The Fryhole

We arrived in Nagoya with just enough time to spare so that we could wander around my old neighbourhood in search of the curry house that Remi and I love. Mmmm.

After lunch we met up with Yukari, a former student of mine, and her husband, Shoji. They took us out to the Expo Park (the World Expo was in Nagoya last year). To get to the site we rode the “linimo” which is short for “linear motorcar” and uses magnetic fields to levitate off the track. It’s a very smooth, and very quiet ride.

Unfortunately, apparently practically all the tourist sites in Nagoya are closed on Mondays, so we just wandered around the empty park for a while, and I played on the slide.

Then we went to Meijo Park, around Nagoya Castle, and tried to make the ducks and carp fight each other for curry sembei (rice crackers).

Yukari and Shoji also took us to Sakae, the district where I used to work. A lot has changed in 3 years - for one thing, there is now a Ferris wheel in downtown Nagoya, and the bus station (called Oasis 21) is a 3 storey building/park. On the 3rd level there is patio with a shallow pond covering most of it. Dad estimates that it is about 4 inches deep, and probably weighs about 200 tons.

The TV Tower has also been repainted since I lived in Nagoya, so it looks much nicer.

To complete the evening, Yukari, Shoji, and Setsuko (a friend of Yukari’s, who also visited us in Canada) took us for a Japanese feast, complete with crab, sashimi, tempura (including matsutake mushrooms - mmm, ridiculously expensive), nabe, and a variety of baked fish. It was amazing! This is how it looked before we devoured it!

After leaving Yokohama, we travelled to Shin-Fuji - basically because we wanted to try to see Mt. Fuji while staying on the Shinkansen line (to go closer or to a better viewing site would have involved lots of local trains, transfers, and back-tracking). However, it was cloudy, so we didn’t actually get to see Mt. Fuji. We think we might have seen its outline, but that’s about it. However, we did get to drink some giant beer in our hotel room.

On Saturday, Kaori and Kenji took us to Kamakura, which was the old military capital. There’s also lots of temples and shrines, and the Big Buddha (a.k.a. Daibutsu).

We also visited the Museum of Literature and Hase-dera.

Before you go into a temple, you are supposed to cleanse yourself by washing your hands, and rinsing out your mouth - here’s Andrew washing away his sins. Or something.

Of course, Hase-dera also has the requisite koi pond.

One thing that is unique to Hase-dera is the tunnels, leading to various shrines, and lined by statues. For some of us, the height of the tunnels wasn’t an issue. For others…

Much of the rest of the time in Yokohama was spent visiting with the Matsuzaki family. And drinking with them. Notice the large bottle of nihon shu between Mr. Matsuzaki and Andrew. Mmmm.

Mrs. Matsuzaki also got Andrew to try natto (fermented soy beans). She’s constantly pushing people to eat it because it’s supposedly healthy. Too bad it doesn’t taste very good. Andrew actually didn’t seem to mind though.

And, Mom spent a lot of time bribing Nanako (Kaori’s daughter), so that Mom could hold her. Little did Mom know that all you have to do is take her outside to see the dog (named Leo; short for Leonardo DiCaprio, apparently).

On Saturday evening the Matsuzaki family took us to another izakaiya for dinner, where lots of eating and drinking ensued. Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures, as Mom somehow forgot her camera.

Shockingly, Remi did not make it to Akihabara the first time he visited Japan. So… of course we had to go this time (Andrew wanted to too! - Remi). For those who don’t know, it’s basically a large electronics district in Tokyo. Yeah. Right up Remi’s alley. And Andrew’s too, for that matter. Kenji and Kaori graciously offered to show us around, so we spent much of the day wandering the streets of Akihabara. Here’s one picture Mom took, which does show some lovely controller T-shirts, but really doesn’t show the vast array of electronics that is available in Akihabara.

Surprisingly, the only thing that anyone bought was watches. Dad and Remi both bought wristwatches, although Remi’s is decidely more high-tech. It automatically synchronizes every once in a while. No more switching times in each new time zone.

