From Osaka to Nagoya

The day after the Sumo match consisted of preparing for Nagoya: after today I would stay at couchsurf hosts for four nights, so little chance to do laundy. So doing this in the hostel was first on the list. While waiting for the drier to finish I was also chatting with Yuko, because I would like to visit Kobe, her hometown, as well. However, by the time the laundry was finished the time windows was way too small: Yu, my couchsurf host in Osaka, would pick me up at his local station at 18:30.
So instead of going to Kobe I went into Osaka to shop for some gifts for Yu, and Nao, his wife. She has just started baking cookies (and she makes really beautiful ones) so I got her a small cookiecutter (in the shape of an elephant, too bad I couldn't find any tulips or windmills), and a bottle of wine for Yu and to share together. After that I got something to eat and did a little of people watching in Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori. These are very, very busy shopping streets for, mainly, teenage girls. This is what I mean with busy:

And since there are so many people, they also try to advertise a lot:

Some more pictures can be found on picasa. They're also mainly of weird Japanese stuff again. Like people in mascotte suits to promote their products, such as this crab for a crab-sushi place:

Osaka 3: People watching

At around 17:30 I picked up my bag from the coin-lockers in the station, to get on the local train to the sub-urb where Yu and Nao live. With some asking around I eventually got the to right train, and off at the right station as well: pfew :-). A little wait and there was Yu to pick me up. 

Yu and Nao are a married couple in the end of their 20's and like to meet foreign people every now and then. It was kind of unlucky that my schedule did not allow a weekend stay, due to that Yu and Nao could only host me for one night in their busy working week, which of course is awesome. When we arrived at their apartment Nao was already cooking a really nice Japanese dish. It was 'Schol' of which I don't know the English name, and have forgotten the Japanese name. With it we had a vegetable that I didn't know (sorry, I have also forgotten its name), however it was a kind of cross between broccoli and celery, created in China. It all tasted very well!

We had a nice discussion about Nao's plan for her cookies, Yu's work as a plant design supervisor, and the state-of-the-art in 3D printing (Engineers...). We also compared Japan and the Netherlands, apparently, in the Netherlands we have 28% more off-time, and earn (GBP per person) 20% more. So this working pressure in Japan is really a huge problem, which is not even delivering anything good either! Sadly for the Japanese, no one in their political system is doing anything about it. We went to sleep quite early: Yu has to get up at around 06:30 to get to his work, and I had a busy schedule to go to the Osaka Aquarium and afterwards to Nagoya. 

The morning started by once again going to the station to drop my bags in a coin-locker. However, it was now 07:30 in the morning: so right in the middle of rush-hour. This means long (orderly) queues on the station (aligned for each train door), and a squeeze inside:

At the station I dropped by small backpack into the coin-locker and went for Osaka aquarium. This was on the must-see list because they have two whale sharks there and it is apparently one of the best aquariums in the world. Most of the pictures will be in on Picasa because I don't want to bore you with a ton of fish-pictures. However, just a few striking things:

Because it was a weekday there were several Japanese schoolclasses in the aquarium. The Japanese are normally very quiet and reserved. For instance in the metro, where everyone is quiet, or in the supermarkt where you want to pass someone: then you just stand and wait until the person moves out of the way instead of saying something. In the Netherlands a primary school teacher would ask his children not to make too much noise and he himself would also not be shouting in a public place. However, the Japanese schoolteacher was even louder than the children themselves, he was shouting instructions, shouting explanations about the fish, shouting names, etc. Really strange to see this.

The Japanese penguins are better trained than the schoolchildren. Before they get their fish they have to be weighed, so they formed an orderly queue in front of the balance.

The whaleshark being fed. There was actually only one instead of two, and it has a skewed dorsal fin and is continually swimming circles in the too small tank. Coming back from the aquarium I think it might have been the last one I have visited... seeing the animals in their natural environment and letting seeing them be determined by fate.

One very cool display in the aquarium was the section with jellyfish. These are some very alien but graceful creatures! All in all I ended the visit with a mixed feeling because of the animal welfare. Especially the whale shark tank was too small, and also seeing the same dolphins we had seen in New Zealand in a small tank instead of out in the ocean, jumping out because they were enjoying the waves from the boats. The speed at which they could swim in the tank was much slower. Like I said: this is probably the last aquarium I have visited.

