21/6/10 - The Traveller.

If I ever need another netbook, I know where I'll get it. One of the staff at the hostel on the side customises laptops/netbooks. This one is half the size of mine, has a touch screen, over-clocked atom processer and 4GB of RAM. It can run Crisis. He also showed me the cool slide out two screen laptops he makes. The price for these is very reasonable too...

Also found out that he plays go. As I was leaving...

After my ride to Nagasaki I arrived just in time to go for a free walk with locals. A nice service for the hostel to provide. They took us to a nearby temple and for once I had an explanation for all the different statues and shrines. I believe now that Shinto exists soley to aid in the aquisition of wealth. Every god it seems has two purposes and one of them is always related to money.

One of the more artistic prayers.

Back at the hostel I taught another two people how to play go (you can probably just assume I do this wherever I go) one of whom has been travelling for 14 years, which I found quite impressive. He studies music in the countries he visits, and has been doing so in Japan for four years. He makes enough money to live on from making traditional Japanese flutes. He has obtained an odd skill set in his time... Of course being a traveller meant that he had a missed a lot of things, including Toy Story which we were able to remedy thanks to the hostels DVD collection.

20/6/10 - Okonomiyaki

"Hiroshima is famous for its style of okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), which literally means "cook it as you like it". Often (and somewhat misleadingly) called "Japanese pizza", it is better described as a type of savory pancake made with egg, cabbage, soba noodles, and meat, seafood or cheese. It is grilled in layers on a hot plate in front of you and slathered liberally with okonomiyaki sauce, with optional extras such as mayonnaise, pickled ginger, and seaweed. It sounds and looks like a mess, but is very tasty and filling. To give you a sense of the civic pride involved here, the Hiroshima tourist information office offers a map with a whopping 97 shops serving okonomiyaki within city limits, and reports have several hundred more in the area."

This is very tasty. If ever you find yoursef in Hiroshima, I suggest you try it.

The main reason for my being in Hiroshima is that accomodation on the close by Island Miyajima is expensive. A ten minute ferry ride each way (free using my JR pass) seemed to be a better option.

FYI

Miyajima is known as one of Japan's top three scenic locations, and it is indeed a very beautiful island.

Another five tiered pagoda. I wonder if there are any bigger ones somewhere...

Thank goodness they put that sign here. I'd never have found my way back.

This is exactly what I said, but noone believed me.

If I had a few more days I'd have loved to hike some of the trails on the island.

19/6/10 - It Finally Happened...

... on the the train to Osaka, I was dealt an unplayable Solitaire hand.

Anyway...

Yet another hostel where noone plays go. I taught four more people here how to play. I'm starting to feel like some sort of go missionary. I've taught twenty-something people how to play since I started travelling.

I spent the day with two of the people I taught, Adam from Cambridge and John from Oxford. John has just graduated with a degree in Pure Mathematics (although not from Oxford University) and I'm afraid some of our conversation may have bored Adam.

Oh well.

After having lunch (in which I had to clarify the order due to Adam's decimation of the Japanese language) we went to see the castle. Once again this is a reconstruction and the inside, complete with lifts, is a museum. Looks good from the outside, though.

The moat, wall and castle combination seems to be a popular setup for Japanese cities.

Another museum close by is very stylish looking. I tend not to go to many museums while here as the wall of Kanji makes it somewhat pointless.

16/6/10 - Let's Play to Chance.

Yes, let's.

Today I went to Nara. There are many more temples, shrines, towers and woods here. All of them are of course magnificent, but I thought I'd take a break from showing all of those and focus on the smaller, more amusing things this time. Also, deer seem to rule this city... they were everywhere.

... and they take nonsense from noone.

The one concession I'll make to temples is this one.

It is the biggest wooden structure in Japan, and houses an even bigger Buddha than at Kamakura.

While in Japan I've seen a lot of amusing signs (intentionally or otherwise) but have chosen not to show them because enormous temples are more interesting. Here is another example.

