Oct 2008

The footwear in Japan is unlike anything you have ever seen. They could really use Al Bundy here to help women get the sizing right. Shoes are either too big or too small. They are almost always heels, regardless of the amount of walking and standing you do here and the quality of the street. Women all seem to love heels. Also, the type of footwear would make most people shudder. Anything goes. If you can walk in it, you can wear it. Doesn't matter the occasion, the size, or the color. Here are just a few of many examples. Pretty much all American's in Japan agree that the shoe choices here are nuts. The incredible thing is that shoes are expensive so people spend a pretty penny to have the latest fasion.

On Saturday night we went to a hotel right in downtown Tokyo, run by the Navy to see a Beatles Japanese cover band. They really sounded just like the Beatles. In between the songs they would read things from a paper because they said their "English was not that good." It was really fun and we boogied down with the best of them.

On Sunday, we went to the Kawagoe festival. This is a festival where they make amazing "floats" decorated with real paper lanterns and they are made of carved wood. They are pulled with giant ropes and 100s of people. They pull the floats down the streets until they meet other floats and the drummers on each float try to get the other drummers off beat. They also have warring dancers with masks. It was surreal to witness. I alwas feel like I am in Disney world watching a show....but it is real life. Japan rocks. In one of the pictures, some intoxicated Japanese teenagers insisted on getting a picture with us. They were a riot. They were giving us high fives and yelling.

Here is the food we ate at the festival before it got dark. Quinn finally got to eat octopus on a stick and I had a baked potato with a thick type of soy based sauce on top. And this picture is for all you midwesterners. They were selling an ear of corn for $4.00 each!!!! Bring your corn here and you can become rich, or at least cover the cost of your plane ticket!

This pictures give you an idea of how crowded the streets were during the festival. You can barely move. You just have to go with the crowd. There is no fighting it. You can better understand the Japanese culture of community after attending just one of these festivals.

Living on base is like living in America but you can vacation in Japan on the weekends. This weekend we traveled from one American island to another American island to do a weekend trip in Yokohama. We stayed on the naval base in Yokosuka which was a good “base” (don’t mind the pun) for traveling to see a different area of the Kanto plain. Naval bases are different because they are 1. Located on the water 2. Have ships instead of airplanes and 3. They say “welcome aboard” when you go through the guard gate. But otherwise it is pretty much the same as Yokota with a mess of nondescript cement buildings, places to shop, a few restaurants to remind you of home. People make the 1 ½ hour drive to Yokosuka from Yokota just for the Chili’s on base! I don’t get it, but maybe after I have lived here longer I will be craving some greasy, fake southwestern food too. A big presidential style margarita sounds good. For now, I am still intrigued with eating the local cuisine and international food with a Japanese twist. It is only about 40 miles between the bases but because of traffic it takes 1 ½ hours on a good day to drive there and about the same on the train. Our neighbors came with us on this adventure so we rode with them. We are still without a car (similar to millions of other Japanese people) and are surviving with bikes only.

Yokohama is known for having the world’s largest China town (next to China’s China town of course). So we ate lunch there and feasted on multiple dishes family style. Here are some pictures of some unidentified fruits/vegetables and our new friends that came with us on our trip. They are our neighbors too.

The streets were full of Chinese decorations and shops and food vendors but we were too full to try any of the street food. Next we went and walked along the coast to the many man made islands full of shops and what not. One of the main reasons for going to Yokohama was that they were hosting an Octoberfest. You haven’t lived until you have drank a pint or two or more with 1000s of Japanese people under a tent with a German band playing and everyone singing/dancing along. Here are a few pics to get the idea. One is of the German food options available. I have a video too but I am working on loading it onto there. This was quite the international event with many Germans, Americans, other Europeans and more all in attendance. It was quite popular and for good reason.

Day 2.

We went to the Landmark tower up to the 68th floor on the fastest elevator in the world. It only takes 40 seconds to get all the way to the top. My ears popped twice. The views were incredible. We could see all the way to Tokyo and all the cityscapes in between. You really just can’t imagine how much urban sprawl there is until you see it from one of these observation decks. The pics don’t really give it much credit but here they are anyway.