Even though this post is already quite long, it is far from over. After the visit to the aquarium I discussed visiting Kobe with Yuko again, but as it was a very, very rainy day, this was not a good day for sightseeing. So immediate change of plan: head to Nagoya now. Book a ticket for the Shinkansen, and off I go:

At the station in Nagoya I just wanted to store all of my luggage in a coin locker, instead of last time, when I wanted to get my small backpack out after 3 hours. Since there was only one (smaller) locker left, I had to get creative and fit all my stuff into the locker by half-unpacking lots of stuff. This is one of the key backpacker skills which I succesfully acquired:

Ryuji, my couchsurfing host, is also a working Japanese man, so he would pick me up at around 19:00. I used the time waiting in Nagoya for exploring the station (and the huge mall inside it) a little bit, as the weather in Nagoya was just as bad as in Osaka. A few impressions:

Inside the 10-story department store is a market level. Very busy, lots of fresh food: good idea to combine this.

Did I mention it was bad weather? I had a beer halfway this building on an outside terrace (with terrace heaters)

Busy meeting point in Nagoya station.

After hanging around a little at the station it was time to head for Ryuji's station. He picked me up, we dropped my bags of at the house and we went out to get some nice Japanese food. We had a good talk about, what now are, the usual subjects: career, love, cultural differences. Once again the night ended early because Ryuji had to leave at 08:00 to get to work. 

All the pictures of this day here:

Osaka 4: Aquarium, trip to Nagoya

Cultural learnings of Japan for make...

After a sunday night of clubbing you can understand that my monday did not start at 09:00 am. Yuko, a Japanese couchsurf host had agreed to meet me in the afternoon to show me around Osaka (even though she is from Kobe). We met up at the station and visited various cafe's in the Umeda area. While seeing Osaka was nice, it was also very interesting to have another good chat with a Japanese person. Yuko is actually planning on emigrating to the Philippines next week to work for a local NGO. An enormous decision of course so we had some good discussion on that. One of her major reasons is the Japanese working culture: she has no desire to spend her working days only working and sleeping, while getting more and more stressed and burned out. Sounds like a great attitude! We had a good talk about work, life, and the differences between our lives and cultures.
Besides some good talk we also had some great food. Yuko took me to a Japanese confectionary place where we ate some tradional Japanese sweet stuff. I had some kind of jelly + bean powder and she took red bean paste with ice cream. Both tasted very good! Later in the evening we had dinner at a Japanese restaurant where we tried various skewers: amongst others green asparagus, Japanese mushroom and bacon rolls with plum sauce. Once again: everything tasted great!
During the evening we also visited Umeda Sky building, a space inspired building with a great relaxing and skyline viewing area on the top floors. Unlike other viewpoints this place had a very relaxed atmosphere, was so big that it never feeled crowded, and sold cheap coffee and snacks which you could take with you to any of the windowside bars. Just a few pictures of the day because it was a short day and mostly spent talking.

A section of skyline, the red thing on the left is a ferris wheel 

(mounted inside and on top of a building)

Umeda Sky building

Yuko on top of Umeda sky

More Osaka pictures here

Osaka 1: Umeda with Yuko

From the guys at the hostel I learned that there was actually a Sumo tournament going on in Osaka (I had checked this in Tokyo because I wanted to go, but in Tokyo there was no tournament while I was there). In Osaka I was very lucky because a tournament is only held once a year there (and lasts two weeks). To buy unreserved tickets you have to be at the counter at 08:00 in the morning. So with a totally screwed up bio-rhythm and some searching in the Osaka labyrinth I arrived at the 'prefectural gymnasium' to buy my tickets. Cool stuff: there was actually a drummer on top of the building in a little hut, announcing the tournament with his drum:

The building entrance was also outfitted with all kinds of flags and, funny thing, the first sumo wrestlers were also coming in (just by foot, on the sidewalk, no artist entrance here). The way the tournament works is that all wrestlers have to perform each day. The lowest class starts early in the morning, the middle class around 15:00 and the top class at around 17:00. I haven't understood anymore of the details, except that score is kept of your wins and losses and that this determines your ranking. The highest ranking players perform last and the best one cannot be wrestled from his position, but is expected to retire once he starts performing badly.

Anyway, more Sumo later on, in the morning I just bought tickets, but didn't go in to watch yet (one re-entry is allowed). I had more touristy things to do: visit Osaka castle, Tsutenkaku tower and tennoji park.

Osaka castle is a beautiful castle, comparable to other castles of the period (Himeji for instance, which is currently under reconstruction). The castle has burned down a number of times, and the castle grounds have been reshaped a number of times by various lords. What is there today is one of the latest restaurations. The castle grounds are very spacious and beautiful, and is surrounded by the business districts of Osaka, making for some surreal pictures.

