Elaina Around the World: 2012

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Trip End Survey: Best and Worst Japan 2012

On our trip to Europe, Greg and I decided that we should rank various things best and worst. We saw some really great sites, stayed in some great hotels, and ate at a couple of great restaurants. But we also saw the worst of all of those things. We decided to do the same for our trip to Japan. The list below is a revised version of the one we used for our Europe trip 3 years ago. So here it is, the Best and Worst List 2012:

Illustrated Best and Worst of Japan 2012

Best historical thing: Hikone Castle

Hikone Castle

Best View: from vista point overlooking old village Shirakawa-go

Shirakawa-go

Best Hotel View: Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel, Tokyo

Worst Hotel View: Business Inn Tsuchiya, Nagoya

Best Hotel: Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel, Tokyo
Worst Hotel: Business Inn Tsuchiya
*Note that since this was a much shorter trip, we only stayed in 5 different hotels.

Best Toilet: Villa Fontaine Roppongi, Tokyo. I liked the warm seats.
Worst Toilet: Business Inn Tsuchiya, Nagoya (only Eastern hole-in-the-ground style toilets available). Note that the men's bathroom in particular was both unbearably disgusting and smelly.

Best Animal Encounter: feeding the deer in Nara

Greg feeding the deer

Best French-Inspired Pastry: pastry with fruit and cream (yums)
Worst French-Inspired Pastry: Mayonnaise and corn pastry

Most Brilliant Food Invention: Pancake sandwich (with margarine and jellied syrup filling)
Best Dessert: E - cheesecake from 7-11

Best Food Item: G - sushi and miso ramen / E - triangular rice thingies with spinach

Best Drink: C.C. Lemon Soda
Best Local Liquor: G - warm sake / E - shochu

Best Castle: Hikone Castle, Hikone
Worst Castle: Himeji Caslte, Himeji (but only because it is currently under construction and covered with a tarp)

Best Temple: Nishihonganji Temple, Kyoto

Best City: Tokyo
Worst City: Yokohama (not a bad city, just lowest ranked)

Best Restaurant: the izakaya we visited in Nagoya

Best Nightlife: Karaoke

Best Subterranean Experience: crazy huge underground cities in Tokyo attached to subway and train stations

Best-Preserved Old City: Shirakawa-go
Best Backdoor Destination: Shirakawa-go

Best Weather: Tokyo
Worst Weather: Kanazawa (freezing cold rain all day)

Most Interestingly Dressed Locals: Harajuku, Tokyo

Clothing shop in Harajuku

Most Relaxing Place: Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel, Tokyo
Least Relaxing Place: E - Business Inn Tsuchiya, Nagoya / Kyoto Imperial Palace park trying to eat food on a bench in freezing cold wind.

Scariest Moment: E - at Business Inn Tsuchiya when I realized there were no western toilets / G - none
Biggest Culture Shock: G - at Bunraku performance the women in the audience were dressed in fancy kimonos.
Cheesiest Tourist Trap: G - the cup of noodles museum in Yokohama / E - Guy wearing a castle suit, Osaka.

Guy wearing a castle suit in Osaka

Longest Distance Walked: New Year's Eve in Tokyo
Longest Travel Day: G - Traveling from San Francisco to Tokyo (21 hours) / E - Traveling from Austin to Tokyo (26 hours)

Best Inside Joke: "5 seconds"

Worst Hawker Experience: Chinatown, Yokohama (people kept trying to get us to come inside their restaurants and hand us fliers)
Biggest Revelation: E - the musical note button on the toilets makes a fake flushing sound meant to cover up other "toilet sounds" / G - "there are a lot of people in Japan"

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Home at Last

I've lived today, January 11th, twice (because Tokyo is 17 hours ahead of San Francisco). The first this morning G and I went to the Imperial Palace gardens in Tokyo, ate lunch at an Italian-ish trattoria, and got on the plane to return to San Francisco. The second this morning, we arrived at the airport, G went to work, and I went home, but later went to work.

And now we are now both home and ready for the sleep that eluded us on our planes. We have, for the first time in our lives, lived a day twice.

Going Back Home

Of the five hotels we stayed at, four required that we check out by 10am. We really could have used an extra hour at the hotel this morning for packing and resting up for the nine hour flight. Today, we left Tokyo; but not before we explored the Imperial Palace gardens.

View from the hotel room

We checked out of the hotel right at ten, having been warned of an automatic fee for staying past. The Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel was located very near the Imperial Palace, so we saved that destination for last. We basically crossed the street and arrived at the park surrounding the palace.

Like the palace in Kyoto, the Tokyo palace was unseeable and untouchable. The gardens, however, were available for pulbic use. Dozens of runners were using the patch circling the palace. The palace is ringed by parkland and the gardens are east of the palace and behind the watchful eye of a guard.

Imperial Palace parkland in Tokyo.

One of the problems with visiting Japan in the winter is that none of the gardens are very attractive; none of the flowers are in bloom and most of the trees have lost their leaves. Despite this emptiness, the gardens still held some surprises, including the base of a castle destroyed centuries ago and never rebuilt and a bansho (or samurai guardhouse) where we heard the grunts and groans of what sounded like a martial arts class.

