Nagoya

I bought a gingerbread house kit from Zeller's for my baby cousin because they don't have gingerbread houses in Japan. He had a lot of fun decorating the house but he didn't even end up eating any of it. Come to think of it, no one's actually really eating it. lol

My cousin got a Pokemon puzzle from Santa for Christmas.
He was so excited to make that he busted out his puzzle and got everyone to make with him, and then eventually for him. After 20 minutes he gave up and started playing his Nintendo DS. Yup, that's right you see him in the back on the sofa. That's what he's doing. The adults ended up finishing the puzzle after an hour and a half. Oh well, it was a lot of fun and now a nice keep sake that is used to decorate the front entrance.







This next video was taken in the apartment that I'm staying at. My uncle lent it out to me since I'll be here for two weeks. We decided to chill here because my grampa goes to bed as early as 8 at night and we don't want to wake him up. He wakes up early in the morning though, at 3am to walk the dog, Chibi.

Disneyland

For Christmas we decided to go to Disney Sea. I don't really know what the difference between Disneyland and Sea is.
It was pretty cool 'cause there were different scenes from movies like Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Indian Jones.

We spend twenty bucks on popcorn though. I don't know how that happened! Everyone raves about the popcorn there so we decided to try it. They give you a buck full and give you a deal on refills. The flavours we tried were: black pepper, sea salt and strawberry.

The park was filled with couples because Christmas here is celebrated usually by couples.

They had a "candle light reflection show" with boats that had thousands of fake candles on it that reflected onto the water. Mickey and Minnie were on the boat along with some random bear in between them. I really wandered how he got
into the show.

I saw this Little Mermaid show where Ariel was real and she was on a trapeze and was doing flips in the air with her fin. She really did look like Ariel, I was stunned! Then in the show another random character appeared - a star fish. I really don't remember a starfish as a character in the movie. Anyway this starfish was working his ass off, dancing and flexing his gluteus maximus and he swayed around Ariel. Actually, I think he was actually trying to steal the show. My friends and I were laughing so hard but it seemed as if we were the only ones.

Random pics

They have a women's only cart for the subwa from 6:57-8:56 in the morning. This is due to the increasing number of women getting assaulted on trains.

Yokohama

After saying goodbye to my friend Philip who is heading back to Germany, I left to go to Yokohama. The last time I saw Philip was in Toronto when he visited in August. Thanks for showing me the way around Tokyo Philip, it was nice seeing you again!

I'm staying in a city called Yokohama which has about 3.6 million people. It only took under 20 minutes to get here from Tokyo.

This is my new house for the week. It's a house filled with Japanese people and foreigners. The living room, kitchen and bathroom are shared. Some of the bedrooms are shared. For instance, my friend Desmond, shares his room with three other people. All of his roommates are very interesting. One of them comes from Sri Lanka, another from Canada, a couple are Japanese but have lived in Nepal for a few years and are back temporarily.

We had a Christmas party and cooked turkey. The ovens here are so small that we had to stuff the turkey into the oven. Normally, if we were in Canada we would be able to cook a turkey twice the size but due to spacial restrictions, they don't even sell turkey's as big as hours in Canada.

I met scone man. If you don't know about scone man, check out his youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6HqQFfwqOI&



Here are some Japanese boys eating hot pot. It was a picture perfect moment so I had to take it.












Here is our Christmas cake. It's like their rum cake during Christmas. Someone told me that couples in Japan celebrate in Japan unlike in other countries where you celebrate with your family. I suppose it's another hallmark holiday here because it's not celebrated for religious reasons. There are hardy any Christians or Catholics here. The majority of Japanese are Buddhist or Shinto.






Because Yokohama is a port city there are quite a few immigrants living here. The city even has its own Chinatown.
It seemed very commercialized therefore it didn't feel like a real Chinatown to me. It felt like I was in a fake city like the time I was in Universal Studios in the fake European town. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time there especially since we had all you can eat dim sum.

In Japan they call dim sum, yum cha which means drink tea.
The ironic thing is that the meal doesn't come with tea and one has to pay extra for it. -_-"

Days 3-5

I got a picture of the guesthouse that I was staying at, but you probably won't be able to see it. Do you see the staircase in between the restaurant on the left and the Nikon store? That's the entrance to the place.

I didn't take a picture of the interior because there were always people in my room. I think some of them actually lived there so I thought I would respect their space. The washroom was as small as an airplane washroom, but that's normal for Japan.








Here is the picture of all the food ate so far. =D
- Those round things on skewers are called: dungo rice balls with soya sauce and cornstarch.
- They have strawberry kit kat here and a chocolate bar like Crunchie called Crunky.
- That picture on the bottom left is of omu-rice. An omlette with ketchup rice inside and on top is Hayashi sauce (similar to curry sauce).
- The picture on the bottom right is a bowl with rice and seafood on top. I love the seafood here, it's so fresh that you don't really smell that fishy scent.

Dec. 20, 2008

Fish Market: Tskuiji
I woke up at 5:00 this morning and laid in bed for a half hour knowing it was too early to wake up. At 7 am, Philip and I went to the fish market. The odour of the fish filled the subway corridors. This market was hectic -there were automatic carts everywhere, fishermen scaling fish, trucks getting loaded with shipments and people holding on to their coolers ready to buy fresh seafood. Sadly, we didn't buy fish there because we have no place to cook it.



















