Kurashiki

We were incredibly lucky for the location of our hotel in Kurashiki. We were right opposite the old city. Strange to be in a high rise building and across the intersection is the start of an old world. We didn't arrive until after dark that first day, so my first view of it was a still river that reflected the soft yellow light of the old buildings. Words could not do it justice. 

Why we arrived after dark had a lot to do with the fact that we had stopped to cycle 20km across the Kibi plains, the legendary home of Momotaro and Ura. We left our bags at the bike station and proceeded to get lost several times. Mari felt terrible but she had only ever done the tour in the other direction (they bike track can be done from either end). Still, we got to see some really cool sights and I was much better on the bike - I didn't run into a pole that day. Small victories. By the time we finished the tour on the bike 4 hours had passed and it was almost dark. 

That night we had the most amazing and well deserved bbq skewers. Mari told us that they are famous to the area. They were so good - some chicken, some beef, some vegetrables wrapped in bacon, and all were juicy. 

The one down side to all this eating out was that we seemed to incur charges everywhere. A lot of the restaurants charge a room fee and a table charge - at one place it was 450 yen! That is like $7 dollars for the privilage of sitting down. Each! 

The following morning, I headed out on a train to visit some gardens before heading back for an afternoon of shopping in the old quarter and trying more new foods. This time it was a crepe like wrap with a sort of citrus turkish delight inside it. It was nice but odd. I also later stumbled across some hot wine. Yes! They serve it to you in a takeaway cup. That is a lot of wine. 

Takayama

Takayama is awesome and very different to the other places we have been to so far. We arrived after a three hour bus trip over the alps. We passed several dams and even drove over the top of one. At one point I had to stop looking down over the edge. We were very high up and it was a very long drop and it had started to snow.

In Takayama itself it wasn't snowing which was a bummer because we were still waiting for it to happen. Our hotel was one where we slept on futons on the floor and there were tatami mats which meant no shoes. It was also a traditional inn which meant shared bathrooms. I didn't mind, you know me, but the others had serious hangups about their bodies and we had to come up with a schedule to ensure no one got to see the other naked. It was a shame because it meant that we couldn't enjoy the hot spring for long. The way the baths worked was you bathed first - quick showed to wet yourself, wash your body, shower off and once clean you could go and soak in the hot water which, I kid you not, had a small water wheel at one end. It was amazing. Dinner was also included that night and it was a huge spread of fish, rice, picked foods, sake etc. I have not eaten so much for dinner in a long time and it was hard, but tasty, work.

After the meal, we retired to the next room over and I cracked open the bottle of sake I had bought. I needed to lighten my bag ya know.... Ceri and Ashley had also bought a bottle and so that was also opened. Poor Mari, our tour guide, could not believe how much sake we could drink.

The following morning I visited a morning market and tried more foods. We visited the only remaining government Samuri building and tea garden - I am now inspired to have one of those. I also went shopping in the historic section of the town and enjoyed the architecture. They have such attention to detail, right down the edges of the rafters and tiles.

After dinner that night we headed back to the hotel and it started to snow. Yay!!! And it was heavy. The next morning when we got up it was to a light, soft blanket of white. Not a lot but enough to make me happy.

Matsumoto

Okay, so I am in Matsumoto now (I think that is how it is spelled). It was a lovely day when I got to see a few amazing sites and try some more new foods. It started with a bike ride out to a Wasabi farm. I haven't been on a bike in years so it was certainly a chance to brush up on my skills and introduce myself to a pole along the way. Although the bike ride wasnt long we still had to get out of the town and into the plains. Lucky for me the cars here are much more accomodating of cyclists unlike in NZ where I and the others would have been squished several times. 

The Wasabi farm was actually quite interesting. I had no idea what wasabi actually was so getting to see how it is grown and what it looks like. For your information, it sort of looks like a root vegetable but greenish and ugly. It can only be grown in very particular environments - it is grown in stones, in free flowing, icey water. If it doesn't have fresh, cold water flowing around it, it won't grow the same so they have their farm just below the mountains where there is constant water coming down off them. While there I tried some wasabi flavoured foods like crackers and tried fresh wasabi which has an almight kick to it. I didn't like it. Still me and Jarvey got some good photos.

