i should start this post off by saying that this trip is the realization of a plan that was formed over ten years ago. it all started at
sheridan college when a pair of rather similar looking guys came up to me and asked if i needed a ride. turns out they had overheard my tale of woe. it was taking me nearly two hours to get to school every morning... the kind offer of a ride from these two brothers became a life long friendship of the best kind.
immediately we got along and it seemed we shared just about every intrest you could think of, not the least of which was an enjoyment of all things japanese. and so it was that many many years ago a plan formed that we should, all three, save up some cash and go to japan. well, things never quite work out like you would expect and one way or another, i ended up in dallas, solomon ended up in "so-cal", and alex was firmly planted up north in our home town of toronto. it never seemed we could quite get our schedules to match up and over the years almost completely forgot the dream.
then one day this year i was trying to figure out something to do over christmas break when all the sudden it hit me. i really want to see a volcano and a glacier. don't ask me where this came from because i'm not really sure myself. i think i just realized that i had fallen into a bit of a rut. don't get me wrong i love going home to toronto and hanging out with my friends and family. truly christmas is my favorite time of the year. but somehow this year i needed to go see a volcano. so i started scouring the globe for places i could go to check one out in person, and hopefully not be reduced to a pile of ashes in the process. fiji sounded good, and italy too; i even found a place called heard island where there is a glacier *on top of* a volcano. no i'm not making it up click
here to see for yourself.
finally i settled on fiji and just as i was about to book the trip i thought to myself... "hey if i'm going to die getting a hole the size of a grapefruit punched through me by a supersonic chunk of pummice then i should have a witness!". so of course i decided to call up alex and sol and see if they were as excited to see a volcano as i was. turns out they weren't. we talked for a bit and for a while it was looking like my planned pummice pummeling was going to be a solo event, when suddenly al said "hey, aren't there volcanos in japan?"
and thus, the best trip ever was born.
alex saved us all a bunch of work by booking the airfare and getting our JR passes (by the way if you ever plan to travel in japan *
get a JR pass* it is worth every penny, especially if you are going to travel to more than one major city) and next thing you know we were on the plane to the land of the rising sun.
day 1
our first stop was tokyo and we had picked a little hotel near Shibuya station as our base camp for the first day. by the time we got there it was already dark so there wasn't too much chance to explore. we quickly headed out to harajuku to find ourselves some tonkatsu for dinner at a place that al had been to on a previous trip. apparently this stuff was to die for so i was pretty excited. i couldnt resist getting a couple pictures of the "neony-downtown-goodness" that is harajuku as we passed though.
by the time we got there we were starved and the tonkatsu was everything we had hoped for. lightly breaded, with a heaping pile of crispy cold cabbage and and by far the best tonkatsu sauce i have ever had. not too sweet, lots of texture and a perfect compliment to the amazingly tender (and uniquely flavored) black pig.
after some insane amount of consecutive waking hours we finally crashed in our very dinky hotel. even though my 6'3" self didn't fit so well in the miniscule bed i don't even remember putting my head to pillow.
day 2
the next day we had planned to get up before the crack of dawn so we could get down to the tokyo fish market and see the fish acution in action. a few short train rides later we arrived at what looked to me like a giant series of semi open air warehouses that clearly were not intended for the everyday traveler to wander through. alex however dived into the fray and solomon and dove in after him. it was total, wonderful, chaos. sea creatures of every type, and every state of aliveness, you could conceive of were stacked everywhere. we skipped past the 300+ stalls of smaller fishes and headed stright for the auction which looked to be wrapping up as we arrived. the floor was lined with hundreds of huge flash frozen tunas that looked more like wierd hollowed out tree stumps than fish. the head and tail had been chopped off of most of them and the big holes where the gills had been removed gave the massive fishes two convenient carrying handles.
the scale of the place is a bit hard to convey but try and imagine an area of 5 by 3 football fields filled to overflowing with fish, fishermen, and little motorized platforms racing around at crazy speeds regardless of who happened to be in their way. we decided to wander the market some more (i was in a bit of a photography trance at this point shooting everything i could see) and at one point i wandered into one guys stall to take a picture of a particularily large fish head when the guy just shoved me out into the aisle and yelled a few incomprehensable and im sure none too flattering comments my way. we had seen enough semi dead sea beings by this point and we were getting pretty hungry as it was nearing 9am by now. turns out alex had another treat in store for us.
the best sushi ever.
