April 12 - Harajuku and Home

Only a half day today so we took a train down to Harajuku and went for a walk in the park to Meiji Shine. Unfortunately, the camera had enough because the card was full and the batteries died.

Afterwards, we attempted to see the Harajuku girls or the rockabilly dancers but it was too early for both. (This marks the third, and probably final, attempts I've made at seeing these and it never seems to work out.)

After that, a scant 16 hours of travel and we're home.

April 11 - Ueno and Shibuya

Almost out of time on this vacation and we're also almost out of energy.

After a late start we headed over to the Ueno district to see the local market under the railway tracks. Then over to Tokyo Tower after lunch, though only the ladies went up since I used to work in an adjacent office building on the 26th floor that actually looked down on the Tower.

Finally, Saturday night was spent seeing the bright lights of the Shibuya district, including taking on the famous "Pedestrian Scramble".

We spent a while trying to find a great burger place I found last time I was in Tokyo, but I couldn't remember exactly where it was so we had to settle for a different one. Then it was one more round of Karaoke (again, no videos). The price difference between Karaoke in the backwaters of Kigoshima compared to touristy Shibuya was incredible. Our singing was still terrible, though.

Tomorrow we head home.

April 10 - Akihabara and the Tokyo Dome

First on the agenda this morning was a wander around the Akihabara district for video games and general noise. We decided to try lunch in the official AKB48 restaurant, since they're our new favorite J-Pop band.

Sadly, we totally misinterpreted Japanese culture and discovered the restaurant was not filled with adoring tweener AKB48 female fans, but instead an almost exclusively male clientele in their twenties through forties, who stared mesmerized at the screens showing AKB48 in a constant loop. We decided to nickname it as "Creepy Japanese Hooters", since effectively it was just a teenybopper-themed maid cafe.

After killing a few hours in playing insane Japanese video games, it was time for a Tokyo Giants game (against the hated Tokyo Swallows). Nothing says "take me out ti the ball game" like beef raman and Japanese curry.

The game went into extra innings, but by the end of the 11th we had sat in undersized Japanese stadium seats as long as our butts could survive, and it was getting late so we headed out. Turned out the Swallows ended up winning it in the 12th. (Curse you, Swallows!)

One more full day in Tokyo and we're almost done...

April 9 - Back to Tokyo

Mostly a travel day today, as we made our way back to Tokyo, stopping over in Fukuoka to get our luggage.

In Tokyo we were met in the station by my workmates from our local office (or former workmates, since I wrapped up my job last week) for a nice dinner.

I've come here for work many times so it was nice to see the guys one last time.

April 8 - Kagoshima

This far south we’re not seeing many other tourists (read: white people) and we have become a novelty to some of the locals, especially with how tall I am: in Dazaifu a group of young men wanted to take a selfie with Victoria and me; in Kumamoto a local (English-speaking) set in for a long chat with me about where we were from and what we were doing there; when we got off the tram in Kagoshima a old man insisted on shaking my hand and seemed to want to settle in for a chat (though he made me nervous so we hurried on); and today a woman on the street seemed to want to practice her English with us (“Welcome! Sightseeing!”).

We headed an hour south to Ibusuki for the semi-famous, sand-bath on-sen where they bury you to your neck in volcanic sand, heated from below from the volcanic activity in the area.

The hot sand is meant to loosen your muscles and joints, and after a week of sharing undersized Japanese beds this treatment actually did a lot of good for our sore backs.

By the time we got back to Kagoshima it was getting a bit late in the day so we decided not to bother crossing the bay to visit the volcano. The weather was still grey and cloudy (obscuring the volcano) and apparently it’s tough to get around there without a car anyway. Instead we managed to find a whole neighborhood of good restaurants (unlike the night before) so we settled in for a tempura feast.

I made an offer to Victoria that I would buy her a brand new car on her sixteenth birthday if she would eat an entire unit of whatever was being brined in the bottom of this jar. She declined.

Afterwards it was still early so we decided to knock off an experience that we had planned to do when back in Tokyo: KARAOKE! In accordance with the International Tribunal on Karaoke for People Who Can’t Sing, there will be no videos or audio posted here, nor on Facebook, nor anywhere, ever.

