Andrew and Teni: Whirled Travelers

Adventures in....Toilet Training the Cats???

2009-08-04T15:55:00.002-06:00

The possibility of doing this seems like an urban myth. But gosh darnit I hate my house smelling like catbutt! So the adventure begins...

About a week and a half ago I decided that I was going to toilet train my two cats, Ami (short for Queen Amidala) and Vader (Yes, both are Star Wars names). After consulting various websites, my favorites being How to Toilet-Train Your Cat and the Douglas Island Veterinary Service's Toilet Training for Cats made Easy (ironic name), I set off with Step 1 - moving the litterbox into the bathroom, smack next to their new best friend, the Toilet. Cats generally will go where the litter is, but to discourage peeing on the carpet where the box used to be and to encourage going to the litterbox's new location, I put the Vader's favorite scratching toy in the place where the litterbox used to be, and lugged Vader over to the litterbox and plunked him down in it. That was the easy part. No problems, other than our bathroom being rather small, and the litterbox rather large.

Step 2 occurred a few days later, when I threw a cardboard box lid (~3-4 inches tall) under the litterbox to get them accustomed to doing their business higher up. Again, no problem. Considering the horror stories I'd read about the resistance cats had put up to the whole process, my cats were going easy as a slip'n'slide ride. So easy, I only waited about 2 days to move their box up higher, this time onto a box a whole foot off the ground. Again, easy. A few days, and I switched out their litterbox for an aluminum roasting pan, since that was what was going to wind up in the toilet eventually. Before long, I had that pan up on the toilet lid, and the cats were having no problems using it up there. Andrew, on the other hand...

More to come!

P90X, It's called "X" for a reason

2009-05-28T10:35:00.003-06:00

Indeed it's been a while since we've updated this blog, but here goes.

We got back from our cruise, which was awesome(The photos are on Facebook), we've planned a few swing trips (Camp Jitterbug, All Bal), and we've been working our tails off to make the money. Fort Collins dance projects are taking off, including Teni's new "Free private lessons" offer which got a flood of requests. Needless to say we're busy.

Nevertheless, we still felt lazy, as people like us tend to whenever we get time to relax. Relaxing = no bueno apparantly. So to stave of the desire to watch all 13(15?) seasons of Buffy in our "free" time, and to tone up a bit, we've decided to do P90X like many swing dancers these days. We've seen the results that people like famous dancers Nick Williams and Bobby White have achieved, and thus we were convinced that it wasn't just another late night infomercial.

They're not kidding that this workout is extreme. The fit test at the beginning gives you hope for your own performance and conditioning before the program. However....day 1 is Back/Chest and a devil of a workout called Ab Ripper X, and you slowly realize that your current "conditioning" as compared with these people is akin to a snail without it's shell...soft, squishy and grossly inadequate.

Tony (the host and creator) starts Ab Ripper X saying: "Ab Ripper X: I hate it, but I LOVE it". This became immediately apparant why as even with our competitive natures, Teni and I successfully pulled about 1/3 of the reps as the people in the video, and while Teni refused to stop until I did, she sure as shit collapsed on the ground into the same mushy puddle as I had one or two reps before.

They say that required equipment is a pullup bar, a heart monitor, excercise bands or weights, and your "bring it" face. After day one, I've already snapped one band amd my "bring it" face was quickly melted into something like a "holy crap, no mas" face. But I guess that's how you know it was a good workout. Today, day two, we have yet to do today's workout: Plyometrics, but all I can say is, I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad that there's no upper body focus today, as I'm not sure if I'll ever feel normal in my upper body again...

P90X: I hate you, but I love you.

P.S.
Incidently, my favorite part of the entire thing so far comes from the "how to bring it" intro video. He suggests that you start with the light version for the first 30 days, then move to the normal for the next 30, then do the "doubles" program all back to back. But he says once you do that you need to: "write me an email and tell me when you're scheduling your trip to Mount Everest because I KNOW you're an animal and I LOVE YOU." I'm still laughing at that....You may not find it so funny, but once you see this Tony guy, you'll get it.

Finally...the funny Japan pictures!!!

2009-03-22T18:09:00.008-06:00

...Or at least the things that struck me as funny. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll just mostly post the pictures...

I've always thought he was pretty cool...

Chocopie...For MEN. Yum.

Andrew explained to me that in Japan, the Colonel and Santa are thought to be the same person...I didn't believe him, but here's the proof!

"Eternally No Charge" lol!

Park'n Park...and then?

Yeah, no clue.

It's an energy drink...

It's no ordinary toilet...

It's got buttons that squirt water and plays music!

You know, I think we all like standards...

Don't trip!

Oh, the car names...

"Moco" means booger in Spanish...

It's a coffee vending machine...named Blendy. Lol.

It's a beer vending machine...

Hope you liked them!

We're going on a cruise!!!

2009-03-16T21:38:00.002-06:00

Andrew and I found a great deal on a 7 night Caribbean cruise that we decided we did not want to pass up, so...April 26 we go on a Carnival cruise!! We will be stopping at the Cayman Islands, Belize, Isla Roatan, and Cozumel. Yeayyyy!!!!!