Inside the castle is an exhibition about the builder and his family. Most of the descriptions were in Japanese, so I didn't learn vary much. Only that he was the first to unite Japan under one name, but his adopted son betrayed almost everyone he dealt with, resulting in this swift death, and therewith the family name. That is why it is not one of the names we associate with Japanese history. 

The other must-see in Osaka is the Tsutenkaku tower. A tower modeled on the Eiffel tower, in the middle of a eating/snacking area. I don't know why this is in the must-see list: the area looks kind of rundown, except for the food, which looks excellent. The tower itself is not beautiful at all. As the view from the Umeda Sky building, as well as from the top floor of the castle were really fantistic I didn't feel like shelling out more money for a skyline, so I passed the tower by and went directly to Tennoji park, which was a tip from a local I met in the Kyoto hostel.

This park was not so stunning as the parks in Kyoto, but it did have a beautiful balance and restfulness to it. Especially with the busy city surrounding it so close by. I got the feeling that a lot of the (old) people in the park were there to find some kind of solace, most of them looked sad and lost. In one of the small sitting shacks inside the park I had lunch, and as I was eating I noticed a kingfisher ('IJsvogel'). It was sitting on a small branch in the garden above the pond some 5m away. It caught a few fish and moved around to two other spots. This was truly an amazing sight to behold: the golden color of the bird, the flash of azure when it flew up, and this all in the backdrop of a beautiful garden: totally zen. As I didn't want to get my camera with my lunch hands I didn't take it out until it was too late: the bird had moved on, so I can share only the description with you :-(.

After this restful experience it was time to rush to the Sumo matches. At 14:45 the middle class of wrestlers would move in, with all the ceremony that is associated with that, so I wanted to be there at the time. Navigating Japanese metro is now easy, so I enjoyed finding my way and knowing that I would be on time. Getting out of the subway I discovered one of the secrets of Sumo wrestlers weight:

Notice the Sumo wrestler under the 'o'

At the entrance to the gymnasium there was quite a lot of commotion: lots of people, camera's, police. It was clear that people were excited! I stayed to watch a little, missing the first ceremony (I was surely on time for the one with the highest class), it was fun seeing the people cheer for wrestlers and celebrities of which I had no idea who they were (but I happily cheered with them). Once inside I was shown my seat by someone who hardly spoke English, getting me almost lost by leaving me one floor below the entrance door instead of at the door. However, with some exploring I did find the entrance and got to my seat by asking another assistant. Before discussing seating, let me first show you the arena (this is near to the final fight, it wasn't this full at the start).

Seating pricing is cheaper depending on your distance and alignment to the ring (dohyo). Front row seats facing the front can be very expensive, and the further and more to the side you get the cheaper. My ticket cost 2000 yen which is the cheapest you can get ;-). There are also box seats, which consist of four cushions in a small rectangular area. Four people sitting crosslegged can barely fit into it, and I saw some Japanese just laying in them all by themselves. For my 2000 yen I got a normal seat which was a lot more comfortable.

For the rest it was just your normal sporting event: get some beer and peanuts, enjoy the action and the emotion in the crowd, except for this time I understood little of the rules. The rules for the fighting are pretty simple, but actually, most of the time is spent on all kind of ceremonies and rituals of which I understood little. A lot of it has to do with impressing the opponent probably. I can describe a few of the events:

East side wrestlers entering the arena

Presentation (?) of the east side fighters

The best(?) east side fighter showing his strength(?) before this round of matches starts

A fighter throwing salt on the dohyo before starting the fight

Final seconds before the fight starts

Something I didn't show is all the moves and handclapping before the actual wrestling starts. The wrestlers go to the final move position some three times while clapping, stamping, throwing salt in between before they go once again for the final position. All the while there is sweepers cleaning the salt away, singers announcing the fights, and the referee taking up position on one or another stance. Please comment if you know more about it (or had some more time to look it up on the google).

Action!

That's gonna hurt

The final winner of this day celebrating his victory by waving a bow around (very, very fast)

It's fun to zoom in on a few of the full resolution pictures (link at the end of this page) and look at the faces of the onlookers. There's a lot of excitement while the fight is going on, which is great to see and experience, especially as you don't see Japanese display this in daily life. All in all it was a fun night, something to remember for sure.

Osaka 2: Sightseeing and Sumo

Time travel

A strange title today, but that was because yesterday was a very strange day: my flight from Nagoya to Honolulu departed at 22:05 in the evening the 15th, and arrived at 10:00 in the morning of march 15. The flight itself took 7 hours, so basically the 15th of march consisted of 33 hours! Now, I didn't see any wrinkles disappear or, my hairline expand so I don't think it made me any younger, however, it is kinda a good revenge for my too short birthday :-).