We also went and walked along some shopping districts and ate awesome Indian food. It is really strange to go eat Indian food and the owner is Indian and speaks Japanese, Indian, and English. We also went up in one of the tallest ferris wheels in the world. It was pretty freaky looking down. We went at night and saw all of the lights of Yokohama and boats in the water along the shore.

Here is a random sculpture or art project downtown.

We had dinner at a swanky Japanese restaurant with all the coolest young urbanites. We had sushi rolls with Kobe beef and a CALIFORNIA roll. Haven’t seen one of those in Japan yet. We had dessert and a drink at another restaurant and then headed back to the hotel.

On the way home the next day we stopped at Denny’s. It bore minimal resemblance to Denny’s in the states and I had some noodle soup while everyone else attempted to order the most American thing on the menu. The egg yolks in Japan are orange which makes you think they should taste kind of cheesy but unfortunately that is not that case. Do you even recognize most of the things on the menu?

I mostly just wanted to post some pictures of things we have been doing, or shots we have taken that we didn't use.

This is another beautiful garden around Nikko. I can just picture a Shogun strolling through the garden trying to come to peace.

This is another picture from the temple in Nikko. They carry these shrines during parades when they hold celebrations or festivals. I can't even imagine what that thing must weigh. They dont build things out of small wood here. I also wouldn't want to think about carrying that thing up the hills around here.

I don't think we included a lot of pictures of the planes from the friendship festival that we went to. I was amazed at how close we were able to get, and I was also amazed at the size of the jets. I have seen a lot of jets flying overhead when I lived in Phoenix, but they seem a lot bigger when you are standing next to them. And the cargo planes that they have seem enormous once there are a bunch of people standing next to them.

For all of you car lovers, I was really excited the first time I saw a GT-R in a parking lot. It is even cooler looking in person than it is in all the magazines and pictures.

This is a typical doorway in Japan. You know that if they had anything like this in the States that they would all be broken or stolen, but here, I think people just take them as they need them and then leave them for the next person. You will never be without an umbrella in japan.

I don' know if we have shown a picture of the window of a restaurant yet, but this is typically how the food is displayed and in some instances we have had to walk our server outside to point at what we wanted. At times I feel really foolish that I don't know Japanese.

One of the stores in the mall sells stretchy business casual pants, and they are all sold in tubes. I was mostly amused by the manaquins on display.

Because everyone rides bikes here, they have started making underground parking areas for bikes, and they even installed a bicycle escalator at one store just so they had a way to get them out easier. There is also a picture of what the bike areas often look like.

Well, I think that is it. The program keeps freezing up, so I hope you appreciate the pictures that I was able to post. Have a good day and keep reading the blog.

Quinn

We ventured into the city this past weekend. You could go to Tokyo every day for 2 weeks and still not see everything. The area of Tokyo is expansive. We took the train to Central Tokyo station and walked to the Imperial Palace gardens. An interesting tidbit about Japanese public areas. They have roped off or sectioned off areas where people can smoke....I think I had something about this in another blog. Well, in Tokyo station they have a glass room where people can smoke and it has little fans that I think suck in the smoke. I didn't go inside to check it out.

The emperor and empress still live on the grounds and much of it is inaccesible to the public. We could hear people practiving some martial arts just behind a hedge barrier but couldn't really see. Quinn and I both wondered if there were really people practicing or if there were just men yelling and pounding sticks on the ground
The palace gardens were huge in comparison to many of the Japanese gardens we have seen in Tokyo but miniscule in comparison to what we saw in Ireland.

There is a running course around the Imperial Gardens. It was packed with runners. Quinn I thought there was a race or something going on but apparently there just isn't anywhere else to run in the city so everyone runs there. It is crazy. So many people

Here is the entrance to the grounds. Cool door. Maybe I can make a table from that.....

Picture of the gardens.

Picture of grass expanse with tall buildings in background.

Here are some random buildings and sculptures we ran into along the way.

We took another above ground, computer operated train around Odaiba and viewed beautiful architecture, the ports, and coastline. Forgot to take pictures of that. Sorry, you will have to come and see it yourself. As we arrived in the shopping area there was a Toyota track and exposition center with a time trial going on. There are always surprised in Japan. There are so many things going on you can't possibly keep track of them all. Here is a pick of one of the cars. Can you believe how close these people are? They hearded everyone into these areas and gave them ear plugs. Everyone seemed as surprised to be there as we were.