After the bike ride, while waiting for my train back, I bought a Match icecream. So good. They do match here in the most amazing ways. I have bought myself some green tea kitkats too. Nomnomnom.

After that we headed back to Matsumoto castle which is the only castle to survive earthquakes and WW2. It is a Samuri castle with 6 levels and steeps steps. I am pretty sure this is where I gained the two large bruises on my leg but I honestly didn't feel anything. I think my legs were so cold that they were numb till I had a hot shower hahaha. It is quite neat as it is surrounded my a moat too. Thankfully, when we visited it also wasn't super busy. The stress of being around so many people is really starting to get to me. I need some more nature to recharge. Nature and space.

Nagano

We left our hotel early to get to the shinkansen (bullet train). It is faaaast. In the city it slows right down but once we were out of the main centre it flies along the track.
Nagano is a very beautful place in the alps. It is much quieter and I felt like I could breath. I could see the sky as there were no highrise buildings but ones more the size of Auckland's. It was also colder than Tokyo with small flakes of snow falling. We got in around 10am with heaps of time to spend. We headed towards the temple at the top of the street. It is a very famous Bhuddist temple. Inside I experienced a taste of total darkness. At the end of the temple is a set of stairs and you are supposed to keep your hand on the right wall, trailing your hand along it. The goal is to find the metal ring in the wall somwhere in the darkness. It was all about trusting yourself and not your eyes. As we descended down it got darker and darker until suddenly there is nothing. My eyes were wide open and I could see nothin. As I was in there I wondered if this is what miners felt like in the old days, feeling their way along in total darkness.As I made my way along, I touched the ring and then not long after that I turned a corner and there was soft light and a set of stairs in the distance. Apparently it is supposed to be like being reborn out of Bhudda's belly.
We also stopped at a restaurant and had oyaki which is like a baked, stuffed bread which we got to stuff ourselves. It was a cool experience. They start off a long like a steamed bun but after we stuffed them (one with sweet bean paste and the other with leeks and onion) they are put on an open cast iron slab over hot cals and baked. It was the tastiest food I have head yet and there was also miso and soba tea. I feel like I am on a gastronomic tour here!
In the afteroon we opted to go out the see the rice terraces on a train. Although winter and there was no rice to be seen, the terraces themselves were interetsing to walk about and they reminded me of the pink and white terraces in pictures. It was bloody freezing by then and we had to sit around after the walk and wait for the train. In the time we waited I discovered hot food vending machines are a thing. I ordered a hot chocolate and it came out in a can that you opened. The Japanese have it seriously sorted out here. On that note, they are also incredibly clean and tidy people. There are no rubbish bins on the streets. Everyone takes their rubbish with them. There is not litter on the streets or in the gutters, they have recycling stations around public events what are actually used correctly. NZ could learn a thing or two about what keeping a tidy city means. Although they seem to use an excessive amount of plastic, none of it is blowing about anywhere, even in the back streets.
As it was Christmas Eve we went out for dinner to a Spanish/Mexican restaurant. It was unique. But I had some sake and that made everything okay. We did a present exchange. We had been told to buy one small gift under 1000 yen and we then sang Jingle Bells and passed them around the table. When the music stopped we had to open the present we had. I got chopsticks which is cool.
This morning we headed out bright and early to see the snow monkeys. What an awesome thing to see on Christmas Day. I saw babies on mothers' backs and groups of males and females. I even got to see one get into the hotpool - total highlight! It wasn't snowing but there was snow about. It was also very cold. This morning's temperature began at minus 6 and got up to 3 degrees at some stage. It was a 1.5km trek to see the  monkeys but it was totally worth it. By the time we had done that and stayed to look at them and take a million photos, it was time to head back. So here I am now, sitting on a bullet train heading out to Masomoto. We should be arriving soon. It has been a great Christmas Day that hasn't felt like a Christmas Day at all except for the hot wine that I drank coming down from seeing the monkeys. It was the best hot wine I have tasted yet.