turns out before this meal i had never really eaten sushi. i had instead only eaten some bland mushy fishy smelling sushi substitute. keep in mind that i have eaten sushi in quite few nice places in toronto, chicago, dallas and even on a previous trip to japan. i can catagorically say this sushi utterly destroyed any concept i might have had about what raw fish was supposed to taste like. this stuff was candy. sweet, fresh, tender, subtle, perfect. we had the "chef's special" and it was definately special. oh i forgot to mention. this place seated about 10 people and we stood there almost 2 hours to get in. it was worth every minute of shivery hungry waiting.
we did quite a bit more tokyo wandering though nothing was particularily of note that day. in the evening we headed to yokohama to stay at a mutual friends place for a few days. many heartfelt thanks go out to dan and his wife for letting us stay in their home and indeed use it as some temporary storage for the already growing "japan loot pile" we were accumulating.
day 3
i should backtrack a bit here as well to mention again that i met alex and sol at sheridan college which was, at the time, one of the best schools in north america to learn classical animation. needless to say we were/are all very hardcore into animation. we spent many a night that year staying up till 3 am watching creations by the master filmaker Hayao Miyazaki of Ghibli Studios instead of doing our homework.
so of course part of this trip, in truth nearly a full day of this trip, was dedicated to the Studio Ghibli Museum. it's hard for me to describe the place and do it justice i think but i'll give it a go. its less a museum and more of giant castle for children (small ones and big ones) to explore. sure there's lots of exhibits showing of the incredible work created by the studio over the years but it also has spiral staircases, hidden entrances, trompe l'oiel and of course a giant plush "cat bus" to romp inside of (watch kiki's delivery service some time and it will all make sense). Add to that a chance to see an (amazing) Ghibli animated short that can only be seen at the museum and a giant robot on the roof and you have the makings of one of the coolest places i have ever been to. i'm not going to tell anyone just how much i spent at the incredible gift shop but suffice it to say i *didn't* buy the $8000 dollar "Porco Rosso" model airplane. Barely. We ended our trip to the museum with some wonderful desert at the ghibli cafe. my favorite part of which was some amazing apple tea from a "100 year old" apple tree.
i'm not sure if i ever quite captured just how busy and hectic tokyo is but this image should give you some sense. it's like this at all hours of the day *everywhere*. and rush hour makes this image look vacant and placid by comparison.
dinner was yaki-tori (i think, al will have to correct me if i got the name mixed up. essentially a continuous stream of different fried stuff on a stick. of course everything went great with sake and by the time we staggered (well mostly i was the one staggering) back to dans place i was feelin' fine.
well actually we got a little lost on the way back to dans place in yokohama so we (laden with ghibli gifts) stopped near this wierd old fixit shop with spooky shadows on the walls. one phone call along with the explanation that "we were near some appartment buildings" and sure enough a few minutes later dan showed up to rescue us.
day 4
in the early afternoon we took our hero dan out for a fancy lunch at "L'ATELIER de Joel Robuchon" and if that ain't snooty sounding enough for you i can assure you that it was on par with all but the snootiest french food i have eaten. overall very good though the cheeses and desert were the highlights for me. i'm sure it's not polite to ask for a bucket of Crème Brûlée at a place like that but i was sorely tempted to... mmmmm...
outside the pavillion the restauraunt was in was a giant metal spider. cool. only in japan...
the afternoons plan was mine to go to yokohamas "sea paradise" and see what was purported to be one of the largest aquariums in the world. turns out they weren't kidding as this place was huge. the main tank was nearly three stories tall and had an escalator running through the middle. easily my favorite part of the place was the penguins. i had no idea how wonderfully quick and fish like they were underwater. these guys could swim like crazy. i suppose i had seen some evidence of this when i took my daughter to see "march of the penguins" (a great movie by the way... it will have you recalling sunday afternoons hunkered down in front of the tv with a bowl of spaghetti-o's and saltines watching some great national geographic special) but i guess it didn't sink in till i saw them zipping around in person.
add to that, polar bears, mantas, pirranahs, sharks, jellyfish, giant crabs and i guess you could say i had had a whale of a time despite the lack of any real ones. there was a dolphin show to see as well but it was pretty late by the time we did the rounds of the aquarium and we were pretty oceaned out.
then the stairs blue lasered us.
day 5
another of my contributions to the trip itinerary was a trip to nagano, to see the snow monkeys. what's a snow monkey you ask? well they are the highest-altitude monkeys in the world. they are actually a pretty common breed of monkey you can find throughout japan but these guys live way up in the mountains near nagano where it snows like the dickens all winter. how do they do it? well they hang out in natural hot springs for most of the cold months and soak up some sulphury good warmpth to survive. i first found out about these dudes from my favorite movie of all time. BARAKA. it has no words and still is the best movie ever. it's difficult to decibe my attraction to these fuzzy little guys but suffice it to say that in some ways they are more human than some actual humans i have come into contact with...