I had yet another odd flavour of ice cream today. Sesame seed. I decided a picture of this was in order as I have never seen grey and black ice cream before. This was by far the oddest flavour I've ever tried, but was still tasty.

Upon my return to Kyoto I taught yet another hostel staff member to play go. This is getting ridiculous. I'm going to have to find a go salon somewhere but I prefer to use my time seeing sights...

14/6/10 - ...In Another Castle.

I started the day by going to see the Omicho market. This is a large area full of stalls selling fresh fruit, vegetables and fish. It'd be a good place to go shopping if you lived here but as a backpacker it wasn't massively useful...

Kanazawa Castle Park was more to my liking. Another impressive looking castle with walls and a moat.

Just across from this was the Kenrokuen garden. It is considered one of the top three gardens in Japan, if not the top. It is a very beautiful place and is home to Japan's oldest fountain.

Here I tried green tea ice cream (see how I cunningly use odd flavours as an excuse to eat lots of ice cream) and it was delicious. You can generally guarantee ice cream is going to taste good, it wouldn't last otherwise.

Next it was onward to the samurai district. The area is another reconstruction (seriously, wood and paper buildings just don't seem to last all that long) but it was still worth a visit. Here I found a ridiculously expensive pottery shop (although I can't say that I've any other pottery shop experiences to compare with). I can't think of any reason that would make me spend in the region of £1000 on a bowl. Think of how much of anything else you could buy with that. A year's supply of green tea ice cream for example. Madness.

At lunch I ran into the opposite problem than usual. No English, only kanji. Thankfully there were big, colourful pictures to assisst me.

13/6/10 - Igo Boost

Got up early this morning to go with a small group of people to Shirakawa. This is the world heritage site of a very old (though mostly replaced) Japanese village. I say mostly replaced because the building design of the time involved making everything that could possibly be flammable, flammable. Apparently this doesn't make for long lasting buildings. Who knew.

On the way there I was impressed by the Japanese philosophy on road building. If they want a road connecting two places there is little that will stand in their way. We passed through many tunnels dug into the mountain to get to our destination, including one 11km long. It took ten minutes to drive through.

I wandered around with Dan, Abby and Adrian; travellers from New Zealand, New Zealand and Mexico respectively. Dan and Abby have been in Japan for eight months teaching English to a company... while learning startlingly little Japanese in return. Their excuse is laziness.

When I got back to Takayama I went to for lunch with another random group of people, the most interesting of whom was one who is hitch hiking around Japan. This is very safe here and he has made it a considerable distance with some excellent experiences along the way. I don't think I'd have the patience, however.

Later in the afternoon I caught the Hida train again where I found myself surounded by middle aged Japanese women, none of whom spoke English. Finally got to have a fairly lengthy conversation in Japanese with Marui san. Learned some new kanji out of it too.

At the next station I was struck once more by how polite and helpful people are here, as the moment I showed hesitation as to which platform I was heading to an old fellow walker over and started explaining the boards to me. I really like it here.

When I arrived at my hostel for my stay in Kanazawa (may have forgotten to mention where I was going earlier...) I found that I was one of only two guests there at the moment. It is a very small hostel holding at most 12 people. The building it occupies used to be a kimmono shop.

The owner, Masaki san, is extraordinarily helpful and my plans for tomorrow are all sorted. He then took Scott (the other guest) and myself to an old, though very modern and impressive, onsen. I'm pretty sure this place doesn't usually get foreigners, or indeed backpackers. It was a very good first onsen experience. There are many more ways to be too hot using water than I had previously realized. Only I could submerse myself in the freezing water afterwards though. Benefit of being Scottish I guess.

An aside. I have yet to run into any Japanese people who play go (igo as they call it) so have taken to teaching anyone in reach how to play. I hope I find someone who plays it before I leave...

12/6/10 - Shinkansen

Today was my fist trip on a shinkansen. Quite fast these things. I especially like how they tilt to take corners at speed. Some impressive angles going on there.