Besides the actual time travel, I also have to do some mental time travel: I am about a week behind with my blog posts so this week I will post one each day, to get up to par again. But first: the view from the office:

To the coast:

To the ocean: 

But now, on to Osaka, for my four days of adventures there:

It was kind of late on my last night in Kyoto, but luckily the travel time to Osaka is short, so I didn't have to get up that early. Walking around with the backpack was heavy, so I got on the subway from the hostel, and also in Osaka I immediately got into the subway to avoid walking around with 25kg+ of luggage. This time the map proved to be easier to interpret: I could find my way to the hostel in one go! The hostel itself however was not that great: very helpful staff, but the sleeping room was in a 'carport' with very small curtains providing a complete lack of privacy. Furthermore most of the guests I spoke to were kinda 'to themselves'. Well, a good contrast with Kyoto, and since I would go couchsurfing not a problem at all. 

First thing on the agenda was to go to Nara. Nara was another of Japans capitals (wikipedia), and therefore has many old buildings. But it is also famous for its park with deer. These are very dangerous:

These deer have become so aggressive and tame because all the tourists feed them. As it was a sunday, there were also a lot of (mainly Japanese) tourists around today, making the park feel like a shopping street in Tokyo.

Besides the deer there is one other attraction that everyone comes to visit: a temple with a giant buddha inside. The statue, and especially its age make this a very impressive place. 

I walked through the rest of the park, but didn't find any really interesting things anymore. I did however find some Japanese working on a strange kind of scaffolding (see below). As I was getting kinda tired I went to find some coffee on the way back to the train. Besides coffee I found a seismic museum displaying some interesting demo's with regard to foundations and building dampeners. There was also a chair where you could get strapped into to experience some of Japan's famous earthquakes. I didn't try but did enjoy seeing some teenagers and children get 'shaken'.

When I got back in the hostel I had a look at some leaflets to find out if there were any special things going on in Osaka and I found out what the scaffolds were for. They are actually torches, which are carried by monks around the temple at sunset only this week.... that caused some curses because I left Nara around 17:30 while the procession takes place at 19:00... oh well, too bad.

The evening in Osaka was spent behind the laptop, choosing a travel schedule for Hawaii, finding a hotel, flights, all the while chatting on the phone to arrange a meeting with a couchsurfer to show me Osaka. By the time I am nearly finished I get to talking with a (French speaking) Belgian guy. We decide to hit town together to get something to eat and get a few drinks. Our Japanese neighbors are once again very helpful with ordering stuff via iPad, and also with tips for where to go after dinner (turn right at the H&M). We especially didn't order any french fries, to keep to local customs, and there you go: our neighbors eating french fries (with chopsticks for fun). 

We did notice we were being discriminated by the staff: the Japanese guests received 'kroepoek' (shrimp crackers) for free when entering, and also the first toast (Kampai!) was made by the staff (so loud the whole restaurant could hear it). We received neither. This is probably because the staff is not confident enough to try this in English, but it did feel a little strange anyway. 

After dinner we decided to follow the advice of our (young) neighbours. Ofcourse we had to check with other people (our age) on the street a few times to feel confident enough that indeed, this was the area to go. We walked down the street a few times (21:00 sunday night) and did find a lot of drunk people, but most looked like they were heading home. In the end we decided to go for club 'Pure', but after asking the doorman if it was busy he truthfully answered that it was not. He even gave us the tip to head for bar 'zero' around the corner, as that was a nicer place..... These Japanese and their honesty :-). Zerro proved to be an Irish pub, but this time a real Japanese one. The bartender was great and chatted with us for a bit and the place was also full of locals. After a few beers we decided to try pure again, just to reward the doorman for his honesty.

Once inside the place was a strange mix of hip-hop and strip club. There were (very amateurish) pole dancing girls, a lot of japanese in weird hip-hop outfits, and a DJ (shouldn't that be MC?) playing rap music. However, two drinks for free for the 1000 yen entry fee, so when we noticed that that included liquor (rum-coke, or wodka red-bull for +100 yen or 70 eurocent) we weren't complaining. The place started filling up more and more, and also the music turned more and more towards dance/techno (with the same hiphoppy, baggy sports outfits, sunglasses, baseball caps crowd). The volume also increased to volumes that were really damaging ears, so halfway the night I put in my ipod headphones to ensure that I could still hear when 60+. Anyway, we had a great night on the dance floor and ended up taking the taxi back to the hostel at around 04:30. Not bad for a sunday night!

Full picture set for Nara here:

Day 0 Osaka: Nara

More Osaka next time, expect some weighty entertainment!

