Japan

After a brief stop over in Cairns we finally left Australia for Tokyo. I was surprised that the flight was quite quick, I thought i'd get fidgety because of my goldfish attention span. Luckly we had some amazing inflight entertainment in the form of Sex and the City the movie. I can't say i'm a huge fan of the show but when you have nothing else suddenly I became hooked and i was slightly annoyed when they cut the movie short so i couldn't see the end. Did Carrie get back with Mr Big? Will Miranda get back with her cheating husband? etc. Inflight food was rubbish of course. there must be someone out there that makes sure that what seems nice on the menu always comes out as goop! maybe i'll order goop next time and see if it has an opposite effect.

We got off the plane and quickly went to a CitiBank got some cold hard Yen and figured out the train system, which to my surprise was quite easy to understand, but theyre kinda funny too they play music when the train come and they get more intence as it gets closer, one of them sounds like Cat Stevens 'remember the days of the old school yard' and another is kinda reggae i reckon it could be a good 'work for the dole' sheme, heaps of musicians are on the dole so get them to sit at stations and play music when trains are approaching. just a though.
anyway, headed for our backpackers, the 'Ace Inn', which is quite nice really, the sleeping quarters are like enclosed bunk beds but there is plenty of room to sleep in, no bed bugs (touch wood) but most of all FREE INTERNET! hence the blog, I imagine there is going to be a lot smaller once I have to pay for it.

Weather here in Japan has been amazing. every day has been roughly 30C and its really humid so we are constantly trying to stay hydrated, which is quite easy with the amount of vending machines. but this hasn't helped my Coca-Cola addiction, i have to say i've been having quite a few. At McDonalds here they sell Coke in milk cartons! (no joke). I have been a little bit disappointed with the vending machines, you hear all these stories about finding wierd shit in them but i haven't come across any at all.

We went to Kyoko for a day it was such a really beautiful city i don't know what i really liked about it, i just did. I think its a really livable city, plenty of things to do and see, compared to Osaka anyway, that really didn't bring much to the table, but also chilled out compared to Tokyo, which at times could be a bit much. Both Josh and I thought it was a shame we didn't stay another night there.

It's funny, when we first got to Japan we would see every temple and castle we could, and be "oh, isn't this cool" or "wow, i feel so calm", but by the end of the first week we would see so many we would say "not another bloodly temple". There were only 2 temples I recommend seeing: the Meiji Jungu Shrine and the Kinkakuji Temple in Kyoto, they are both really beautiful and in a really stunning setting of water and cherry blossoms it quite amazing how calm and peaceful you feel after walking around them. Oh, and Osaka Castle which had heaps of artifacts in it like samurai masks, costumes that date back thousands of years, it was really cool to see something that old with that much history and still be in such good condition.

It seems Josh and I were a big hit with the locals in Osaka. On our first night there, we were both pretty exhausted because of the 9 hour bus ride from Tokyo, so we thought it would be a good idea to go for a local beer and a bite to eat. this was possiably the best idea we ever had. We walked into this little resturant and sat down and all the menu was in japanese and waitress knew very little english. some how we ordered 2 beers, which by the way was the best beer i've every had. Luckily, a local woman helped us out with ordering some food, we had some tempura and some. At one point all of the staff were staring at us and so i asked them in broken english how many Australians do you get in this resturant to which they replied "none, you are the first". We had such a good time we went back again a couple of days before we left and have another beer. they suggested we try sake. HOLY SHIT! I thought sake was meant to be had in a small glass but they gave it to us in a huge glass and it was so strong! they also gave us some food to compliment the sake. We didn't know what it was and it was probably good thing they didn't tell us first off because, when i eventually asked i found out it was fish stomach with chilli sauce (luckily it tasted better than it sounded). At the end of our visit we gave them our blog address and they gave us T-shirts the staff wear! Awesome! If your ever in Osaka make sure to look them up they are awesome people and the food is amazing!

One day while we were walking around Osaka we stumbled across a gallery of what looked like traditional calligraphy, we were walking around and an old man came over to us, he was one of the artists in the exhibition and wanted to show us his work. we wandered over to the 3 pieces he had done and he asked us to sit down on the couch opposite to observe them. Being the polite young men we are, we did and the old man started to try to explain his work in broken english, from what i could gather the symbol he did were ancient symbols used for thousands of years. Then all over a sudden the old man put his arm around my shoulder... i was thinking, this is a little strange. but i didn't want to be rude because i thought it might be some japanese thing i wasn't aware of. the man continued to tell us more about his work and how it was about love. then he put his hand on my knee and said "its about feeling concrete". it was then i realised that it wasn't some japanese thing i wasn't aware of, i think this old guy is trying to pick me up. i turned to Josh who was trying to contain his laughter and said "umm, is that the time?" and we both made a run for it. in hindsight, the old man is only human.