(Except perhaps one day at Victoria’s wedding reception, unless I am sufficiently bribed…)

April 7 - Backpacking in Kyushu

Today we set off further south towards Kagoshima. Our guide at the tea ceremony two days ago had recommended visiting Dazaifu so we added it to our itinerary and set off early with the expectation that we’d have to figure out various modes of public transport along the way. Wanting to travel light, we ditched our luggage at the hotel and set off like true backpackers. (We’ll be coming back through Fukuoka in a few days.)

Two bus rides later and we arrived in Dazaifu to have a wander around the extensive Dazaifu Tenmangū (Shinto) complex.

 Nearby was the tranquil Buddhist Komyozenji Temple, which was much plainer but offered a Zen garden where we could become one with the universe.

Next we continued south towards Kumamoto. After an early error in attempting to board a school bus, we hopped a train, then a 2 km walk, then another train, then a Shinkansen, then a tram to arrive at Kumamoto Castle.

(There actually was a decent crowd there, but when we went to take our photo a statistically rare “parting of the waters” occurred and it looks like it is deserted.)

Another tram, another Shinkansen, then another tram and we arrived at our hotel in Kagoshima in the early evening. (At $37/night I was worried about what it would be like but it turned out to be fine; plain but functional and clean.) We headed out to find some dinner but had no luck at all since we were so far away from the normal tourist spots: no English menus, few restaurants with pictures of the food, and half of them seemed to be strip bars. (We later learned that our mistake was leaving the hotel and turning left; the next night we turned right and come across several streets of good, authentic restaurants.) In frustration we attempted to get a burger at Mos Burgers but with no English-speakers available we were not able to communicate to them that Victoria wanted a plain burger, with no sauces, fried eggs, nor diced squid on top. In the end we were forced to do the unthinkable and get her a KFC simply because at least we knew how to order there. (Being a man of principle, I refused to eat there and got myself some pork sandwiches and sushi from the Family Mart around the corner.)

For those keeping score on the day, that was two buses, two trains, two Shinkansen, but the surprise winner was the city trams at three rides today.

April 6 - Fukuoka, part 2.

A bit of a slower day today. Originally we had considered doing a day trip to Nagasaki, but given that we have quite a few big days planned ahead as well as a decent hotel to rest up in, we instead decided to just do a half-day of exploring today to mop up some of the items in Fukuoka we didn't have to for yesterday. The weather continued to be somewhat "bleh" - grey and wet but not-quite-raining - as we explored Ōhori Park.

The park is famous for its cherry blossoms, and though we're here at the right time of year they came a bit early this year and as a result only about half were still on the trees as we explored the Fukuoka castle ruins.

We then continued on to Gokoku shrine which would have been nice if it weren't for the oppressive crowds.

For the most part we found the shrine was closed, which was a theme that carried throughout the day - we suspect today might be some local holiday that we didn't know about. We therefore headed back to the hotel for a siesta and an early night. Our guide at the tea ceremony yesterday had recommended a shrine south of here that we want to try to fit in on our way to Kumamoto so it made sense to have an early night.

April 5 - Fukuoka

Today we had a run of good luck and happy coincidences that turned it into quite a lot of fun, but this’ll be a long post capturing it all.

We started the day learning how to use the local bus in Fukuoka and took it to view some Buddhist temples: Shōfuku-ji, Jōten-ji, and Tōchō-ji. While the weather is cool, it is all quite picturesque because this far south the cherry blossoms have already started to fall and are in such vast amounts that it looks like snow on the ground.

Of the Buddhist temples the best was Tōchō-ji, with its 50’ tall wooden Buddha (no pictures allowed) that had a strange tunnel underneath: for the first ten meters there were detailed paintings depicting demons and devils and a hellish landscape, and then you had to work your way through a curved and winding hallway in complete and utter darkness, just feeling your way forward along the walls. Surely it represented having faith and moving forward into the unknown and/or emerging into the light, but there was nothing in English anywhere so we’ll never know.

Next we switched to Shinto shrines with a visit to Kushida-jinja where we had a stroke of good luck. A woman approached me and asked if we wanted free tickets to a tea ceremony, as she had already bought them but then three members of her family had failed to show up. Almost anywhere else in the world this would have set of my Spidey Senses as an obvious scam, but with the Japanese we decided to go with it and it turned out quite well. Within minutes we had a guide getting us ready for a traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

Out of respect we didn't take pictures during the actual ceremony, which was a shame because the pastries they served were the most visually stunning things we've ever been served. They were crafted as lifelike pink tulips and were the very definition of “wanting to have your cake and eat it too”.

