Adventures in Japan

The Begining of the End

Last night was one of Jon's last nights in Japan. It was also his last gig in Japan. It was also his first gig in Japan. I didn't even know the dude was in a band.

But he was. In a band. We saw said band last night. Georgie Boys they were called. It was an interesting show. Jon was the only white guy in the band. They sang mainly cover songs, there was one original song in their set, but Jon didn't do the singing. Yoshi, Ben and Jon's roommate, did the vocals.

Jon was standing off to the side, just doing his own thing. The rest of the band was clumped together, jamming. Yoshi didn't know some of the words.

I didn't have my camera, of course.

But it was a good time.

Might meet up with Jon again in London.

Twelve Drummers Drumming

Our hotel had a free breakfast. It consisted of many different rice balls and a bowl of soup. Afterwards, I felt full and hungry at the same time. We did a little more poking around and then caught the tram to the train.

We then rode the train (multiple trains on multiple train lines to be more exact) for over eight hours. Then we were home.

The end.

Eleven Pipers Piping

I did not sleep well. I slept a cat-filled sleep. So wrong.

So I was not in the best frame of mind when we woke up. And mornings are never my time to shine. Plus we just wanted to get out of that hostel. I'm just making up excuses now. I cut the tip of my finger off. Just the fleshy bit. I was blindly grabbing through my toiletry bag, trying to find the travel case for my toothbrush. Instead I found out that my razor was lacking its travel case. Ow. The kind of ow that shuts your brain down for a couple seconds. The blood brought me back around. There was a bit of it.

Of course the day we leave the hostel is the day it seems the friendliest. A little old lady who we had never seen around before helped us through all the checking out and kept saying good bye to us in happy broken English.

We dumped our bags at our hotel and then went out shopping. Today was shopping day.

Y'see Theo, when Japanese people go traveling, they always bring back presents for all their friends and acquaintances. These gifts are called omiyage. Different parts of Japan are known for different things, so when you go to these different parts of Japan you know exactly what to buy for folks back home. But not if you're us. We spent a fair few hours trying to think of who would get what.

After that we took a nap. Our hotel, in addition to having bibles for several world religions (no love for Scientology, Will Smith must be so sad), also has a couple movie channels. But not really. What they have is a couple of rented DVDs and some spare channels on the televisions. You tune in at the appointed time and some monkey somewhere presses play.

Or not. Spiderman 3 just sat on the menu screen for over an hour. Funny.

Not as funny as where we ate dinner. It was a place called Quaratine Plan. Remember that time we ate at that theme restaurant in Tokyo? Whoever opened Quarantine Plan had had a similar dining experience. It was kooky. The entrance looks like something out of a cheesy post apocalyptic action movie from the 1980s. There was a Vic 20 keyboard embedded in the wall, man!


You enter through an automatic sliding door into a reception area that is all curved walls and bright whiteness. As we were waiting, another couple wandered in off the street. Not quite in in. They were looking at all the sci fi trappings outside. A waitress appeared out of nowhere and hit a button near the door. A zombie popped out of a barrel right next to the couple outside. The lady shrieked. Good times.


The lady who had pushed the button then handcuffed herself to Carla and led us to our table.

Our waiter knew a little bit of English and was happy to whip it out whenever necessary. Or unnecessary. He ended each encounter with, "Yes Sir! Yes Ma'am!" and a stiff salute. The food was good and the drinks were interesting and we had a great last night in Matsuyama.

Most interesting food of the night? Something devised by a scientist more mad than Professor Carla McDrinky up above? Let's see if I can remember the Japanese and translate it into broken English. Surprised/Shocked Eating: Crispy Chicken Wing Gyoza.


It looks fairly normal at first glance. Maybe a bit too plump, but that is rarely a bad thing. When you pick it up, you notice that the weight is... off... somehow. Let's take a bite!

There ain't no bones in there baby! There ain't no regular chicken meat either. All the meat had been sucked out, ground up and mixed into gyoza filling and then stuck back into the skin. Crazy.

Our night might have been greater still if we had remembered to return to the liquor store we had found earlier in the evening. Crown Royal for 15 bucks. And Earl Grey liqueur.

Dang.

Ten Lords A Leaping

Our hostel has very hard beds. There are no fitted sheets for the beds, nor are there pillow cases. Just loose sheets to wrap around whatever needs wrapping. And the showers. You have to push a button to make the water flow. The water flows for less than 20 seconds. It takes longer than 20 seconds for the water to warm up.

We might be too old for hostels.

The area of town we are staying in is famous for its hot springs. There is one bath house in particular that is famous all across Japan. It has been around for over 3000 years. We didn't go in. But it looked nice. Smaller than I thought it would be.


There are also foot baths all over the neighbourhood. If your feet feel sore or tired, just sit down and give them a soak.

That all was prequel, I guess.

From our hostel at the top of the hill we walked through a shrine. It looked like a shrine. There were some architectural thingees that make it special, but I am an ignorant foreigner and did not notice them. The shrine was for two gods: the god of war and the god of mathematics. Yeah.

