Arigato gozaimasu Nihon

Yesterday started out with shopping our way through Harajuku and
moving on to the open air market in Ueno. Here we found all sorts of
produce, street food vendors, clothing, and tea shops. After walking
for a while and working up an appetite, we ate at a western style
cafeteria restaurant called the Harvester serving up chicken pita
sandwiches.

After lunch, we stopped into an arcade and played some Typing of the
Dead. Its a video game that normally has two guns for players to
shoot zombies on the screen called House of the Dead. The japanese
version has two keyboards instead and you have to type the words on
the screen to kill the zombies. Christie smoked me as I more or less
embarassed myself with my poor typing skills.

Nick had planned out a dinner at an all you can eat Korean barbecue
restaurant with grills on your table. When we arrived, we found out
they were full, and had to search elsewhere. Luckily, just around the
corner was a conveyer belt sushi restaurant. We popped in through the
star trek door (these are everywhere) and had a seat around a small
square station in the middle of the room. Inside this were two sushi
chefs, completely surrounded by a rotating conveyer belt. Diners just
grab whatever they want off the conveyer and the chefs fill the holes
with more plates of sushi. Each plate had 2 pieces of nigiri (sashimi
slice on top of rice) or 4 rolls on it. Plates are color coded
corresponding to how much they cost, but most were either 99 or 126
yen ($.90 - $1.15). You can even make special requests, if you know
the japanese name of the sushi you want :) After Christie had a
couple plates worth, I accumulated a stack of 10 plates and settled
the bill. All told, it cost about 11 or 12 dollars for the two of us.

We decided to fill in the cracks at an english pub nearby and have a
guiness and some edamame (soy beans for snacking). One final stop at
a convenience store to pick up some French Consomme flavored Pringles,
and we were back at the ryokan.

Sadly, we had to pack up this morning and head for the airport. We
thanked our hosts for their hospitality, snapped a group photo, and
rode some trains to the airport. Here we said our final goodbyes and
made our way to the terminal. Our airplane had been struck by
lightning in Hawaii, so we had a small delay. After that it was
smooth sailing back home, only to find a huge ice dam on our front
porch. Yesterday we were shopping and eating sushi in Tokyo, and
today we are chipping ice off our porch in Minnesota. Home sweet
home, I guess :)

Traveling to Japan has taught us more than we could have dreamed about
Japanese people, culture, and history....But we have also learned a
lot about ourselves along the way. During our travels, we were
humbled by the Japanese people, amazed by their technology, and
belittled by their history. And so another chapter draws to a close
in this long, amazing journey.

-Scott and Christie

Tokyo Night Life

Hello again from Tokyo!

Last night, we decided to check out the night life in Tokyo. Setting
off for the train station, we were greeted by throngs of young
Japanese girls. Our best guess was that a boy band concert had just
ended at Tokyo Dome, and the streets were ridiculously packed with
teenage girls gushing over pictures of the band. Honestly, we almost
got trampled trying to get through the crowds.

We rode the train to Shibuya, a neighborhood known for its clubs. We
met up with one of Nick`s (our friend who lives here) friends named
Erin. It turns out she is also from Port Washington, but then again,
who isn`t really :) We all set off to a traditional Japanese bar.
Here you generally drink sake and order a bunch of small plates of
food, sort of like tapas. Ordering the food was a serious adventure.
The menu was written mostly in obscure Kanji, which are characters
that represent a whole word. Even with two Japanese speakers, we had
a difficult time decyphering the menu. Most menus we have seen are
written out phonetically using what is sort of like an alphabet.
Anyways, we got a chance to sample some wild food, including Tuna
Sashimi (slices of raw tuna with wasabi), Octopus Kimchee (korean
pickled cabbage with octopus), Yakitori (grilled chicken kebabs), Soba
(fried noodles), and finally Horse Sashimi (slices of raw horse flesh
with garlic). We had a couple bottles of sake and decided to hit the
club.

The club we went to was called Club Pure and cost around 25 dollars
for men and 15 for women, which includes all you can drink until 5 am.
Here, the trains stop running from 1 am to 5 am, so if you are out
after 1, you can`t get home until 5 anyways, so you just stay out.
There were about half foreigners inside, and we played pool and darts,
chatted up the patrons, and had a great time. Now I have one of the
worlds worst gin headaches as a result. around 4:30 we left for a
snack, and I ate a bunch of sushi while waiting for the train. We
made it home around 5:45 or 6 and slept in really late.

Today we might try to get over to chinatown, after recovering. We
will keep you posted on our adventures! :)

-Scott and Christie

Tsukiji Fish Market

This morning we finally made it to the fish market, and it was
absolutely wild. We got off the subway and were immediately in front
of a large, indian looking Buddhist Temple. Not even this magnificent
ancient shrine could distract me from the task at hand: consume the
freshest fish in the world.