Actually, that’s not quite true. It synchronizes to any asian/american time source (which should cover all of Japan and all of North America, to my knowledge. You can get ones that would work against Europe time sources as well, but they aren’t as nice so I didn’t bother); but you still have to tell it what timezone you are in. After you’ve done that; you always know what time it is though. It synchronizes every night automatically; and you can force it to sync with the right button-press. It’s also solar-powered — the entire watch face is a solar cell, and the watch has a rechargeable battery that tops itself up whenever it is exposed to light. Very cool. - Remi

We went for sushi for lunch, and in the skyrise where we ate we discovered how much Japanese people love nature. Portable (and wheeled!) grass to sit on!

After the day spent shopping in Akihabara, there’s really only one thing left to do - hop a train to Shinjuku and go drinking! Kenji and Kaori took us to an izakaiya where you have to remove your shoes. Evidently, that is something more of a problem for Andrew than for those of us with smaller feet, as he had some difficulty shutting the door of the shoe locker…

There was a 2-hour limit on the izakaiya, so we had to leave. But we decided we weren’t done drinking yet, so we went to a pub to play darts. It’s a little different from the Black Dog though - it’s electronic for one thing; and the darts wouldn’t be dangerous even to a small child (not much of a tip on them). Here’s a shot of Kenji playing.

Andrew won the first round, and then we decided that the winner of each round had to do a shot (to help level the playing field). The first shot we ordered was a double Jack. We had to explain what it was. Mom won the next round, and got it — lucky her!

We also ordered a Prairie Fire, which Andrew had to drink as the winner of the first round. The waiter was a little grossed out by our order, and became more and more intrigued/amazed by our drinks as the evening wore on.

By the end of the night, we resorted to a Lotto 649 (count 6 bottles from the left in the first row, 4 bottles from the right in the second row, 9 bottles from the left in the third row; mix into a shot glass) that we tried to make Remi and Kaori split. Remi had the first half, and then it was Kaori’s turn…

After smelling it… she didn’t go for it.

But Kenji bravely accepted the challenge.

And quickly chased it with beer.

All in all - it was a very fun evening!

Since Nikkō is really close to Tokyo, it didn’t take us very long to get to Tokyo. While waiting for our Imperial Palace tour (you have to apply for a time slot online, and provide various information including your age, occupation, and other post-9/11 terrorist information), we wandered around Ginza. Since the Lonely Planet mentioned a Godzilla statue…. well, we obviously had to go in search of it! But since we were imagining some giant monument we were a little disappointed when we found this:

It is quite unnoticeable — we actually walked right by it in the street and went several blocks too far before deciding that we had gone too far and needed to go back and check again.

We ate a convenience store lunch (trust me, that’s not as gross as it sounds - convenience stores in Japan actually have decent food for a very reasonble price) at a fountain just outside the Palace walls.

The Palace itself was… underwhelming. A lot of it is off-limits, so there’s not a heck of a lot to see. Some if it is impressive though.

One of the best parts was the people who have to scale the walls of the moat to clean out the moss from in-between the rocks.

We think they should have ninja uniforms!  It would really add to the atmosphere of the Imperial Castle.  Maybe other retainers could even come out in mock-up Samurai armor and they could stage battles.
The gardens around the Imperial Palace are also quite nice - but you don’t need a reservation for those, just a number (like a coat check tag) so they can keep track of who is still there.  We entered them after our tour of the palace and walked around a bit… one of the most interesting things is that they have dedicated certain areas to be clones of other areas throughout Japan, so a lot of effort is taken to make them appear exactly as those other areas (including landscaping and foliage; and probably animals too).

After the Palace, we had some ramen and then took the Narita Express to meet Andrew. \o/  He was coming in on a flight from CDG (Paris), and we timed our arrival quite well, as neither group really had to wait for the other.  After collecting him, we took the Narita Express again, only this time Yokohama (and the Matsuzaki’s home) was our destination.

Upon our arrival there we got to meet Nanako (Kaori and Kenji’s child) for the very first time!

We introduced Andrew to everyone, and he fit right in. 

We relaxed and talked with the Matsuzaki family for a little bit and then headed off to bed.