Some more of Tokyo

It has been sometime since I have walked this much! If only I had my step counter with me. I reckon I have done at least 20000 steps today and it would have been waaaaaay more yesterday. Today was a 'free' day to do as we pleased. Everyone split up and went their seperate ways today. This groups is lovely but they are very much here to do their own thing and it is strange not to be forming close bonds with the others, even my roommate.
Anyway, today I went to the zoo. It was probably the most depressing zoo I have ever been to. The animals are kept in very small areas that really are not big enough for them. The signs are also misleading - Monkey Mountain sounds glorious and majestic. It isn't. It is a series of concrete floored cages. There is a mountain but it is also a concrete structure and there is no leafy things to break it up. The monkeys all looked sad. It was the same with the lion, the bears, the elephants.
The zoo is set into the middle of a park though again, there is a distinct lack of green spaces. Today there was extra stuff on too. Apparently it is the Emperor's birthday today and a public holiday which explains the busy factor on a Sunday. At the park they had a small series of markets selling food - the fish was something I was not quite up to attempting but I I did enjoy the kumara cut up into wedges. The odd thing was that they sold the kumara with three options; with salt, plain, or with sugar. Sugar??? Just beyond the food stalls was a stage and a bunch of dancers that were performing a sort of J-pop style. Lots of mash-up music and small Japanese girls smiling and waving.
From there I headed about to see what else was in the park. It is HUGE. There are several museums and a pond which in the summer is full of lotus flowers but in the winter was full of dead sticks that were once lotus flowers. There was also a temple up near the zoo which was stunning with a main path bordered by rows of stone laterns. Inside was a really interesting site. It is the home of the flame of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. The story goes that a man went to see the damage left by the bomb and see if his uncle had survived. He found the building still burning with the flames if the nuclear fire. The man took the flame home with him and kept it alight for many, many years. The flame still burns just outside the temple now and has become a symbol of peace and a reminder of the devestation caused by nuclear weapons.
From Ueno park I went to the shopping market and bought my secret santa gift. . The streets of Tokyo are incredibly busy and the people walk with purpose. I managed about an hr then headed back to the hotel for a rest before heading back out for a show.
The show was great but I almost missed it when I got there at 6pm and it started at 6.20 and I didn't have a ticket. I was lucky there was still a standing space to watch the show. I was slightly annoyed however that I had said I was coming and they said to meet at 6pm and they had bought tickets at 5.45pm and gone inside. I didn't have wifi so had to go back down into the subway with free wifi to message them.
I wasn't sure what to expect but it turned out to be quite funny from what I understood. It was basically about a blind man who is getting robbed by a thief. They strike up a converstation and the blind man makes the thief feel sorry and changes his ways and even gives the blind man money. Turns out the blind man is greedy and has hordes of gold stashed in his house which we don't find out about until the end, after the thief leaves. It was all in Japanese and Andrew, who was sharing his translator with me, dropped it about half way through so I had to muddle through with the way they spoke, not what was said.
I tried to go back down after the show to get a ticket for the second scene but it was sold out so I left the others who had a ticket for it already and headed back to the hotel where I stopped at a small Japanese restaurant and at ramen (I had to pick a picture and hope for the best) and another white horse (of which I still haven't looked up what exactly it is).