After the shrine, we went to a temple. A very smoky temple. This temple also had caves. Not really caves, I guess, more like a couple of tunnels. Poorly lit, incense filled tunnels. With sporadic strobing lights. Yeah, that was fun. And a little freaky. But that was not the freakiest thing about that temple-y area. No sir, the freakiest thing that happened today was probably one of the freakiest things that I've ever been a part of.


Carla and I stumbled out of the dark smoky tunnel and onto a side street. A little bit further up the street was a park type thing. There were some Buddhist type statues in it, so I thought it might have been another part of the temple. Once we entered the park, I knew I was mistaken. The main temple, even though it is a popular and well known temple, is kind of run down. This 'park' we found ourselves in was neglected.


The statues were rusted and crumbling. The flowers were fighting a losing battle with the weeds. And there were cats everywhere. Carla and I were the only two people in the place.


I was busy taking pictures of rust when I heard Carla say, "There's something wrong with that cat."


Intrigued, I came to see what she was talking about. She had stopped on a flight of stairs. At the top was a sickly looking kitten. One of its eyes was all goopy. But that's not the first thing you would notice about this cat. No. This cat couldn't meow. All that came out of its shaking frame was a horrible wheeze of a sound.


That's about when Carla decided to turn around.

She's always been the brains of this operation.

I stayed and poked around some more. I found this statue.


It could be of Jesus after he spent those days and nights in the desert with Satan. Or it could be just freaking scary.

This statue was next to a structure built in the shape of a peach. The door to this peach building was open.

You know how I said this 'park' was just up the road from a busy temple? I couldn't hear the bells of the temple, the murmur of the crowd, the sound of traffic. Nothing. I couldn't even hear any birds.

I walked towards the open door. The only light inside was what fell through the door. Outside of that patch of brightness there was nothing save for a couple of glints from the statues inside.


Have you ever felt wrong? Like...

Wrong. Just wrong. I felt so wrong. That place was wrong. I was seriously freaking out, standing in that doorway. And, of course, part of me wanted to go in. But I didn't. Instead I turned around.

There was a line of cats staring at me from the top of the stairs.

So wrong.

I got the hell out of there. I don't think I made much sense for the next hour or so. Everything and everyone looked sinister.

Horrible.

Then I got a few drinks in me and the day got better.

We found a new, better place to spend our last night. We had a glorious dinner.


But still, man... Those cats were just staring at me.

Nine Ladies Dancing

That was sort of the view from our hotel room. Best part of our stay there. It weren't the breakfast.

After breakfast we walked a couple blocks over to the sex museum. I think the sex museum broke Carla's fragile little mind. She can't look at Japanese art anymore without seeing something filthy. There were a lot of filthy pictures. And carvings. And etchings. And it was everywhere: on the walls, on the roof, on the floor, everywhere. And a lot of it seemed to be the work of one man. Freaky. He just travelled the world looking for dirty stuff. Here's something you might not know: everywhere is perverted. It's true. I'd show you pictures, but I didn't take any. I didn't take any because it costs an extra 200 bucks to tour the sex museum with a camera.

In lieu of filthy pornography, I give you a picture of a mountainside graveyard. We walked through this graveyard on on way to the bull fights. The walk was about as steep as you would expect a walk up the side of a mountain to be.

The bull fights were bull fights. Which is to say they were not what you think of when you think of bull fights. These bull fights did not involve greasy men in too-tight pants and poofy shirts cut way too low sticking majestic animals with pointy things to make up for their own shortcomings. There was none of that.

This bull fighting was just a couple of bulls fighting each other. With shivs! No.

I'm so tired.


Two bulls entered this ring... only one left! No. They both left. But one of them left with a trophy. Well, the bull didn't get the trophy, but someone who had something to do with the bull did.


As you can see in that picture up there, the bulls are not alone in the ring. They do all the fighting, but their... owners(?) cheer them on.


But what I failed to capture in these photos is just how close the dudes get to their bulls. They pat them on the head as the other bull's sharp head is flailing about. Sometimes these bulls charge or retreat. They move pretty fast is what I'm getting at. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near them. One dude got knocked down and nearly trampled. One bull cracked the bamboo barrier around the ring. Good times.

After that we hopped on a train for Matsuyama.


There was some nice scenery along the way. But Carla and I were looking forward to the coastal section of this train ride. These tickets we have, they were dirt cheap. We've done all this traveling for less than one shinkansen ticket. But the trains aren't fast. And they stop a lot. Sometimes they stop for a really long time. So that people can get off the train to go to the bathroom. The really fast trains have lots of bathrooms but the really slow ones don't have any at all, that just doesn't make any sense. Or maybe it does, I'm really quite tired.

What I was trying to get at is this: we got to the most scenic part of this leg of the trip just after sundown. There was a glimmer of light left in the sky. Enough, barely, to give us a hint of what we had missed. The glorious scenery was out the there in the dimly dark dimness, like a hot chick in a parka. You know it's amazing, but you can't see it.

We made it into Matsuyama, caught a tram to near our hostel,walked up the hill to our hostel, checked in to our hostel and then started planning where else we could stay other than our hostel.