After leaving Sendai on Halloween, we took the Shinkansen and then a local train to Nikkō. Nikkō is a national park area just a bit north of Tokyo that has several shrines and temples as well as lots of hot springs and waterfalls, and lays claim to something like 7,000 cedars. It is also the final resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu - so there’s some rather grandiose temples in his honour. Plus, it’s supposedly the origin of the 3 monkeys.

Which these 3 monkeys visited…

Since Nikkō is in the mountains, it’s a little chilly and autumn arrives a little earlier here than in Tokyo. Mom took a ridiculous number of pictures of this tree, as did virtually all the other tourists.

Nikkō’s fame is partly due to religious reasons - the Buddhist monk Shōdō Shōnin established a hermitage in it, and was carried across the river by two huge serpents. Nowadays, they have a nice bridge that they charge a toll for, so we just took pictures from the free bridge a bit (about 50m) downstream. Here it is at night, and the following day.

We stayed in Nikkō for a couple of days (in a rather nice hotel that royalty apparently also stays at when visiting Nikkō). For dinner on the evening of the first day, we went to Hippari Dako - a tiny little mama-san restaurant that people have decorated the walls of with their business cards and momentos.

Of course, we proved the adage “it’s a small world” when I looked at the wall across from me and saw a business card for Alikatu with Troy Hrushka’s name on it - he used to live in Greg’s basement, and now lives one block over from us! Weird.

And, also of course, we had to add our own contribution to Hippari Dako’s walls. Unfortunately, none of us have business cards, so instead… we used Canadian pins to tack a $5 bill with the added speech balloon “I heartily endorse this food and/or product.”

For our second day in Nikkō, we decided to go to Kegon Falls. Not being the type to take the easy way out, we opted to hike there (even though a bus can drop you off about 250m from the falls themselves).  It’s apparently impossible for us to go on any type of hike without the use of a cable car, as we ended up buying one-way tickets on the Akechi-daira cable car. Here’s the view of the falls from the top of that cable car:

It’s a little far away, and the trail… well - it looks like this:

And in other places, it looks like this:

It also didn’t help that the Lonely Planet we’re using apparently hasn’t been updated in a little while. We were going to hike from the Akechi-daira cable car to the Chuzenji cable car, which was reported to be 1.5 km (really it was 4 km to that point). And… the Chuzenji cable car no longer exists. Argh.  Another few km over the trails, but at the very least that hike was downhill, which was no small favour as by this time everyone was getting quite tired.
Eventually, we managed to get to the Kegon Falls parking lot, where all the nice comfy buses drop off their (sane) passengers to view the falls.

So… okay, it was worth it.

Feeling that we owed ourselves, we took the bus back to Nikkō proper and went to an Izakaiya for supper.  An Izakaiya is a cross between a bar and a restaurant; think like Earls only with more drinking.  There we sampled a large number of random dishes (all of which were quite good) and prompted the owner to remark something along the lines of osake sugoi ne?  Apparently we are quite strong drinkers; which we’ve proven since, as well…

We left Hokkaido early in the morning (caught our first train at 07:00) and travelled to Sendai. To get there, we went through the Seikan Tunnel, which is 53.85 km long, and 240 m below sea level. We also had our first ride on the Shinkansen, which apparently travels so fast that Mom can’t look out the window without feeling ill.  Hehe.

Once we got to Sendai, we found a place to stay (a business hotel instead of a ryokan this time - yay to free Internet access, the opportunity to rent a laptop for ¥800/night, and vending machines for pay-TV-porn) and went for lunch. We were trying to find a Japanese curry house, but instead found an Indian one. It’s always an interesting experience meeting foreigners living in Japan, as neither person is ever sure language it would be best to communicate it. We ended up ordering in a mix of Japanese and English.

After lunch, we took a train from Sendai to Matsushima-kaigan. The island views here are considered to be part of the Nihon Sankei (the 3 great sights of Japan). And it is beautiful. There’s supposedly a 252 m long red wooden bridge connecting Fukuura Island to the mainland. There is a bridge, but it’s definitely not wooden. It had an awfully metallic ring to it.

The bridge to Oshima Island, on the other hand, was actually wooden - although much shorter.