Temple
We ran into a small temple where I heard a saw a lot of tourists. I actually thought they were local people, until they spoke Chinese and Korean.











Ginza
This was a well-known shopping district like the Champs-Elysee in Paris. It wasn't that interesting though, especially when you don't have money to spend.

Imperial Garden
Philip thought this place was boring because all the plants were dead. He expected gardens to be beautiful but because of the time of season the the trees were naked and the grass was as yellow as a Golden Retriever (type of dog). For those of you who are wondering why I put type of dog, it's because there are people reading this blog who's first language isn't English. Going back on topic...the Imperial Garden is owned by the Caesar (Tenno in Japanese) of Japan. I just found out that had a Caesar today, shows how much I know about Japan.


Municipal Government Building
Got a nice view of the city from the top of this building. The escalator was weird. It showed floors 1,2 and 49. Where were the other levels?
Anyways, it's funny because there are elevator attendants. So they push the buttons for you and greet you as you go in and out of the elevator. I don't see a real point in that, but then again there are many people doing seemingless useless jobs. There was one guy at the airport who straightened out the baggages from the luggage pick-up area. There were two police man diverting traffic from a small road. We saw four people working in a small food buggy. When I exchanged my money they made me fill out a form where I had to write my full name and where I was staying. They needed a total of two people to exchange my money. As well, when Philip bought a souvenir for his sister it got really awkward. They sat him down at a table as if we were part of the mafia. There was lady who unwrapped each item to show us that it was in good condition. One lady took the money from Philip then ran behind the piller where the cash register was. We heard some rustling, then we were heard footsteps. Another lady comes back with his change, then I start to wonder where the first lady went. Anyway, we walked away as she bowed and I didn't know whether I shoud bow or not...awkward!

Roppongi Hill
I learned a new word today. "Gentrification." Once a dark and deteriorated neighbourhood, Roppongi hills was transformed into an upscale urban shopping site. The shopping mall they had was pretty fancy and had upscale stores. I didn't even bother looking at them because I knew the prices were crazy. We actually ran out of things today because we're not big shopping fans.

Ikebukuro Art Space
In the lonelyplanet guide, it tells us to check out this art space where they hold concerts and have a very long escalator. People were pouring out of the escalator like milk flowing out of a plastic bag. It was kind of randomw. We went up to the 6th floorwith the elevator and then just went down the elevator.













Indian Food
For dinner we had Indian food - salad, naan, roti and chicken curry. We were the only ones in the restaurant. It seemed pretty deserted, nevertheless I enjoyed it. The cook came and talked to us. We found out he was from Chennai. I asked him if he liked it here and he said he did but and admitted that the language barrier was a pretty big problem for him. I can see how it could be. If it weren't for the English map, it would be 10 times harder getting around the city. Today I was even asked a question in Japanese and I didn't have a clue what the cashier wanted from me. Her colleague picked up that I didn't understand the Japanese. It turns at she was just asking me if I wanted my noodles in a bowl that was small, medium, or large. Aiyaiyai...

Tokyo

I arrived in Tokyo at 3:20 p.m. and met from friend Philip, from Germany, at the airport. He was nice enough to fetch me from the airport to show me to the hostel and escort me around the city. It took about an hour from the airport to get into the city. This is a picture of Shinjuku station - the busiest station in Tokyo. Or as Philip says, the busiest station in the world.



Thankfully for him, I was able to find my way around. If it weren't for him, I probably wouldn't have found my hostel.

So the first day I was here we did a lot of things. First of all the hostel wasn't what I expected. We found the manager in his office which looked like a garage. He showed us to our rooms which was located in a separate building. Actually, it was in a completely hidden place, in between a restaurant and a shop.

It cost 16,00 yen to stay per night which converts to about $22. The only thing there is hardly any space. In one room here are 5 people staying and, as I expected, the bathroom is puny!

After dropping off my suitcase at the hostel, Philip and I wandered around looking for food. I heard that the noodles here were cheap so I decided that noodles would be in the best interest of my wallet.




We ate shrimp tempura. It's interesting because you purchase your ticket for your meal from a vending machine outside of the restaurant. Then, you bring your ticket inside the restaurant and then they ask you whether you want it your noodles hot or cold. It's great because you don't have to pay for tip or order in Japanese, which I'm scared of doing. lol!

After that we paid a visit to Akihabara, a.k.a. Electric Town. There are many electronic shops and arcades around here. We also found many manga shops, some seemed a little sketch bag because you would only see men in them. I don't really wanna know what they were looking at. -_-"

We called it an early night because both of us were tired, especially me. My head kept jerking on my train because I dozed off every second. It was horrible. As soon as I got to the hostel, I crawled into bed with a coma.




















Right: streets close to Takanobaba station in Tokyo
Left: View from the top of city hall

Flight

My flight was at 6:40 am so I had to leave the house 4am. I decided not to sleep that night so I got home at 1. Then at 3 o clock I went over to Wal-Mart to get more gifts for my family. I thought it would be a short trip but I ended up staying their for about a half an hour because the cashier had problems using a gift card and I started to get stressed out. Furthermore, I missed a call from home so they started to worry that I would miss my flight because I wasn't home yet. My mom thought I went crazy and forgot where I was going. She always thinks of the worst possible consequences. Just like the time I was coming home last from school, she thought I was stuck in a ditch in the snow. Oh mother dear!