most of this day was consumed with the trip to nagano aboard the "shinkansen super hikari express!" if that's not the best name for a train ever, i have no idea what is. lunch consisted of a bento box full of fresh fish, pickled veggies, rice, tempura, some onigiri and green tea from a vending machine. perfect. the japanese truly know how to eat.
when we arrived in nagano (cue olympic theme music) we were greeted by great big puffly flakes of snow falling from the sky. we unloaded and spent a couple hours wandering the streets at night just to get a feel for the place. we checked out a pachinko parlor and eventually came to rest in a tiny "toast" cafe where we had some hot tea and thick toast with honey for about ten minutes before they kicked us out. apparently they were just closing as we arrived but that wasn't going to stand between a man and his honey toast damnit.
day 6
monkey day.
that morning we headed to the cheery locale of Jigokudani Yaen-koen or "Wild Monkey Park in Hell Valley" as it is translated apparently? the weather was pretty rough (and the tiny ship was tossed?) and by the time we got to the rather remote train station the snow was really coming down. luckily i was fully equipped with thermal underwear and was able to locate some better gloves at a local convenience store for the hike to come.
from there we hopped a bus that eventually landed us at the base of the mountain which we then realized we were going to have to climb if we wanted to see the monkeys.
partway up the mountain we had an exciting moment when the snow laden trees caused a semi-avalanche behind us and doused the japanese couple that was hiking not far behind in an absolute ton of snow. after a long and breathtaking (both physically and metaphorically) hike up a densely wooded trail we finaly came across this little guy in the path. he looked like he was enjoying his twig so we snapped a few pictures and continued on. i don't think any of us realized we were going to be able to get so close to them!
we rounded a bend, climbed some, very steep, very icy, snow covered stairs, paid our admission, and sure enough not far beyond that point was a beautiful hot spring full of snow monkeys.
i was in heaven.
i'm sure i photographed them for over an hour but it seemed to go by in about 15 minutes. finally after pissing off the alpha male one too many times and beginning to lose feeling in my fingers we warmed up at the little rest spot near the ticket counter and headed back to nagano.
i took a quick bathroom break at a gas station near the bus stop as we waited for our ride back and found that for some reason they were selling jars with freaking 2 inch long giant wasps floating in them. yuk. who would want to buy a giant dead bug floating in a jar of what looked like urine i'll never know. i sure wouldn't want to meet the living versions of these guys... (AAAAAH ITS MOTHRA WE MUST FLEEEE) i'm pretty sure my "very alergic to bees" friend jen will probably go into
Anaphylactic Shock just reading this.
i don't think we had the energy to do much after the snow monkey hike so that was about it for nagano.
day 7
the next morning we hopped another shinkansen super hikari express (i'll never get tired of saying that) to kyoto and a couple hours later after settling into the hotel we caught a ride on the "romantic train" and rolled through the mountains and valleys for about 30 minutes. i think this ride was meant for couples in love in the summer to make out on when it goes though the dark tunnels. needless to say we didn't do any of that. :P it was, however, quite beautful despite it being a bit barren and wintery.
after the train we headed back into town and checked out my favorite of all the 1 zillion temples in kyoto; Ryoanji. unfortunately the main garden walls were under construction so it wasn't nearly as serene a moment as i recalled from my previous trip many summers ago. luckily they felt so bad about letting people into a completely ruined rock garden and charging them for it so they opened up a part of the temple not usually available to the public. not so luckily by the time we got there it was closing so we didn't see too much except a few wierd neon shots of bamboo i snapped as they ushered us out.
we then headed to a place that served something very similar to yaki-tori but wasn't ... i'm sure al will remind me what it was called when he reads this and i will update it. fantastic food. more sake. a great end to a nice day in kyoto.
day 8
the coolest day.