Josh and I went to Harajuku which was lots of fun, Harajuku is known for its crazy dressers (think the back-up dancers in the Gwen Stefani filmclip). We went down a few back streets and found some really cool vintage clothing stores (i could've gone mental in there), one store sold only cruise shirts and another only shoes and insence, it was hilarious!
When Josh and Leon met up with us in Tokyo we took them out to Harajuku, we met a guy at the backpackers from England called Ahmed so he came along as well. this was the first night we had sushi in Japan and it was brilliant i couldn't get over how much better it was to any other sushi i'd ever had before and i didn't think it would ever be repeated, that was until we went to the fish markets, considering it was 4:30am it was so hectic but the sushi was amazing straight off the boat, but thats another story.
We wandered around from bar to bar trying to find somewhere half cool when we met 2 girls, Courtney from Scotland and Michelle from Brisbane, both over here teaching english. they took us to this awesome lounge called 'Insomnia' and had a few drinks and spoke to a couple of Japanese guys around our age who were pretty cool. We saw the Hachiko crossing which is that main intersection you seen in every snippet you have ever seen about Japan. its pretty impressive to just sit and watch so many people crossing all at once.
Towards the end of the night i began to wilt (suprise, suprise) and I decided to head back to the backpackers with Ahmed so we got a cab but i think either there was a bit of lost in translation or we were so drunk we were slurring our words because i asked the cabby to drop us off at Akebonobashi station... turns out there is another station by the name of Akebenebashi station so when he dropped us off we couldn't figure out where our backpackers had got to! so we wandered around for a while until we ran into a policeman who showed us how to get home. in the end the other guys that stayed behind partying ended up beating me home. kind of funny now, but not at the time.

Another day when hired bikes and rode around Tokyo like BMX bandits (Josh was Nicole Kidman) over here you can ride on the footpath or on the road and you don't need to wear a helmet, i think i nearly died a few times from crazy asian drivers (thats racist!) and heat exhaustion (did i mention i have travel insurance) but it was a really good way of seeing Tokyo i was so exhausted after, i don't think i'd ridden a bike for years! That night, we went out to Karaoke! it was pretty funny. We went to the same ones as lost in Translation (but not the same room) our room was themed and had projections of the solar system. It was a great room to belt out Prince's 'Purple Rain' to.

When Josh and I flew over we thought that seeing a Sumo was all but lost because we heard the season was over. but while we were here we noticed that there was a huge contoversy in the sumo world, we later found out the 2 sumos had been caught smoking pot (imagine the muchies) and also the season had just begun, hooray! so of course we went and they were MASSIVE but so fexible, while they were warming up they would kick there legs up so high, some of them were real show boats, revving up the crowds and throwing what looked like salt. We were all so happy to be able to have seen a sumo fight, theyre such a big part of japanese culture and we had kind of written off the experience because of what we had heard.

Josh and I have invented a game called 'Cauc Spotting' whenever we see another caucasian we yell out 'CAUC!' before the other one does. Its proved to be a stable part of our days in Japan but i'm not sure how it will go when we head to Europe.

Josh and I also brought a frisbee at a 100 yen shop. Its proved to be a god send! When ever we find a park we rip it out, the first day we were rubbish but after a few days our technique improved, were even getting a little cocky, every so ofter we throw some tricks in the mix like catching it behind your back or between your legs. We also invented a game called 'Hit you in the face', its pretty self explainatory. Player 1 stands still, while player 2 throws the frisbee at player 1's face. Hence the name. Josh is really good at it, i think its a way of him venting his anger.

I have found a new love, Japanese televison. I don't understand a word there saying but i'm strangly intrigued. The hosts are always old men (think japanese Darryl Somers) with young hot models and it seems everything they say is hilarious. Come to think of it they should put Hey Hey its Saturday on TV over here, it would make a killing! They love the odd game show too, one I saw the other day was a game show about pulling faces. Brilliant! and they love putting subtitles on EVERYTHING. oh, and i also saw a anime film about a girl who was a witch and her pet cat. supposidly its a real cult film over here, i think it was mainly for children but i enjoyed it.

Josh has also found a love, the Coffee Float. Its like a iced coffee, but its not. Its cold coffee with ice in it and then soft serve on the top. We have a song we wrote about it and everything. I'm pretty sure it would go straight to the top of the J-Pop chart (by the way music over here is pretty average) Oh, while on the topic of soft serve, they LOVE soft serve icecream over here, it seems everywhere you look you can get one.

One thing I do have to say that Tokyo needs to improve on is the quality of its street proformers. We watched one guy who had a massive crowd and I swear he got so many laughs and applause for doing next to nothing. It's an outrage!

Overall the people in Japan i generally really nice, sometimes overly nice ie: old man trying to pick me up. but there was one day we were at Osaka castle just looking at a map and a little japanese man ask us if we needed any help, we said we were fine but he pointed out where abouts to go anyway. he then asked us where we were from to which we replied Australia. his eyes lit and and said "oh melu gibson! oh, nico kidman, wussel crowe!" and we giggled and said yeah and then he said "me tom hanks!" and pointed at his army t-shirt, i think he mean saving private ryan, i still don't know if he thinks if Tom Hanks is Australian but oh well.
In Tokyo i found more people spoke english and in the other areas they didn't as well but they did there best to help you out. Its also really clean here which i kinda didn't expect but the most amazing bit of that is that there are hardly any bins around. One thing about Japan, its really cool by day but it gets awesome at night time! the lights, signage (which they are constantly getting the spelling and order wrong) and advertising (by the way is very strange) create an amazing buzz.