Tokyo - day one

Holy moly, that was a long day! It all began at the crack of dawn when my brain told me that it was time to get up but was in fact only 4am (NZ time it was 8am). It forced myself back to sleep but had trouble sleeping as my room mate kept getting up. To be fair, she was trying her best to be quiet but the toilet door has a squeak worse than a murder house door and the toilet starts flushing as soon as you sit down on it. So, basically, you have to flush it again once your done. It is a terrible waste of water.
As the sun rose, I dragged myself out of bed for breakfast which was awesom. All you can eat style of basically everything from eggs to cereal to stir fry or curry. I kid you not. There is something for everyones pallette.
At 9.30 I finally got to meet the tour guide. Her name is Mari and she is a crack up. She has an awesome sense of humour and although her English is sometimes hard to understand, she never lets that stop her. The plan on the itinery was to do a half day of walking about and seeing the city but it turned into 12 hours when she didn't stop. It was intense. I saw a lot. And I do mean a lot.
We began at the fish markets that are no longer the fish markets as they have recently moved them to a bigger space. Apparently they are the biggest fish market in the world. If I wanted to, I could go out to the new markets at 2am and watch the auctions for the tuna etc fresh off the boat. No thanks. Howve,and the outer market is still there and there is still plenty of things to see and eat. They offer free samples in a lot of places so I tried dried out beans, dried and shredded cod coated in lemon sugar, squid jerky, sweet egg, roasted almonds still in their shells (they were YUM!). You could basically eat lunch there and not have to spend anything. From there we headed down to a bhuddist shrine and I am happy to see that I have Regular Fortune. I had to pay 100 yen, shake this barrel and get out a stick with a number on it. The number corrosponded to a little draw and inside was my fortune. Basically, translating from Engrish to English it says I have the desire to be superior to others and build my identity. I can look forward to a satisfactory income and a car (coach and horse). Also if I am a warrior I can catch and control whole countries with a single arrow and I will become well known in other countries and all my relative will be prosperous (You are welcome guys hahaaha). It also said that it is good to start a trip - so there you go!
From there, it all got hectic. By the time we did that it was lunch (which ended up being at 2pm) and so Mari took us to a small restuarant that seated about twenty people max - and that was actually large compared to some I had seen. She ordered Tokyo pancakes for us which, and I am not kidding right now, look like what my dog throws up. Nothing about the appearance gave me hope but it wasn't that bad. It is cooked in the middle of the table on a small bbq top and after cooking, it still looks like vomit. We were given these small shovels and you eat it straight off the hot plate. She also ordered another style of pancake which looked more like a frittata (which we had to cook) and then some noodles stirfried on the hot plate.
From there we were off again. Now, can I just point out that this was supposed to be a few hours only. Mari, bless her, is a little rocket. She moved fast and was were speed walking to catch up. Lucky for me I have been training my whole life for this moment - thanks dad! Hahahaa. We visited the Harujuku area (where all the teenagers where the anime clothing). I was a bit disappointed not to see too many dressed up but the ones that were were cool. We visited Shinjuku for dinner (expensive but all you can eat... and we had to cook it ourselves again). We also went to the famous Shibuya crossing - the one from Resident Evil and Fast and Furious. It was craaaaaazy crossing it. Hundreds on hundreds crossing and lights everywhere, TV billboards - it was sensory overload. To end the night, we headed up the Government Tower to the observatory on level 45. From there we could see a lot of Tokyo. It was from there I got a real sense of how big the place was. It was up there that I also purchased a little toy dog that looked a bit like Harvey. I have named it Jarvey (Japanese Harvey) and will aim to take some pictures with him in it every day to show Aaliyah and the others.
By the time we had done all that it was about 9pm and then we had to tackle the return journey. It was then that I had my first taste of  what the trains are like at peak hour. I didn't like it. We were crammed on like sardines and people there are so used to shoving past one another that they don't even apologise. If possible, I would like to avoid doing that again. It took half an hour to get back. At one point, an elderly Japanese man started to talk to me and asked about where I was from. I think he was practising his English. He was very sweet and made the time go a bit faster.
Right, I am off. It is almost 9am. The zoo opens at 9.30. I think it takes 20 minutes to walk there. Best get going.

I have arrived

It has been a long day but I am here. It seemed like forever waiting at the airport, then forever for the flight, then suddenly I was in Japan and navigating busy hallways with people that definitely knew where they were going. I sort of slowly meandered through the halls until I figured out what I was doing. Lucky for me I have travelled enough to get by. Also lucky for me, the trains are colour coded and the information desk people speak English and are incredibly helpful. I finally got to the hotel and arrived at the same time as my roommate - Kateraina. I walked in the door a few minutes before she did.
After a quick shower we braved the world and went out to get some dinner. Can I just say, we are so spoilt in NZ not to have people smoking in restaurants anymore. It was gross sitting beside a man who smoked like a chimney. The first place we went to was selling a lot of entrails and it felt like everyone was smoking, so we jumped ship and found place that did ramen and picky bits like edmame. There were pictures of the foods so it was simply a matter of pointing. It was also pretty cheap. I tried a drink called White Stallion. I think it was a beer but I am not actually sure. It was very light coloured and tasted like a mix between beer, lemon, soda water and vodka. It was odd but refreshing and I will definitely order it again.
Anyway, it is time for bed. Oh, one last thing... the toilets! They are amazing and have so many option buttons - like a privacy button which means it plays music while you go hahahaha.