i really have to thank solomon for making this day possible. it was his fascination with the geisha that made it all happen. in the morning we headed out to the geisha district and took a walking tour of the area where we hoped we might see some geisha going to and from their appointments in the morning. our guide was an incredible story himself, a canadian, football (soccer for you american types) player that at the age of 22 and on a 1 week vaction to kyoto ditched everything and decided to stay in japan forever. now at the more ripe age of 36 he has become probably the only non-japanese person to ever become entrenched in the world of the geisha. in fact at one point during the tour we happened to be walking with him when we wandered past some sort of film crew that seemed to be out getting ready to shoot video of a bride a groom. while i was snapping this picture of the bride i suddenly noticed that our guide was talking animatedly with the film crew and after some loud exclamations and hasty bows i was able to ask him what happened. apparently they had made some comment about us tourists wandering the geisha district of course not realizing that one of the two very white looking guys was fluent in japanese they were shocked to discover that he was not only a japanese speaker but that his "singing name" was painted on the fence nearby along with many other famous kyoto performers. hah! we aren't so touristy now are we!?! ok well i still was but the tour was fascinating and as luck would have it we hit it off with our guide extremely well. so well that we invited him to lunch and after that went with him to a once a month flea-market kind of thing downtown that he had planned to go to later that day.
flea markets are some of my favorite places on earth. a love of old things was handed down to me by my families many trips to auctions and flea markets in northern ontario. so as a result i took exactly zero pictures of the place due to the fact i was so caught up in the shopping. i managed to walk away with (only) some old ink stamps, hand dried green tea, handmade chop sticks, an antique abacus, some coins, and a bag of piping hot red bean buns that we quickly devoured. i'll attempt to get a couple pictures of the market from alex and add them here later. truly i could have spent all day there and i would kill to go back.
after spending the day with us our guide offered up what, as i came to understand later, turned out to be a very special opportunity. an evening with him, a miko, and her geisha "mother". we were going to get a chance to do something that most japanese people will never do in their lifetimes. i learned that evening that it's not an easy thing to meet a geisha. it's not even something you can just decide to do if you happen to be a wealthy person. because in the economy of the geisha, while it does involve money, (and a good sum of it too i might add) the true measure of a persons ability to meet one is his reputation. not just any reputation; being famous isn't going to help your case either. you need to know someone, personally, who is already a member of the very exclusive "tea houses" that train and manage the geishas. they, in turn, have to put their reputation on the line to allow you to come with them. even then you can only go to see the geishas in their company for many many expensive trips before you build your own reputation enough to be able to ask to meet them on your own.
we had an afternoon to kill and after grabbing up some vibrant japanese paper and sampling some more hand dried teas at a nearby tea shop we headed back to the gesha district for our evening with the geishas.
first we headed out to a tiny little bar tucked into a corner so small it only seated 5 people. no word of a lie 5 person maximum. the waiter took our order and then yelled it through the wall behind us where this guy would poke his head through to confirm the order and eventually hand us our meal. since there was literally no room to stand it was up to the person near the hole to serve the food. priceless. some okonomi-yaki and a few tumblers of shochu later (essentially the japanese equivalent of vodka but made with rice, barley, or sweet potatos) we were ready to head to the tea house.
it was a truly humbling experience. i have known some women in my life that had the ability to look right through you. but being observed by a geisha felt like my entire mind had been reduced to a single thought that she casually held in her gaze as a master smith might observe his students sword. as though if she were to blink the whole of my being might just dissapear. to say she had a powerful presence is the understatement of my life.
and yet when she was not dancing or singing for us she was fun and bubbling with laughter, an instant best friend who was immediately easy to be with even though she spoke hardly a word of english. turns out geishas also know some great drinking games and it also turns out they are very good at winning them... the sake was drunk from new cups our guide had purchased eariler that day to aide him in the opening of his new bar and we gave them a good workout. our time with her seemed to go by very quickly but it was an experience i will not soon forget.
i don't recall too much about the rest of the evening but somehow we made it back to the hotel.
day 9
we got off to a slow start that day and after a bit of wandering ended up at a highly reccomended unagi restauraunt for lunch. mmmm eel. while i'm sure many folk would assume that eel was the most exotic and gross thing imaginable to eat it's ironic that in fact it's one of the most accessible (and tasty) japanese foods i can think of. it's very much the japanese analogue to barbeque. this place was some of the best i have had and as you can see from the picture i devoured quite a large plate of it.
after lunch we did some more shopping and then begain a rather long trek from kyoto to the very southern tip of japan and the small city of kagoshima.
day 10
as you may recall if you are still concious after reading this insanely long travelogue one of the core reasons i had wanted to return to japan was to see a real live volcano and kagoshima is a great place to see one reasonably safely. now when i say active you must realize that this thing is not spewing lava 24 hours a day. there are only a few volcanos in the world that have that sort of disposition anyway. which is not to say that this is a tame volcano either, it's not uncommon to see the residents of kagoshima whip out their umbrellas to avoid getting dusted by the occaisional ash-fall. sadly we didn't get to experience this aspect of kagoshima but i guess i'll save that for another trip. indeed the top of the volcano proper (sakura-jima) is forbidden to visit by law. the "death zone", as it is reffered to, is quite likely to kill you with a chunk of supersonic rock or smother you with toxic gas when you aren't looking. pretty much everything i could find online said. "don't go to the top of this thing"
while we didn't attempt to crest sakura-jima we did decide to bike to the observatory half way up.
