ten of them.

I’m planning to spend a couple of days here in Kyoto, then off to Kanazawa, then back to Toyko. I only have 10 days left of my vacation! Auuugh!

There were two day-trips I wanted to make from Okayama: Takamatsu, and Tsuyama. Takamatsu has one of the “top three” gardens in Japan, and Tsuyama is regarded as “the best place to view cherry blossoms in this part of Japan.

Given the blooming is still happening, I figured I’d go for the garden yesterday, and give the blossoms another day to open before going on to Tsuyama.

In hindsight, bad decision. Why? Yesterday was a nice day. Today it rained all day. And Tsuyama’s Kakuzan Park was all that it was cracked up to be and more – absolutely beautiful, and would have been more so if there had been some sun.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Osaka, with a brief stop in Himiji, then on to Kyoto. Schedule changed due to lack of foresight. ;)

The funniest thing happened to me today…

I was in Ritsuin Park in Takamatsu, and a little Japanese girl, probably about six years old, ran up to me and just stared. I mean the whole, mouth-open, utter amazement stare. I said “Konnichiwa” (hello) to her and she just kept staring.

I think I must have been the first white person she’s ever seen…

So where have I been?

I spent three days up in Nikko, a little temple-town in the mountains north of Tokyo – it snowed on me. I could have gone to Canada and been snowed upon. Then again, Canada doesn’t have the “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil” monkeys – They’re in Nikko. And, of course, I saw them and forgot to take a picture.

After Nikko, I went back to Tokyo for a few days, then headed off to Okayama, which is where I am now. Today I day-tripped to Takamatsu, and tomorrow I’m going to Tsuyama. After that, off to Kyoto.

Whistling at the wind

There’s something to that old saying about not whistling at the wind. For example:

1. In the last entry, I mentioned that I was only backing up my photos to my portable hard drive, because the Internet was too slow to back them up across the Pacific ocean. Whistling at the wind. The hard drive died on me when I got to Nikko, and I lost my first day and a half of photos. My solution now is (a) make two seperate DVD backups, (b) mail one to home, and (c) mail one to work.
3. When I mailed back DVDs, I decided to mail back my rain pants as well, since it hadn’t rained yet, and I needed the space in my bag. Whistled at the wind. Poured on me the next day.

I hate Visa

I seem to have developed a routine:

1. Try to buy something with visa card.
2. Be declined.
3. Call visa – yes, I know buying things in Japan is outside my normal spending pattern. That’s because I’m in Japan!

Toilets

I have now experienced the whole spectrum – the trough in the floor, and the high-tech “heat the seat, wash your butt, and motor down the lid” type. It shouldn’t be too hard to guess which one I prefer.

Time to start burning more DVDs…

Last year, I bought myself a really nice watch; it had the two features I consider essential: a countdown timer to tell me when the laundry is done, and charging by sunlight so I never have to replace the battery.

However, it’s a resonably expensive watch, which I didn’t feel went with my style of budget travel (ignore the $8000 of camera gear I’m carrying, of course)

Long story short, I bought a cheap $20 watch for the trip.
When I arrived in japan I spun the hands foreward 14 hours to make up the difference from crossing the international date line.

And tonight, when I arrived at the hostel, they told me I had already checked out. “ummm, I’m leaving on the 25th for Nikko.”

“it is the 25th.”

Turns out spinning the hands doesn’t change the date – you have to pull the stem out to a different position to change the date.

Fortunately, they still had a bed available for me. I emailed the hostel in Nikko and told them to charge me for tonight (aka for my stupidity) and asked if I could still show up tomorrow.

It’s raining here in Tokyo today, so I figured this would be a good day to find an Internet cafe, download my photos, and just rest a bit.

Getting around
The Tokyo subway system is incredibly good, once you figure out how it works. There’s enough signage in English that you can at least figure out which side of the tracks to board on, but that’s about it.

