So let me introduce the special guest, Jon! He was here for 2 weeks in September and I asked him to write a guest entry in my journal... and what follows is all his. Well, all his except for a few little editorial comments by me, but only in the most appropriate places, of course ;-) Read on, and if you'd like my more elaborate version they're here too.
to Alexa's version of the first week
to Alexa's version of the second week
Rain. Really annoying, I noticed. I thought before I got into all the wonderful things about my trip to Japan I'd get the one thing that went oh-so-wrong out of the way. Now, before leaving I'd seen a weather graph for Japan that showed September was the second rainiest month after May, I think [ed. note: June, you twit]. Well, I'm glad I didn't come in May. This, being my 12th day here, is also the 11th day it has rained, as I sit here under a shelter at Inokashiraonshi Park protecting myself from - you guessed it - rain. Actually to tell you the truth the rain hasn't probably been that awful, just frequent, and I think the whole Mt. Fuji typhoon rain early in the trip has just psychologically scarred me so that I cringe whenver I feel the first drop hit me.
But what a place Tokyo is. Where do I start? I think the best way to do this is to start listing the things I remember/enjoyed the most, which is going to be difficult to discern seeing as everything was so interesting.
THE CLIMB: How could I ever forget all the different stages that my mind went through? How could I ever forget the sheer state of fridgedness and convulsive shivering at the summit? How could I ever forget the entire process of not knowing where to go next in between the 6th and 7th stations, realizing what we had to do to keep going, and then the actual scaling itself! I tell ya, that entire Mt. Fuji experience had it all. Here's a quick summary of my feelings, conveniently broken into Fuji stages:
5th station: excitement, anticipation
6th station: relief, more excitement
7th station: exhileration, wetness
8th station: wetness˛, frustration, hope
9th station: "oh-please-stop-f@*!#!@-pouring!"
10th station: sense of accomplishment, absolute immobility, stupidity, happiness, and INSANITY due to conditions
Oh yes, and how can I forget spending $150 in one day on taxis? Ah well, it was well worth the experience, I'd do it again anytime (preferably not in a typhoon though) [ed. note: Oh good! Someone to climb it with ME! How 'bout next weekend?]
MOTLEY CRUE: Yeah I was wondering whether my pink hair would be an absolutely outrageous appearance to the Japanese, but a quick trip to Yoyogi Park and its surrounding area quickly eased my mind. Spiked yellow hair about 15 inches off the head, head-to-toe fishnet outfits and the infamous "Grease" dancing team were among the more memorable costumes. What a wonderful place, where all this goes on right around the corner from buildings where everyone wears a (wrinkled) suite and tie. To me that was perhaps the most obvious peculiarity of this city - the fact that you an literally within 15 minutes see shrines and temples built much before Canada was evvven a country, parks with beautiful green grass and precisely manicured trees, businessmen riding to work on a bike with their briefcase in the front basket, any number of people any age carrying carrying palm-sized cell phones, 53-floor skyrises lining the streets, women wearing traditional kimonos, little back alleyways with nobody in sight, little main street with ONLY people in sight. The high-tech "go-go" side as I've heard it called and the history-laden peaceful side mix so naturally that it makes for an incredible range of experiences every day. Anyway I'm getting away from my list thing here.
CALLIGRAPHY: What an amazing Japanese experience that most visitors would miss out on. I'm so glad Alexa's taking those lessons cause I loved trying it. It's so hard! I mean, when you look at Japanese calligraphy without having tried it, it looks hard enough. But you really don't get an understanding of how it all works until you see it for yourself in production. Cool!! Wow her sensei is sooo good. She would write one out in about 10 seconds and then I would try it in about 5 minutes. I got to make the kanjis for "Japan", and then "Jon" in katakana. The sensei kept saying "so so" throughout the evening, which means "yeah yeah" or "okay okay" but it also described my calligraphy, at best. That's alright it was really a lot of fun, and although I understood none of the language I was able to follow the topics almost all the time, since she used a lot of hand signals and stuff, and Alexa could translate what was necessary. She even made us food! Wicked Japanese food, such as sembei, green tea, a tempura (?) [ed. note: nope it wasn't tempura - some sort of an thing, tempura is a battered fish or something like that!] in sorta a waffle-like cover, and a rice and chesnut dish to take home! She was really nice, just as nearly everyone here seems to be. People who work at stores actually WANT to help you, to serve you, and they make a big deal out of it. I could go buy a pack of gum now and they'd wrap it up all fancy-like and give me the receipt of course!
THE T WITH A LINE ON TOP: Shinjuku station: 2 million people a day. One straight road in Hino: population, 8. Which one gave me problems, yes, the straight road. Anyway the most memorable part of getting lost was attempting to ask for directions to the post office without the benefit of a map or my handy-dandy few pages of Japanese sentences to go by. I actually managed to get the woman in the store to get out stamps, but then apparently she couldn't make the connection that it was the post office I wanted. The other time I got lost was en route to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, where again without a suitable map I had to make do, and eventually figured out I did the following:
BUDDHA CEREMONY: While roaming Hino I happened across some sort of Japanese ceremony in a temple, which appeared to be a ceremony paying homage to Buddha. After standing around outside watching for a minute, I decided hesitatingly to go in and sit in the Japanese calligraphy style [ed. note: it's called seiza, and it's REEEEEALLY hard!] alongside the others taking part. It was a really cool experience, I'm really glad I decided to do it. There were maybe 6 monks wearing green robes, and one head monk leading the chanting wearing purple. Practically throughout the entire ceremony they were all facing away from us who were sitting, so you couldn't see their faces. At one point, one guy in green came from the back and stood right in front of us, then rattled something off in Japanese. No idea. But everybody else got up and began to line up at one of the entrances to the actual shrine area where the monks were. Again I hesitated, after all, I still wasn't sure what it was I was participating in, and worried that they might find it offensive if I partook in this event. But an old Japanese man at the back of the line motioned me to line up in front of him, so I did. One of the monks at the door put a dab of some kind of clay dust on my palm, and then we all put our hands together in the prayer position and walked through the shrine area, stopping to pray at each statue. Anyway this whole ceremony rocked the house.