Afterwards we exited the shrine and stumbled upon the latest craze in Japan: an Owl Café. These are notoriously hard to get in to but our lucky streak held up and they had open spots within the hour, just enough time for us to grab some Japanese curry for lunch in the meantime.

The Owl Café was a strange experience: the owls are free but the coffee and/or soft drinks are 15,000 yen each. (There’s only one other business I’m aware of where you spend almost $20 for a Coke… ;) ) After ordering our drinks we immediately abandoned them and spent the next hour taking photos with owls of various shapes and sizes. What a hoot! (HAR HAR HAR HAR!!! I'm hilarious.)

After the Owl Café our lucky streak ran out and disaster struck!

In an attempt to pack light for this holiday, I only brought a single pair of long pants (hoping the weather would be warmer than it has turned out to be so far). Over the last couple days the crotch has been slowly ripping, resisting all emergency sewing-kit attempts at repair. At some point during the visit with the owls it finally gave out exposing the world to more than what is honorable - no wonder the owl’s eyes were so wide! Amazingly, we managed to find Japanese jeans in sizes that fit me inside of fifteen minutes in the nearby Canal City mall complex. However, it was quite a performance trying to explain to the non-English-speaking, female sales clerk that I was not taking the pants off to purchase them (so she would have to scan the bar code on my arse) as well as miming that we wanted her to throw my current pants away. (Point at pants… mimic throwing away from you with both hands, then running in the opposite direction.)

Afterwards we found that the nearby Yanagabashi Market was closed, and with such a busy morning it had gotten so late we would have to put off the remaining sites we wanted to visit until the next day.

Today’s lesson: Any day is a good day when you return to the hotel in a different pair of pants than you set out in.

April 4 - Shinkansen

Today is another travel day since our trip schedule was to go out as far as possible and then work our way back. This started with a packed Tokyo Metro train ride to Tokyo Station…

…followed by a five-hour Shinkansen ride down to Fukuoka, Kyushu.

(That’s the GPS on my phone reporting a speed of 266 km/hour. The fasted we measured on the ride was 284 km/hour.)

Luckily our hotel in Fukuoka is a nice, large resort with a good pool and hot tubs, which were much needed after so many days of travel. Victoria wasn't impressed that the red headcap (required in the pool) clashed with her swimsuit so made me wear it (the headcap, that is), trading in for my black one.

Unfortunately the resort is a bit separated from the central core so we didn't have many options for dinner. We ended up having to settle for the traditional Japanese custom: The Hard Rock Cafe.

April 3 - Tokyo

After a long journey we’re starting this trip with an overnight in Tokyo before heading on to Kyushu in the morning.

Apparently Victoria has aged during the flight over since when we bought bus tickets from Narita airport into Tokyo the fare is cheaper if you’re under 25 years old and the ticket agent insisted on seeing her passport for proof-of-age before letting us have the discounted fare. (She’s 13.)

After a quick bag drop at the hotel, the main event for the day was just to manage to stay up until a decent hour so we could hopefully not have too much jet lag the first night. We took the train down to Shinjuku prefecture so Victoria could have her first taste of the bright lights and noise that Tokyo is famous for.

Then we were off to Yakitori Alley for some chicken yakitori as a “light” dinner. (Victoria wasn't so impressed with the sticks that had chicken hearts, liver, nor skin on them. More for me.)

Again, Victoria seems to appear older here (perhaps it’s the comparative average height?): as we were scoping the various barbecue stalls for one that could accommodate us, we turned around to find that an English guy in his twenties struck up a chat with Victoria, hopefully just being friendly and nothing more.

Back at the hotel we’re trying to get in the Japanese habit of politely hitting the “Door Open” and “Door Close” button for other patrons, but as our place is a little bit outside the tourist zone the buttons don’t have English and we can never remember which is which.

We've learned that the one on the right is “Door Close” and are remembering it by thinking that the lower half of the symbol looks like a guy doing a little dance and yelling “CLOSE!” The easiest way to remember this is to do the little dance and the yell yourself.

It’s best to wait until you’re alone in the elevator first, though.

April 2 - Off to Japan

Leave to Japan with our niece Victoria today!