Once you get off the subway, it’s a whole different story. Apparently, in a city of 12 million people, they never found it useful to give names to their streets. The only streets which have names are main roads, and that’s because the Americans during their post-war occupation basically said “unconditional surrender means do whatever we tell you to. Now name some of your streets so we’re not always getting lost!”

To wit: The first time I tried to go to Akihabara, I ended up walking the opposite direction from the metro station. Given my “keep going, you must almost be there” mentality, which once had me drive half way through Vermont while looking for a park in New Hampshire, I just kept going and going, until eventually I gave up, found a subway station, went back to my starting point, and had to walk the other way.

Things which are cool

Japanese cell phones. Holy crap. So cool! Unfortunately, because Japan uses bizarre variations of wireless standards (they’re like the Microsoft of RF standards, apparently none of them will work in North America. Dang, I’d be willing to give up my iPhone for one of these cool phones.

Things which are hot

Besides Japanese women?

I’d heard about the Japanese vending machines, which are on every street corner and provide drinks, occasionally food, beer, cigarettes, and apparently, in the right part of town, bras and panties. But nothing had prepared me for the first time I put in my 120 yen, pressed the button for a can of coffee, and near burnt my hand on the can.

Hot coffee. In a can.

I’m on a quest now, to find which brand I like the best.

Things which are not fast enough

The Internet link back to North America. I brought a portable hard drive with me to download my photos from my digital camera, and I figured I’d also upload copies to my web server so that I would have two copies for safety. This didn’t quite work out, since one photo took over 7 minutes to upload. Granted, my camera is 22 megapixel, but still…

Things that hurt

My feet. Before I left, I had minor surgery to remove some ingrown toenails, thinking it would be better to deal with a few days of strange walking before than having my nails poking into my feet for a month. And it was the right decision – I haven’t had any problems with my toenails. Now, blisters, that’s another story. It has become quite obvious that sitting at a desk for 10-14 hours per day is not appropriate preperation for walking around for 12 hours a day.

Silver linings

Because my feet hurt and my legs were sore last night, I really just wanted to soak in a bath for a while. Unfortuately, the hostel only has showers. The silver lining is that it made me go out to a sentou, which is a public bath house. Now, in North America, “bath house” generally means “gay pickup joint,” which it fortunately does not here; here it’s more like a spa or a hot tub.

According to one of the guidebooks, until the mid-late 20th century, Japanese houses didn’t have baths, so every few blocks would be a sentou, where the locals would go to bathe. Nowadays, there are far less sentou around, but there’s still more than a thousand here in Tokyo.

The guidebook said that if it was your first time at a sento, you should watch the locals and do what they do. Of course, as an uptight North American, watching a bunch of naked men is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Yes, not “clothing optional” – since when does anyone wear clothes to the bath? That is, other than frugal travelers like myself, who will occasionally shower in their clothes, because it saves time over washing clothes and body seperately.

Anyways, you sit on a stool, clean yourself up completely, then go into the bath. And “hot tub” is quite an appropriate term – the thermometer read 43 degrees celcius, which is 109 degrees in fahrenheit. Hot hot hot. I only lasted a few minutes. But damn, did I feel good afterwards.

So where am I?

Right now, I’m in a Manga Cafe, which is a place where you pay an hourly fee to sit around, read manga (Japanese comics), use the Internet, or sleep. As I look around, I see four people sleeping. But, at 400 yen (about $4) an hour, it’s a pretty cheap place to spend the night if you have to.

Sakura update

Oh yeah, the whole point of this trip: photographing cherry trees in bloom. I’ve seen a few early bloomers, but the blossoms are basically in the very early stages of blooming now, which is perfect – I timed it right, more or less.

Pictures?

No raw converter. No photoshop. Ergo, no photos ready to post yet.

Where next?

Tomorrow I leave for a few days in Nikko, about two hours north of Tokyo. Apparently a combination of national park, dozens of shrines, and rich tourists. I will not be one of the latter.