Kyoto:temples, temples, party, temples, temples, temples 2/2

After bringing back the bike I discussed what a good place to eat would be with Hiro, one of the people working for the hostel. In the end we decided to go for a bite and a beer together. Hiro has studied in Kenya for a year and will go to France at the end of this year. He is a quite an entrepreneurial Japanese guy and we had a lot of good discussions on the differences between Japanese and Western culture.
We continued our discussions on the local variant of the 'Irish pub', which was another nice illustration of cultural differences :-). I'll add a section with pictures of strange impressions to the end of this blog post again showing a few. Hiro's shift at the hostel started at 22:00pm so we left early so that he could get to work. Because it was friday night I discussed the plans for the rest of the evening with the other people in the Hostel, and in the end only me and Anas, a Moroccan guy were brave enough to go to the club (the Japanese guys convinced each other that this would be 'dangerous' as there were 'bad men' at the club). We asked the Hostel personnel where we should go and their answer was quite unanimous: kawaramachi street.
We took the metro that way and started asking people on the street where we should go. The answers were not that unanimous but 'Butterfly' was the answer we heard most, so that's where we went. 500 Yen entry fee and a free drink, nice beats and a nice crowd: good choice. First cultural difference: almost all the music was from the time I was 18, we heard for instance: two unlimited, daft punk (around the world), Danzel - put your hands up in the air, etc.

For us Europeans the crowd did not consist of 'dangerous men': just your usual party crowd. We stayed in the place until closing time, met up with some crazy people on the street afterwards and joined up with a Japanese couple to the next bar. We talked over a shisha, had some fun with the locals and met some more travellers who took us to the next club. This was a shady kind of place which we left after a little while. We walked back to the hostel and even at 05:00 am you couldn't cross a red light without checking whether any taxi's would hit you if you did this. Note on safety in Japan: we saw at least four girls walking back home unaccompanied at 05:00am in the morning: great to be in a place that does not have a lot of crime.


You will probably expect this, but the following day did not have a morning for me :-). I took it easy and had a 'balancing day' for most of the day: updating finances, finally making a picture selection and starting this blog post. Somewhere in the afternoon 'the German guys' Flo and Fabian who I had talked to before came back to the hostel, with the plan to leave for Fushimi Inari shrine in 45 minutes. This place was also on my list, so I decided to join them.
Fushimi Inari is famous due to the 'Memoires of a Geisha' movie, in which the red arches play a role. I have still to see the movie, but it was a cool place to visit anyway. We went there at dawn, due to the nice view you can then have of the city, higher up the mountain (hill really). The place being completely dark except for the path under the arches also gave the place a nice kinda spooky atmosphere on the way down again.

The day ended with a nice dinner in a restaurant (about 100m from the hostel), where ordering your food was done via a tablet. This had pictures, but all text and pop-ups were in Japanese which was sometimes challenging, but with a little help from the very friendly serving girl we did manage to get some food. The english translation of the menu was not really that helpful as you can see later on.
A larger selection of the pictures of my last day in Kyoto can be found here:
Day 4: Kyoto - Fushimi Inari

Besides all these touristy activities I will once again give an overview of Japanese stuff that comes across as strange to me.

The title alone would be enough to ensure very little box-office success in the Netherlands.

Every roadblock or small piece of construction has a guard in front of it, apologizing to the general public about this incursion into their public space. Even though it is totally unnessary they will point you the way around the obstacle. Sometimes there's even 3 people to help you navigate around a 50cm obstacle in a 3m sidewalk.

More games, but this time not only in the arcade hall, but on front of it, out in the street.

Someone with a better knowledge of Japan should really write a post about the term 'Kawai', I am not sure if these pajamas are Kawai, or just crazy. They're basically one piece pluche pajamas (in adult sizes) in the shape of bears, bunnies, etc.. strange!

Kawai by the way means cute, and is something that is really important for Japanese girls to act. Cute as in adorable, shy and a little giggly, but as I already mentioned, I don't know enough about the subtleties to really comment correctly on it.

To me this comes across as a culture clash: a shrine in the middle of a mall. Not so in Japan.

Prayer boards/offerings you can buy at a temple. They've got cheap paper ones, or expensive objects, each object with its own function (this goes for the shrines as well). The topic of religion really also deserves its own blog post.

A sign on a TV in an Irish pub. It basically says that the staff are very sorry, but in case a disaster strikes, they won't be able to display any matches on TV... and they actually seriously mean this: hilarious!

Saturday morning, waiting for the metro... and ofcourse Kermit and Tigger are also there...

English translated menu: write the english name of the vegetable or meat on top of the picture that already shows it: very useful! ;-)