Base of a castle destroyed long ago

Moat around palace with city in the background

We exited the gardens by the east gate. The next order of business was food. We hadn't eaten breakfast, and it was already noon. We managed to find an Italian trattoria popular with the lunch crowd from the nearby high rise office buildings. They vegetarianized one of the four meaty pasta dishes on their menu for me.

We finished our meal and hopped on the metro (we had managed to walk three stops from our hotel). We got back to our hotel, grabbed our bags, and hopped back on the metro to get to the train station to take the reserve only Narita Express to the airport.

We managed to make it to the airport, check in for our flights, return our Suica (metro) cards and the phone we rented, and say our goodbyes. We were not flying on the same plane; Greg's ticket was purchased by his company and we couldn't afford a ticket for me on the same flight.

My return flight wasn't nearly as horrible as the flight there. One of the first things I told Greg when I arrived in Japan is that I would have to stay there forever because I couldn't take another flight like that. But I survived. Perhaps the flight was bearable in part because of the interesting Canadian couple seated next to me. The girl cried, then stopped, then cried, and then the boy cried. I didn't get it because I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but the drama did make my journey more enjoyable. I spent much of the flight speculating about what was going on. I have no definite conclusion.

Greg and I met up at the airport (our flights left and arrived 30 minutes apart). We boarded the train at the airport. He got off in Burlingame to go to work and I went home. Home, sweet home.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Tokyo with a Side Trip to Yokohama

We had every intention of making today a marathon day, but it just didn't happen. I didn't get much sleep and Greg couldn't wake up. We finally managed to get up and get ready and left only a couple of hours later than we were planning to. I want to point out that I was ready soon after our scheduled departing time.

We took the metro from Hanzoman to Shibuya, then the train from Shibuya to the Sakuragicho train station (one stop after Yokohama). I had read that this station was closest to the sites, but we had primarily wanted to visit the Chinatown, and we would have done better to get off the train a couple of stations later.

Boat at the Maritime Museum and the Cosmo World ferris wheel,
both near Yokohama port.

However, Sakuragicho was very close to the Maritime Museum, Cosmo World, and the Cup of Noodles Museum (which was unfortunately closed).

Near the Cup of Noodles Museum, we discovered a tourist bus that stopped exactly where we wanted to go. We waited a few minutes for the next bus, hopped on, and paid our 100 yen each.

Chinatown, Yokohama

Chinatown is bordered by elaborate gates. The food and architecture in this district is different from the rest of Japan, but the people are more outspoken as well. In much of Japan, hawking services is not allowed, but in Chinatown, advertisement fliers were passed out at many corners and someone was standing outside each restaurant trying to convince people to eat in there.

Chinatown, Yokohama

Greg bought a steamed bun, but we held off on lunch until we returned to Tokyo. Most of the restaurant hawkers wouldn't let us get close enough to the large picture menus posted outside to look at them. And when we did get a rare glimpse of a picture menu, we couldn't tell what dishes, if any, contained no meat.

Chinatown, Yokohama

After wandering around the streets of Chinatown, and in and out of kitschy tourist shops, we checked the map and walked to the nearest JR train station. Our next stop was the Asakusa district in Tokyo, known for Senso-ji Temple.

Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo

The New Year holiday seems to be winding down in cities like Kanazawa. In Kanazawa, we walked by many temples that were in the process of dismantling their good luck charm sales tents and seemed to have gone back to their normal daily operations. However, the temple in Asakusa was still very much busy with activity.

Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo

Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo. I'm actually
not sure what this large shoe meant, but there
were Japanese people taking pictures of their
friends in front of it too.

Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo

Asakusa.

After visiting the temple, we wandered the streets popping in and out of little shops and booths selling everything from fans, to yukatas, to candies. We finished exploring and discussed what we would do the rest of the day.

Although we had a little daylight left, we were tired and so cut our day short and took the metro back to the hotel. We found dinner at a convenience store and spent the rest of the evening at the hotel watching Japanese TV.

Tomorrow we fly back home to San Francisco. I admit I'm a little sad.

Monday, January 9, 2012

The 10 Second Game

While in Tokyo and Kyoto, Greg and I played this game I dubbed the "10 Second Game" which turns into the "5 Second Game" while riding a train. My theory was that wherever you were in Tokyo or Kyoto, you were never more than about 10 seconds from a vending machine. On a moving train, no more than 5 seconds would pass between vending machine sightings. The object of the game was to see how long the 5 or 10 second rule lasted. The record was probably something like a minute for the train version which is insane when you think about it. At minimum, we would have to see 12 vending machines within a minute from our seats on the train. And we often saw many more than that.

Vending machines on a street corner near our hotel in Tokyo.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Nagoya City and Back to Tokyo

After the awesomeness of karaoke last night, we slept a little later this morning. Because check-out time was 10am, we still didn't get to sleep too much later. We hadn't yet seen Nagoya, and I wanted to see the castle at the very least. We checked out and left our bags at the hotel, then walked to the castle.

