Thursday, December 08, 2005
DAY 95: Japan (even though we're leaving Australia in a few days)
Okay, I think I can officially claim that we are way behind on blogging. But since none of you can complain to us in person, you'll have to deal with it :) So I'll take you now back about 17 days to when we actually first arrived in Japan. Mer's friend, Josh, left his job to travel in Japan for two months so we joined up and spent 10 days visting Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Nikko together. It was definitely a whirlwind train tour, where I gained full appreciation for my iPod.
We spent our first 4 days in Tokyo visiting a Hokusai art exhibit (of the "36 Views of Mt Fuji" fame - where we waited in line for 2 hours to then crawl through the museum in the most orderly line I've ever seen), tasting the culinary delights (including fermented bean paste and fried bird cartilige as well as tons of more-appealing dishes), playing with Sony's cutting edge technology, shopping for heated toilet seats as experienced in our hotel (unfortunately we return home empty handed - this particular luxury is quite expensive) and shielding our eyes from the neon lights. Tokyo was very fashionable, with a few styles I questioned but grew accustomed to: knee socks with high heels, micro mini skirts (or shorts of the Daisy Duke variety for the boys) as a part of school uniforms, and hair gelled in ways I would have thought only a team of professional stylists could create. Of course we remained in our well-worn jeans (a nice way of putting it) and fleeces. We discussed these clothing trends, as well as every other item of Japanese culture that surprised us, with Josh's Japanese friend, Gon. Gon showed us the Tokyo nightlife (with bars on the 7th floor of buildings, you definitely need a "tour guide") and planted the suggestion of karoke in our minds - later to be satisfied by a 2 hour sing-fest in Hiroshima.
We then took the bullet train to Kyoto and visted a multitude of Zen gardens/temples with amazing fall colors (including the Golden Temple, with gold foil covering the entire building), and made friends with traditional Japanese women in kimonos whom we spent the day with. As they were leaving, we learned they had rented the kimonos and had to hurry back to return them on time. So much for authenticity, but dang my pictures look nice! While in Kyoto we also took a day trip to Nara, a small town with historic temples and pagodas, where we took a tour with Yoko, a local woman. And no trip to Japan would be complete without stalking geisha. And although Josh thought any woman in a kimono was a geisha, our attmepts were unsuccessful. Other nightly activities consisted of intense Yahtzee games lasting well into the wee hours and arguing over whether we should spend 100 Yen to heat our room for 2 hours. We definitely appreciated Josh's patience with our bickering and celebration when one of us rolled Yahtzee. For "not being a game person", he certainly got into it.
We also confronted the language barrier in amusing ways. The highlight of these "confrontations" was in the 100 Yen Store (the equivalent of the dollar store in the US), where Meridith purchased a little container of hand lotion, as identified by the picture of hands on the tube and the fact that it was placed with the other lotions. A few uses into the cream, however, she started to notice that it didn't do much to relieve dry, itchy skin, but instead, to her horror, began to dye her hands white. Yes, it was hand whitening cream rather than hand lotion, as confirmed by a bilingual local. And while the bleach didn't do much to improve the condition of her skin, she was left with a lasting reminder of her experiences in Japan. Josh and I were both rather amused and had to commemorate the realization with photos of course.
On our way from Kyoto to Hiroshima, we stopped in Himeji, which claims the most important castle in Japan. After wandering through the amazing castle, dreaming of the Samurai times and taking plenty of pictures, we jumped back on the train to Hiroshima. In Hiroshima, the spirit of our touring changed slightly and we visited the A-Bomb Dome (one of a few buildings left in the same condition it was the day after the bombing), the Children's Peace Museum (where a little girl thought that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes, her leukemia from the radiation generated by the bomb would be cured - while she died before completing the 1,000 cranes, millions of visitors have continued the tradition in hopes of a nuclear-free world), and the Atomic Bomb Museum. I will definitely say that Japanese museums are extremely easy for English speaking tourists, as well as surprising in how much responsibility they take for past events (learning about world history through international eyes has definitely been interesting). Additionally, Hiroshima brought back some painful memories for Mer - not regarding the A bomb, but pertaining to roach bombs. After waking up with small insect bites (that did swell to some amusing sizes), Meridith re-lived her 2001 horror of "the bedbugs that would not die". This incident was nothing like the last, so instead of causing her intense pain, it was more about my mental anguish in hearing her recount the 2001 story for 4 days straight - but don't worry, we both survived.
During our day in Hiroshima, we also took a side trip to Miyajima where we saw the famous "floating red tori" which welcomed ships from the bay, avoided the food-hungry "friendly" deer, and visited some more temples. Once we had thoroughly explored Miyajima, we took a 6 hour train ride up to Nikko, a small historic town northwest of Tokyo. (We had hoped to spend a day hiking Mount Fuji but it didn't work out. We only got the quick glimpses from the bullet train.) After getting into Nikko after dark, we met an amazingly nice local man who spent 30 minutes directing us to our hotel (thank you - we would have surely ended up sleeping on a street corner without you). The next morning, we spent our 4 hours in Nikko running from one temple to the next, only to come to the conclusion that we should have just stayed in Tokyo the night before (I may only be speaking for myself here). We then raced back to Tokyo to make our plane bound for New Zealand.