being the photoy type i decided to get up early the morning of our volacinc excursion (like 4am early) and shoot some pictures of the sun coming up over the volcano. this is the land of the rising sun afterall. frankly i'm not sure how i even knew that the sun would even be coming up anywhere near to behind the volcano at all. but i didn't let a little thing like pre-planning slow me down so I just went for it. when i got to the docks i was dissapointed to see that it was heavily industrialized and filled with boats so it was difficult to find an unobstructed view. after a while i snuck onto a loading dock and hid behind some giant metal cargo crates (eat your heart out solid snake) and watched the sun come up. it was absolutely breathtaking and cold on my butt.
later that day we rented our bikes, hopped the ferry and began our volcano adventure. little did i know what an adventure it would turn out to be. now before i describe our route i should mention that the bikes we had rented were exactly the kind of two wheeled vehicle you would expect to find discarded in an alleyway. rickety but functional is about the highest honor i can bestow these ancient velocipedes.
so heading to the north around the base of sakura-jima we muscled our way up and down and up and down through strnge semi-abandoned hamlets till we managed to find our way to the road leading up. it was then that i discovered how out of shape i really was. about 2 hours of grueling uphill bike walking we finally reached the observatory. along the way we were passed by many a tour bus and quite a few locals as well that all looked bewildered and amazed that there were people *biking* this hill. while i will admit it was not the brightest plan for someone in my physical shape, i think we got to see a side of sakura-jima that most will never experience. our reward for the pain and exhaustion were some some magnificent views of the the main cone as well as the, now tiny, city of kagoshima far below.
next came the best part of the entire day. 9 minutes of straight downhill splendor. a total rush that was totally magnified by our aforementioned rickety bi-wheeled claptraptions.
now most folks having arrived back at the tiny port would have hopped onto the next ferry had some dinner and called it a day. not me, however, i was on a mission. i came to see a volcano and that meant seeing some bubbly glowing red lava. on the map there was labeled only a short jaunt away the "lava fields". we were going to bike our way there before sundown, and failing that the lava would certainly look that much cooler in the dark.
well about 2 hours of brutal up and down bike walking as the sun was setting around us and still no sign of the lava. we were just about to give up but 30 minutes more finally saw us arrive. and what we saw amazed us.
a whole bunch of rocks.
so it turns out that the "lava feilds" are actually fully cooled and somewhat grown over and look surprisingly similar to the terrain we had just struggled across for the past two hours. add to that the fact that the sun was down and now they just looked like darkness and we were not such happy campers. a short break later we were headed back to the ferry which fortunately for us runs all night.
more than two hours later we arrived back at the ferry. completely exhausted and very hungry. on the ferry we located a place to eat using the trusty "lonely planet" and just as we pulled in to port we were treated to an unexpected surprise. fireworks. turns out that day had been a national holiday and amazingly just as we arrived the main fireworks display went off. we felt like champions. us vs the volcano!
day 11
this was, as you might imagine, a day for resting. at the end of which we hopped a plane back to tokyo.
day 12
this was a sunday and, as such, we made a plan to check out the now imfamous (thanks gwen) harajuku girls who according to our information hang out in a park in harajuku and dress up in all kinds of funky ways. first, though, we checked out the famous shibuya intersection where apparently nearly one thousand people cross the street in every direction at once every time the lights change. i believe it.
the harajuku grils were fascinating. i could try to describe what i saw but i think the pictures say it all. besides which i think if this blog gets any longer the chances that no one will even read this far, never mind all the way to the end, are approximately zero.
day 13
the bulk of this day was consumed with a trip to probably the worlds largest anime and manga store. it was three stories of awe inspriring manga madness. i could almost hear the trees weeping. it was glorious. i almost caved and bought a 2000 dollar original cel from My Neighbor Totoro... almost. something tells me that, years from now, that decision will haunt me.
day 14
i just chilled out this day and tried to store up some strength for the trip back home... alex and sol went out and did more shopping still and we met up at the ariport just in time for 9 hours of awesome sitting.
conclusion:
at any rate it feels that after a description of this magnitude i should probably say somthing about my life being changed and the beauty of other cultures and how much i like red beans. instead i will just say this.
best. trip. ever.