We wandered around the Fukuura Island for an hour or so - and were awed by the extremely dangerous flower that they keep captive there…

Also, I learned that there’s probably a good reason to stay on the path.

It’s always nice to have family members to help clean off your pants!

We also visited Godai-dō temple, and made Mom and Dad pay their respects.

At the vending machines by the train station, there was Coke Citrus. I have no idea why we don’t have this in Canada, as it is waaaay better than Coke with lime. Stupid Coca-Cola North America.

When we returned to the hotel, we rented the laptop and as Mom was starving while waiting for us, she explored the hotel vending machines, and was apparently shocked to find that you can buy ice cream and alcohol from them. Mmm, appetizers.

To find a restaurant for dinner, we used a tried and true method. Wander the streets. Look around. Hmmm, that place looks nice. And since it was a place that sold meat on a stick, we were sold! Plus, their specialty was something Sendai is famous for - cow tongue. So, we had tongue sashimi for appetizers, followed by various meats and veggies on sticks. Yummy!

We were woken up in Tōya by the massive rolling wave of Angela.  Futons make that entirely too difficult, but I suppose it is one of the hazards of sleeping on them… no cover against the roiling violence of a sister.  After beating her into submission with a hail of pillows, we got ready to move out and went downstairs to have breakfast at the Ryokan and then left for the bus station.  Once there, we spent some time locating the correct bus back to the Tōya train station… train schedules are quite a bit easier to read than bus schedules; but eventually Angela and I came up with the same time from two independent sources of information, so we were pretty confident it was correct… and thankfully it turned out to be, as the bus that we caught got us to the station 8 minutes before our scheduled departure.  It turned out to be lots of time; but still is a little closer than we wanted to cut it.

We took the train to Hakodate, which was a very nice trip along the coastline of Hokkaido.  Once there we checked into a nearby hotel (we knew the next morning was going to earlier than usual, due to the trip to Sendai, so we wanted a hotel close to the train station) and immediately headed for the pentagonal fort that had been the Tokugawa loyalists last stand against the Meiji troops.  Along the way, we chose a restaurant that we thought the guidebook was directing us to, but we’re really not sure… because we still don’t know the name of the place that we ate.  It was a little bit off of the main road, but noticeable because it had an aquarium of live squid out front (no pictures of that, sorry).  In any case, the restaurant was great service and food!

Dad had a beer and a grilled fish that he and Ma were able to subdue with joint co-operation.

Angela had squid.  No doubt one from the tank outside, the poor little cutey.

The fort was just down the road, and we headed there forthwith after lunch.  There isn’t much left of it, but it looks to have been quite impressive at one point in time.  You can rarely see the original stone-working, but what there is looks very well done.

The moat surrounding the outer perimeter of the fort — viewed from above, this forms the pentagonal shape.

Some of the original stonework, partially obscured by trees.  The fort would be much more impressive in the spring, I believe, because 4,000 sakura (cherry blossom) trees have been planted around the fort and its area, which would be very impressive to see during full bloom.  One time I’ll hit Japan at the right time to see it… next time.

Mom and Dad under some of the foliage that currently lords over the fort.

We wandered through the fort a bit more, and then we saw the cannons.  They were remnants of the original fort and looked interesting; and we only had to wait a little while for the area to clear so that we could take this picture.

There was no sign saying we couldn’t.  I swear.

After the fort we were somewhat at a loss where to go… the only other thing on our list of things to do in Hakodate was the nightview, and it wasn’t yet late enough to warrant going up the tram to the top of Hakodate-yama to see it.  Luckily we ran across a sign for “the cape”… and we were off!  After a street-car ride and about 1.5 km of walking we ended up at the end of the cape, which turned out to be quite the scenic spot.  There are a variety of photos in the album; I will just choose a few of them here…

Angela and Mom out on the rocks at the end of the cape.

The cape, with a lowering sun behind it.  The sun was setting the whole time, which leads to my favourite picture of the bunch…

The sun setting behind the isle of Hakodate, across the Tsugaru straights.  I wanted to wait around for the sun to actually set, but it was still up in the sky enough that we had some time to burn, so we decided to head for the top of Hakodate-yama and try to see the sunset up there.  We headed out, and we actually managed to see a shrine dedicated to the fallen retainers of the Tokugawa and a Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine along the way.  Hakodate is one of those cities where you cannot round a corner without running into something historic.