At Nagoya I had to switch to a different train. This one was called the "Wide View Hida" and is designed to give the best view through its huge windows. The route to Takayama essentially requires this; beautiful rivers, mountains, forests and villages passed by on the way there.

Upon arrival at Takayama I dumped my gear in the hostel and set off to have a look around knowing that I didn't have too much time here as I am only staying one night.

First off was the nearby old government building. Classic Japanese architecture that had the Tenchi Muyo theme tune stuck in my head for hours. I'm glad I like that tune...

Afterwards I wandered around the old area of town before going to a ramen shop for dinner. I'm pretty much resigned to the waiters/waitresses speaking English now, and just jabber away in Japanese anyway. They tend to be happy enough switching.

Due to my continued inabilty to read more than 40 or so kanji I have no idea what is going on with these guys. All I know is that painting of them were on the wall in the restaurant. Curious limb proportions.

10/6/10 - Rush Hour

I headed out on a day trip to Kamakura today and caught the end of the rush hour. Even then it was the worst I've ever experienced. The doors open and a flood of people who have become far to well acquainted with each other surges in and out of the train. I think I could improve on the announcements considerably. "Now arriving at Tokyo Station. This shit's about to get real!"

Kamakura was once the political capital of Japan, but I would have thought religious from the sheer number of temples around. It is as though they were building temples for years and then someone remembered that other buildings might be necessary at some stage. Seeing as you have to pay to access the biggest ones, I chose two of the major sites to have a look at.

First up was the giant Buddha. That is the actual size he was in real life. True story. For a small fee you can also go inside the statue. I did. There was really no reason to do so...

Near the statue I was accosted by a group of Japanese school children. They were asking questions in english for their schoolwork. I'm not convinced they actually go to school at all as the entire town was full of them.

On the way out I spotted purple sweet potatoe flavoured ice cream and obviously had to try some. Despite its name and appearance it tastes very nice. I was going to take a picture of the cone but then I ate it by accident. I'm sure you're able to picture purple icecream though.

The next temple I went to was Hasedera. Known for the largest wooden statue in Japan, I was more taken with the veritable army of Benzaiten statues they have. There must be thousands of them about the place. What are they planning?

After this I went for a wander off the usual tourist route. Still full of shrines and temples, only smaller and with no English signs, or indeed any other foreigners. Very peaceful.

To finish up I took a walk along the waterfront and saw hawks behaving as seagulls do in the stealing of food. This version is considerably more intimidating, however.

Oh, I also discovered that the fist pump was invented by Buddhists.

9/6/10 - Ninja Riding a Panda

Seriously, this place is awesome.

Also, I've found out why the flushing sound exists on the toilets.

Today I went for a look around Akihabara aka electric street. Here there is floor after floor, building after building of electronic stores. I honestly have no idea how they all stay in business. There is also a huge number of game shops and anime/manga shops. If I could read kanji I could have spent so much money there.

Here is an arcade with different floors for different genres of games. A floor essentially devoted to Time Crisis is my kind of arcade.

On my way bag I passed a supermarket and thought I'd show you how prolific cycling is here. They go faster than I'd feel safe doing on pavements full of pedestrians too.

As a result of getting irritated by not being able to read anything I've started learning kanji. 20 down, only 1980 common use kanji left to go. It isn't made any easier by the number of readings some of them have. The kanji meaning "base", "lower" or "under" can be read as, "ka", "ge", "shita", "shimo", "moto", "kudasaru", "kudaru", "sagaru", and "oriru". Knowing which you are meant to use is only known from experience. In general Japanese is a very sensible language but how is this in any way a sane writing system!?! Stupid Chinese...

In the evening I found that the hostel had suddenly filled up and I spent the evening talking to various. Most of them were Australian. It has started already...

I went for another walk around the temple near the hostel with one of them. This time I remembered my gorilla pod so my night shots are better. As it turns out, night mode + faint green light = pretty cool pictures.