SHINJUKU PARK: I'm not even sure if it's actual name is Shinjuku Park, but you know what I mean. [ed. note: yep, that's the name!] Very, very beautiful scenery. I just wish it wasn't, ahem, pouring when I was there so I could've seen more and taken more pictures. But nevertheless awesome.
DA PALACE GARDENS: Man I'd hate to be a groundskeeper here, cause this area is HUGE and it's immaculate [ed. note: ew, I hate that word!]. We were wondering how they could even cut the shrubbery (nie!) in the middle since it couldn't be reached by hand. The famous bridge with the temple (?) [ed. note: palace, actually] in the background and the moat is actually as nice as it looks in pictures, and the sun even came out for one of my pictures so hopefully it'll turn out good. So far we've developed about 110 combined pictures and they're fabulous!
QUIKKO TRIP TO NIKKO: About 2.5 hours to get there, mabye more, for 1.5 hours there. Hmm.. was it worth it? Easily. The buildings at the Tosho-gu Shrine were by far the most amazing buildings I've EVER seen. Unbelievable. There's no way I could explain how detailed and colourful and brilliant they all were. Not even with pictures. I would have loved to stay in Nikko for say an entire weekend, but at least I got a taste of it. One of the buildings there (a gate, called the Yomei-mon) was actually so carefully planned and so much incredible detail was included during construction that the final pillar was actually purposefully installed upside-down! Man I could go on and on about this place but it wouldn't help - you just need to see it for yourself.
KABUKI: Another situation where I didn't understand a single word but it didn't matter. Really cool Japanese theatre. Fantastic costumes, interesting traditional props and actions (ie. wooden blocks, shouts from the audience referring to the characters' sort of kabuki acting sects at appropriate times), and surprisingly some pretty incredible stunts. Come to think of it the arcade in Ueno was also a neat place due to the fact the vendors vocally advertise their products to the packed street of people. Nothin' like that in Canada! Back to Kabuki - a really interesting 4.5 hours (yeah, it was really that long) that was manageable to follow (the main plot anyway) through the help of the English summary we got prior to the performance. Another real Japanese experience for me!
Well before I fill up the entire journal, I better stop at risk of missing something I really should have included. I hope the other places aren't jealous! I really did like everything though, I can safely say it was the best trip I've ever taken. To finish I'm gonna make a quick list of some of the little details I've noticed in my time here that I thought were strange/interesting, kay:
Well I know there are many more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Anyway, it's been a great trip, I can honestly say I enjoyed everything and it was well worth it. You were an amazing tour guide Alexa [ed. note: why thankya! Maybe I should switch outta math..], it really helped having you to tell me where to go and which experiences I just had to have while here. It was sooo much fun! I just wish I didn't have to go back to school now... Okay! Thanks for a great trip, and the honour of writing in your Pulitzer-prize-winning journal!
Jon Roegele, a.k.a. "the road to solving logic"
[Wednesday September 24, 1997]
•subway ticket process, especially the 'ticket vacuum' sooo cool
•everyone rides a bike, they even have bike parking lots!
•yes, even businessmen in suits ride bikes to work
•the fact that EVERYONE carries umbrellas, even in mist (although after seeing this weather I can't blame them...)
•everyone also has cell phones
•they have umbrella locks at museums and stuff!
•the toilets at Fuji... hole-in-the-ground style
•buildings and signs are designed more up-down than side-to-side, which makes streets look so much better
•everything is backwards, at least, when in doubt, do the opposite of in Canada (ie. driving)
•Alexa's kitchen appliances, all of 'em
•there are a lot of crows around
•the fact that they hand out travel packages of kleenex at subway stations
•the Sapporo beer free give-away on a street corner with girls
•I found a badminton shop! Like, it was actually on the sign - badminton. Wicked!
•the range of clothing that the population wears, you may think Canada has it all, but not quite
•the post office is on every map like it's some sort of national monument, yet I couldn't find the one I needed...
•Alexa lives beside a urinal factory [ed. note: I have yet to confirm this fact..]
•the garbage can per capita rate is about 1 can per 1,000,000 people, and yet they insist on wrapping even the cheapest piece-of-crap purchases in these bags and giving you the receipt...
•everybody seems polite, even if I don't understand them
•nobody packs meals to eat while out, but we did, except at kabuki, where everyone whipped out a rice dish except for us
•every ad consists of one or two people doing something strange, usually with wierd looks on their faces
•there is a store called 'Myashita'
•EVERY time you enter a store the clerks scream a welcom at you
•they put 'an' beans in everything!
•everyone seemed to think it ws the strangest thing that I was eating fish in the biggest fish market in the world
•Alexa's mysterious vanishing chin... (heh, heh...sorry)
•the cool way people here start biking
•they have 3L beer cans... in vending machines!
•there are separate pay phones for domestic and international calls, some domestic ones had prices broken down by distance! (ie. 0-20km, 20-30km)
•vegetable and fruit, $6 for 6 green oranges - no thankyou
•the spookily accurate fortune I got!
•some of the gas stations have the pumps hanging down from the ceiling!
•the corny subway music
email me (Alexa) at: sharp@sh.oda.epson.co.jp