We made it to the tram and to the top of Hakodate mountain before the sun had finished setting, but unfortunately by that time the horizon had clouded up, so I don’t have any fantastic pictures to add of that. :(  The nightview of Hakodate from Hakodate-yama was certainly magnificent, though!

The city of Hakodate, bracketed by the Tsugaru straights on either side.

After checking out the night view we headed back down the tram and back into the city proper, heading back towards our hotel… but then we were struck by a religious epiphany as we contemplated supper.

The Church of Beer.  Normally I am not one to be very religious; but if there is one thing that would make me so… Angela can still feel its warmth deep in her soul.  It’s actually a micro-brewery inside, and we ended up sampling multiple different beers, but the ones that really stick in my mind were Green Apple Beer (it was OK) and Grapefruit Beer (it was good).  Why oh why don’t they bottle these things for export?

It was getting late, however, and we knew it would be a long travel day tomorrow for the trip from Hakodate right through to Sendai, so we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

Have managed to be un-Dellz0red in Sendai!  See the posts that have been done.  :)

Currently we are in Hakodate (tomorrow we head for Sendai, leaving Hokkaido for the main island of Honshu).  We had full intention of using this time to post about the vacation thus far, but the hotel provides Dell workstations for people to use (of all things), and for whatever reason they are not recognizing any of my USB dongles.  So no pictures… and without pictures to discuss I find that I don’t know what to write about!

So what we are going to do is try again from Sendai tomorrow and see if we can get things working.  I’ll leave you with these teasers, one for each day that we have been here:

1. Sapporo, Hokkaido - Welcomed by a well-known Japanese hero.
2. Otaru, Hokkaido - No snow (yet), but we went skiing.
3. Toya, Hokkaido - Quite the steamy undertaking.
4. Hakodate, Hokkaido - “Hey… see that sign?” quoth Herman, in The Simpsons.

Andrew, if you are reading this… practice the following saying for your arrival later this week:

Hiragana: もうひとつおねあいします。

Romaji: mou hitotsu onegai shimasu

Sound-alike: moe he-taught-sue oh-ne-gai she-moss

Trust me,　you shall need it.

So, we left Otaru in the morning, and unfortunately had to backtrack to Sapporo. But still, that was only about 45 minutes on the train - gosh, I love the trains here! We took the train the Tōya station, but then had to figure out what bus to take to Tōya Onsen, which is actually where all the fun stuff is. Luckily, a nice bus driver took pity on us, so we managed to get there, find a ryokan, drop off our bags, and get some food. Remi and I were craving ramen by this point, so Mom and Dad got to have their first ramen meal at a very nice shop where the proprieters seemed quite interested to see foreigners during the off-peak season. Mmmmm!

Tōya has two volcanoes near it - Shōwa Shin-zan and Usu-zan, which is of course why we decided to go there. After lunch, we tried to figure out how to get to the ropeway, and after much wandering around finally learned that the buses stop running after October 15. So, we cabbed it. After a cable car ride and a bit of a walk, this is what we saw…

Hee hee! Steamy! 

Of course, then we had to walk back (in time for the cable car, as Mom really didn’t want a repeat of Tengu Mountain. Okay, probably none of us did), up the 707 stairs. Ow.

By the time we got back, a cloud was beginning to descend on the mountain. See the little lone tree that survived the original volcanic massacre? (Okay, probably it started growing afterwards, but I prefer to think of it as a mutant tree, growing strong off of sulphuric fumes.) 

While we were waiting for our cab on the return trip… Remi tried some Bubble Man II! 

Here’s the tasting… 

It’s delicious! :D 

We returned to the ryokan in time for a massive, delicious meal.

We were going to go for a walk following the meal, but as it was pouring rain we just went upstairs and had a nice soak in the ryokan’s mineral baths before going to sleep in our nice futons - on tsunami mats, as Dad calls them.