We spent our first 4 days in Tokyo visiting a Hokusai art exhibit (of the "36 Views of Mt Fuji" fame - where we waited in line for 2 hours to then crawl through the museum in the most orderly line I've ever seen), tasting the culinary delights (including fermented bean paste and fried bird cartilige as well as tons of more-appealing dishes), playing with Sony's cutting edge technology, shopping for heated toilet seats as experienced in our hotel (unfortunately we return home empty handed - this particular luxury is quite expensive) and shielding our eyes from the neon lights. Tokyo was very fashionable, with a few styles I questioned but grew accustomed to: knee socks with high heels, micro mini skirts (or shorts of the Daisy Duke variety for the boys) as a part of school uniforms, and hair gelled in ways I would have thought only a team of professional stylists could create. Of course we remained in our well-worn jeans (a nice way of putting it) and fleeces. We discussed these clothing trends, as well as every other item of Japanese culture that surprised us, with Josh's Japanese friend, Gon. Gon showed us the Tokyo nightlife (with bars on the 7th floor of buildings, you definitely need a "tour guide") and planted the suggestion of karoke in our minds - later to be satisfied by a 2 hour sing-fest in Hiroshima.
We then took the bullet train to Kyoto and visted a multitude of Zen gardens/temples with amazing fall colors (including the Golden Temple, with gold foil covering the entire building), and made friends with traditional Japanese women in kimonos whom we spent the day with. As they were leaving, we learned they had rented the kimonos and had to hurry back to return them on time. So much for authenticity, but dang my pictures look nice! While in Kyoto we also took a day trip to Nara, a small town with historic temples and pagodas, where we took a tour with Yoko, a local woman. And no trip to Japan would be complete without stalking geisha. And although Josh thought any woman in a kimono was a geisha, our attmepts were unsuccessful. Other nightly activities consisted of intense Yahtzee games lasting well into the wee hours and arguing over whether we should spend 100 Yen to heat our room for 2 hours. We definitely appreciated Josh's patience with our bickering and celebration when one of us rolled Yahtzee. For "not being a game person", he certainly got into it.
We also confronted the language barrier in amusing ways. The highlight of these "confrontations" was in the 100 Yen Store (the equivalent of the dollar store in the US), where Meridith purchased a little container of hand lotion, as identified by the picture of hands on the tube and the fact that it was placed with the other lotions. A few uses into the cream, however, she started to notice that it didn't do much to relieve dry, itchy skin, but instead, to her horror, began to dye her hands white. Yes, it was hand whitening cream rather than hand lotion, as confirmed by a bilingual local. And while the bleach didn't do much to improve the condition of her skin, she was left with a lasting reminder of her experiences in Japan. Josh and I were both rather amused and had to commemorate the realization with photos of course.
On our way from Kyoto to Hiroshima, we stopped in Himeji, which claims the most important castle in Japan. After wandering through the amazing castle, dreaming of the Samurai times and taking plenty of pictures, we jumped back on the train to Hiroshima. In Hiroshima, the spirit of our touring changed slightly and we visited the A-Bomb Dome (one of a few buildings left in the same condition it was the day after the bombing), the Children's Peace Museum (where a little girl thought that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes, her leukemia from the radiation generated by the bomb would be cured - while she died before completing the 1,000 cranes, millions of visitors have continued the tradition in hopes of a nuclear-free world), and the Atomic Bomb Museum. I will definitely say that Japanese museums are extremely easy for English speaking tourists, as well as surprising in how much responsibility they take for past events (learning about world history through international eyes has definitely been interesting). Additionally, Hiroshima brought back some painful memories for Mer - not regarding the A bomb, but pertaining to roach bombs. After waking up with small insect bites (that did swell to some amusing sizes), Meridith re-lived her 2001 horror of "the bedbugs that would not die". This incident was nothing like the last, so instead of causing her intense pain, it was more about my mental anguish in hearing her recount the 2001 story for 4 days straight - but don't worry, we both survived.
During our day in Hiroshima, we also took a side trip to Miyajima where we saw the famous "floating red tori" which welcomed ships from the bay, avoided the food-hungry "friendly" deer, and visited some more temples. Once we had thoroughly explored Miyajima, we took a 6 hour train ride up to Nikko, a small historic town northwest of Tokyo. (We had hoped to spend a day hiking Mount Fuji but it didn't work out. We only got the quick glimpses from the bullet train.) After getting into Nikko after dark, we met an amazingly nice local man who spent 30 minutes directing us to our hotel (thank you - we would have surely ended up sleeping on a street corner without you). The next morning, we spent our 4 hours in Nikko running from one temple to the next, only to come to the conclusion that we should have just stayed in Tokyo the night before (I may only be speaking for myself here). We then raced back to Tokyo to make our plane bound for New Zealand.
# posted by Mer and Les @ 6:02 PM 