After wading through the vendors on the outskirts, we finally got
inside the market proper. As you approach this huge metal structure
resembling an airplane hangar, hundreds of mini forklifts are whizzing
everywhere, dodging pedestrians, bicyclists, and tiny trucks. We
really felt frightened by all the hectic driving. Once we crossed the
lots of trucks, we found the wholesale vendors selling everything you
could ever imagine from the sea. Tentacles, squid, enormous tuna,
grouper, flounder, and a thousand things I thought I would only see on
the Discovery channel surrounded us in styrofoam crates. We sloshed
through the rows of fish, catching glimpses of live blowfish (the
poison ones I think), crazy octopus, shrimp the size of your head, and
all manner of shellfish. Workers were cutting 4 foot long frozen tuna
with bandsaws like they were wood boards. Unfortunately, I only
stopped to take a couple photos, as stopping meant getting yelled at
in japanese by the forklift drivers and other shoppers. We saw only
one or two other tourists inside the market.

Having worked up an appetite, I found the nearest sashimi stand and
purchased a meal ticket from a vending machine. I exchanged it for a
large bowl of salmon sashimi on rice, with some egg pieces thrown in
for good measure. As we sat on the sidewalk, I proceeded to torch the
back of my brain with wasabi. Several Japanese even stopped to take
pictures of my `wasabi face`. It was the best breakfast I have ever
had.

Weary from the 6 am wake up, we trekked back to our Ryokan and had a
big nap. It was so windy that one of the windows on the second floor
shattered. We have no plans for the rest of the evening, but I am
sure we will cook something fun up.

We miss you all!!!

Scott and Christie

Kamakura

Well we had a fantastic trip to Kyoto. We visited the old imperial
palace there, an ancient castle, and several temples. We happened
upon a Japanese Cemetery which is haunted by monkeys, but sadly there
were none at the time. We got to ride the Shinkansen, or bullet
train, there and back and man was it fast. There were some plum
blossoms and one or two cherry blossoms, but not many yet. We got
back yesterday.

Today Christie and I left the group behind and headed to the funky
beach town of Kamakura. It was a cool place with great ocean views.
The weather was not fit for beach combing, sadly. We went to the 12th
century Hase temple on a huge cliff and left a message of peace for
all of you in a cave inside the temple. Also, we saw a gigantic
bronze Buddah cast in 1252. We could even go inside of it. Somehow
it survived tsunamis, earthquakes, and fires and is still standing and
is in pretty good shape ... I was able to get my fill of sashimi, and
it was raining when we got back to Tokyo. Luckily, there was an
umbrella vending machine in the train station so we stayed dry.

Tomorrow we will hit the fish market which got delayed. For dinner we
are hoping to make it to Japans largest Chinatown in Yokohama, which
should be a memorable experience.

We miss you all and hope you are doing well.

Cheers,
Scott and Christie

Konnichiwa

We have arrived in　Tokyo safely!! We are beginning our Third day here
and starting to get our bearings. The ryokan we are staying at is
beautiful with a traditional japanese garden outside.

Arriving in the airport was tricky, because most of our flight was
continuing on to Manilla. We made our way through customs and found
our friends waiting for us. The train ride into tokyo took about an
hour and a half and then we took a subway to our ryokan. THen we went
out for dinner to a chinese place and had some wonderful food. We
came back and bought some beer from the vending machine, that was fun!

Our second day we took a train to Hirajuku, which is a wild and hip
neighborhood in Tokyo. There were lots of girls there dressed up in
strange clothing waiting for modelling photographers to take their
pictures. We strolled through a park and listened to a bunch of
people playing music. Lunch was eaten at an indian curry restaurant
playing reggae music. It was one of the spiciest meals I have eaten
in a long time. We also visited a temple and a karaoke box.

Last night we went to a japanese fast food restaurant, which consists
of buying a meal ticket from a vending machine and trading it for
food, which was very good. I ate what seemed like meatloaf with an
egg on top. Nothing is in english, so you have to roll the dice when
ordering food. Its quite an adventure to even attempt to purchase
things.

The locals are very nice, but only a few know english and very little
at that. We have been welcomed everywhere we have gone, and the city
is beautiful. I expected skyscrapers everywhere, but instead there
are many older small 1 or 2 story buildings just very close together.
None of the streets have names as far as I can tell, so we have
assigned our own names to the ones in this neighborhood. It seems to
be working out well, as we have not gotten lost yet.

I am nearing the end of my allotted computer time, so I will wish you
all well. Today we travel around the city some more, and we are going
to hit up the nightlife tonight before leaving for Kyoto tomorrow.

See you all soon!

ーScott