Nine Somethings A Somethinging

Just a quick note to let you all know that the updates might be a bit more sparse from now on. We are staying in a youth hostel. So no more internet in our room. No more bathroom in our room either. And our TV doesn't work. And where the hell are all the youth?

Eight Maids A Milking

We woke up tired. With mouths that belonged to dead people. Happy New Year.

We somehow made it onto the train and set off for Uwajima. I crashed pretty hard, but Carla snapped some good shots of the loveliness we sped through.

That is a gorgeous looking day I slept through.

I woke up to this:


I woke up to a gorgeous day. Just a little snowier. Seriously - what a lovely day to start of the year with. Freshly fallen snow, mountains, sunshine, big fluffy snowflakes: it was awesome.

When we stopped for lunch, we spent more time wandering around town than eating. Most everything was closed, but the air was crisp the melting snow was falling off of roofs and street lamps with loud plops all over the place, I could've wandered around for hours.


But we had to get back on that train. It started to snow a bit harder as we did so. The snow came down harder and harder until this is what we saw out the window:


This is what it looked like inside the window:


Everyone either looking out the windows at the gorgeous scenery or napping. There was this one guy who had a real expensive looking camera hanging around his neck but took all his pictures with his cell phone. There was also a couple who seemed to be taking pictures only of all the small footbridges the train passed. Odd. But they seemed very happy.

We weren't all that happy when we finally checked into our hotel. It's not as good as the one we left in Kochi. Plus the wind had picked up. Still, we poked around town. Japan is dead on New Year's Day. Except the temples and shrines. Which is where we went.


We ate some carny food and then poked around town some more. We ended up at a yakiniku restaurant. Which is great prep for tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Bull fights! And a sex museum.

Also of note: we've seen watching a lot more Japanese television during this trip. Japanese TV gets even more crazy around New Year's. Tonight was some kind of surreal talent contest. There was extreme cooking, trampoline kanji writing, oil drum balloon popping, a woman peeled a cucumber using a chainsaw, and much more. Crazy.

Still Swimming

After The Anpanman stuff, we bussed over to the Ryugado caves.

Caves are caves. I, myself, happen to like caves. I like getting into the earth and looking around, seeing all the weird stuff that happens underground. I like the fact that it takes one hundred years for things to grow by a centimeter.

But it ain't all that easy to take pictures in that environment. They're all dark and blurry and stuff.


That one turned out okay. These caves were fairly cave-like. Which is to say that there weren't any super wow bits to it. An average cave. Built(?) with average Japanese people in mind. Which is to say that we were ducking a lot. And I had to suck in my gut more than usual.

After that there were the chickens. The famous chickens. Roosters, to be more specific. They are famous for their tails.


That is a real live rooster in there in the upper left. And that is his actual tail on the right. I coulda maybe framed that one better.

The other thing of note out there at the caves is this:


That is a phone booth with some cave persons on top of it.

After that we went back to our hotel and had a nap. Then we got up and went out for New Year's Eve. Kochi is cool, man. I like it. It's got a young vibe. There's a lot of young folks around and they seem to like to have fun.


Anyhoo, there was this building at the end of the shopping arcade that housed many many eating and drinking establishments and a lot of common seating in between. That is where we went for New Year's. On the way there we passed a dance competition that had sprung up in the middle of the street.

We ate a bit (including toshikoshi, soba noodles eaten right after the new year starts. Their length symbolizes your longevity) and drank a lot and talked to a bunch of cool people. But Carla started to crash at around 2 in the morning so we decided to call it a night. On the way back to our hotel (much nicer than our first hotel), we ran into some people we had met earlier in the evening. They were with some other people we hadn't seen before. Soon, we saw a lot more of them:


Happy New Year, y'all!

Seven Swans A Swimming

Today was kind of a free day, no real plans had we. Maybe go to a cave. Maybe go to the Anpanman museum.

Let us talk for a moment about Anpanman. Anpanman is an institution in Japan. You think Pokemon is popular? Pokemon can't even dream of grabbing Anpanman's cape in Japan.

An Pan Man. "An" means sweet bean paste. "Pan" means bread. "Man" means man. Sweet bean paste man. Anpanman has a special punch and kick for defeating bad guys. He can also tear off bits of his head to feed the hungry, sick, or sad.


Jamuojisan (Uncle Jam) was a kindly old baker. One night, a star flew in to his oven, and Anpanman was born. Whenever Anpanman is in danger, Uncle Jam just bakes him a new head.


Anpanman's nemesis is Bakinman. "Baikin" means germ. So he Baikinman is a germ who wants to destroy sweet bread. Yeah. There are many other characters. Many, many others.


Dokinchan is Baikinman's sister. She is in love with...


Shokupanman. He has toast for a head. Which is not as wierd as...


Currypanman. He has a curry filled bun for a head.

We took a train to bus to the Anpanman museum. The museum was closed. That sucked. There were a couple of other things to see, basically glorified gift shops. We took some pictures.

We will share these pictures with you soon. Right now it is New Year's Day and it is time to sleep. Happy new!