Nagoya Castle

The Ninomaru Palace was under construction, so we were only able to see a small exhibit explaining how the the palace is being rebuilt. The castle and the rest of the grounds, however, were open to visitors. We explored the grounds, bought a banana chocolate ice cream cone, then entered the castle (after the ice cream was consumed).

Nagoya Castle

The castle featured various exhibits on different floors. One floor was devoted to hand-painted door and wall panels, one showed replicas of the castle at different stages, and the top floor boasted many windows and a view of Nagoya city.

Nagoya Castle. The guys who built the castle wanted to

make sure they got credit for each stone they carried, so

they carved their symbol into their stones.

Nagoya Castle is most famous for the pair of golden dolphins located on the roof. One is male and the other is female, so the measurements and specifications of the two are different.

Like most of the castles we visited, Nagoya-jo had been rebuilt. The castle had been destroyed during World War II. Everything burned, including the dolphins. The dolphins were recast and placed atop the rebuilt castle, only removed twice since for expositions.

Replica of one of the golden dolphins.

People were lined up to pose for pictures with this golden dolphin replica. There were replicas in other parts of the castle as well. There was even one inside the castle that people could sit on and have their photo taken. The line for that dolphin was huge.

The time was getting late, so I said goodbye to the dolphins and Greg checked the map for the nearest metro station (which happened to be a kilometer or two away, not so near). We still had to travel back to Tokyo.

Yuri met us at the train station and we said our goodbyes. We left Nagoya on the 2.33pm hikari shinkansen. I didn't think it would take very long to get back to Tokyo on the shinkansen, but it actually did take us about two hours. I had remembered that it took about 2 1/2 hours to get from Tokyo to Kyoto, and this time we were traveling less distance.

By the time we arrived at our hotel, it was almost dark. We stayed at the Grand Arc Hanzoman on the west side of the Imperial Palace. After the inconveniences and problems of Business Inn Tsuchiya in Nagoya, Grand Arc Hanzoman was amazing. The 14 floor elevator ride was smooth, the toilets had warm seats, and we had an incredible view of the city.

View from our hotel room in Tokyo.

After unpacking a few things and trying on the slippers and robes the hotel provided, we discussed how we were going to spend the evening. Greg had been wanting to go to the Akihabara district, so after resting for about an hour at the hotel, we set out for the nearest train station (because our rail passes would cover the cost of the rail journey and because the rail line stopped at Akihabara). According to the hotel website, the nearest station was a 10 minute walk. They must have meant a 10 minute run, because the walk took us at least 20 minutes.

We made it to the train station and onto a train going toward Akihabara. We left the station through the "Electric Town" exit and were greeted by the lights of the multi-storied Sega arcade, manga shops, and electronics stores. Greg commented that this is where his people are.

Akihabara, Tokyo

Unfortunately, Akihabara is not a part of Tokyo that stays open late. Many of the stores started closing down shortly after we arrived, but not before I acquired a couple of new cutesy Japanese toys. Cell phone charms and key chains are all over shops in Japan and are always cute. I ended up with a mole inside a mushroom cellphone charm and a kitty cat key chain. Greg bought a couple of character key chains.

After picking up some dinner at a 7-11 (you can play the 10 Second Game with convenience stores as well as vending machines), we walked back to the JR station (Japan Rail) and boarded the next train going north. One stop later, we got off in Ueno.

Since it was late, we didn't venture far from the train station. The zoo and a couple of the national museums are located in Ueno, but the area we explored near the train station was a bit seedy. There were a lot of shops, restaurants, pachinko parlors, and a few massage halls. Pachinko is a form of gambling that is something like pinball combined with slot machines. Homeless people, invisible in most other areas of Tokyo, were visible there.

Only the pachinko parlors and massage halls were still open, so we didn't spend much time in Ueno. Near midnight, we entered the metro station adjacent to the train station and took the metro back to the hotel (since the metro station is closer to the hotel than the train station is).

KARAOKE!!

We were all starving by the time we arrived back in Nagoya after our day in Shirakawa-go. After we ate dinner at a local izakaya, we crossed the street and karaoked for a couple of hours.

How to karaoke in Japan

Step 1: Once you and your friends are in your rented karaoke room, select a song using the song book.

Step 2: Wait for the song to queue up and appear on the television screen.

Step 3: Pick up a microphone and start belting out some tunes.

Yuri and Greg

Note that no one cares about how good or bad a singer you are. In fact, you will be able to hear a bit of other people's performances through the wall.

Massa, Elaina, and Greg

Step 4: You will get a phone call on the in-room phone when your allotted time is almost up.

Yuri, Massa, and I

Step 5: Put down the microphone, get your stuff together, put on your coat, and walk out the door.

Yuri, Greg, and I

And there you go, how to karaoke in 5 easy steps.

Shirakawa-Go in Pictures

Today was such an awesome day! G and I spent the day with Yuri and her friend Massa. They rented a car and drove us to Shirakawa-go, a UNESCO world heritage site. Shirakawa-go features traditional gassho-zukuri farmhouses. "Gassho-zukuri" means "built like praying hands." Some are more than 250 years old.

The village is so picturesque! Every photo I took turned out well. So rather than using words to explain, I'll let the photos do the talking.