November 16th: A day for the host family

2008-11-26T18:43:00.003-07:00

Before I had made all my preparations and whatnot to come to Japan this time, I contacted my old host family from back when I studied abroad four years ago. We have been keeping in touch all these years, and I really wanted to see them. My host sister had gone from 9 years old to 13…..a big jump for a young girl. Especially in Japan, when you enter your “chuugaku” (middle school) years, and your preparation for college starts. A big responsibility at a physically challenging time... I won’t get into the details of the cultural context and all that stuff, but needless to say: Japanese kids have it rough during this time in their lives. I was particularly interested to see how Kayoko was handling it and how grown up she had gotten since I was last here. As her “brother”, I was impressed and pleased. Much like my blood sister, she has matured a lot and shows a great deal of promise :-) Here's a picture of her to the right of their new host daughter, holding a gift that I won in a claw machine, hah:

So I dedicated a whole day to them. I got up and going from Ian’s and met my host family at the station I used to go to everyday for school, Korien-eki:

They came with their new host student, whom I was very pleased to see. You see, I was their first host student, and I was always curious really what kind of impression I left on them (the Japanese are often not very forthright about how they think of you….in fact, they never are). I guess the fact that this is their 7th host student since me is a testament to me not being a terrible “son”. Here are some pictures of my family:

This is the skateboard I left behind when I came back to the US. They made me sign it. They're going to keep it. Wow....I feel like I'm famous :-)

“Boku no koto wo wasuranaide kudasai” I said to my host mother before I left from Japan. By the time I got back to the US, she had written my mother an email that said “I cannot forget Andrew, he was my first son”. I almost cried.

Nov 15th: Outback to Izakayas

2008-11-26T18:09:00.004-07:00

On Saturday, I decided it was about time to get the hell out of the house, so after sleeping in, me, Mike, and Kozue (who stayed over with us) decided to go out for breakfast/lunch (at 1pm, hah) at…

Yes, Outback Steakhouse. I know, strange to go to an Asian country for an authentic experience and whatnot, and then drop a bunch of money on a western franchise, but what the hell, Outback has some tasty food, I’m not gonna lie about that…

On the way to Outback we saw this (take a look at these tights...this lady was like 60):

And this cool sculpture:

After this tasty treat, we took a trip down to Nagoya station, where they dropped me off so I could head to Osaka via my good old friend the Shinkansen (I’ve really gotten my money’s worth out of my unlimited train pass dealy):

Nice sunset out the window of the train:

Upon arrival, I settled at Ians place and then met up with a friend to go dancing! It was a lot of fun, and it was good to see my old dance friends from 4 years ago. I took this really cool picture of a wall of advertisements near shinsaibashi(a popular area for bars and shopping in Osaka):

Me and Ian killed some time and called up another friend of ours, Matthias Kreiger, who previously joined us for Karaoke in a previous post. Due to a negative experience after the last time we stayed out late in Osaka, Kreiger decided to bring some friends to accompany him on tonights ichibanjuunomi (All night long drinking…..yeah, doesn’t translate well). After some brief debate, we all decided we’d go out drinking - Japanese style! By that, I mean we decided to go to an Izakaya. Izakayas are essentially the traditional version of bars in Japan. They serve interesting small snack-y foods and lots of tasty, tasty booze.

On the way to the Izakaya:

This is what is being said:

So, we removed our shoes, climbed up behind a more or less non effective curtain, and congregated around our table and so began the fun. After introductions, and some general chit-chat about relationships and whatnot, I brought up the idea of drinking games, and we decided to try out a few. We started with a game that some of my Japanese friends in the US taught me called “Gyuu-tan geimu”, which literally translates to the “beef tongue game” (don’t ask…I don’t know). Apparently it’s a really popular game, because everybody at the table knew it right away. If you’re interested, I can teach you….it’s really easy. After many rounds, and many beers, we decided to switch games, we played another game that I don’t know the name of, but in similar style, people around the table call off certain words in a pre-determined order. Add to that, random pointing to reset the order of the yelling, and you get one big, fun, drunken mess. It was a blast, to say the least. After that, Ian TRIED to explain a very complicated coin flicking, beer chugging, game, like quarters…mixed with Hockey… mixed with pinball, mixed with….well you get the idea. After two other drinking games, and the ensuing difficulty in learning and explaining it, needless to say, we eventually just sort of gave up in drunken disinterest.

Unfortuately, I don’t have any good pictures from the Izakaya. (I know….I’m a slacker. Sorry, I was distracted by delicious booze and fun games, can you blame me?). These pictures are of us putting our shoes back on the way out from there:

After this, Ian and I went home, and Kreiger and posse headed to the next destination in their ichibanjuunomi. Needless to say, after the brief bike ride home (in the light rain, no less). We passed out VERY quickly.

The 13th and 14th: Gorogoro

2008-11-26T17:55:00.003-07:00

Thursday, I took most of the day to relax from the traveling all over the place, and get some work done, get some stuff prepared for the blog, chat with Teni (who I was beginning to miss a lot!), and just generally get re-organized. So, unfortunately, there’s not a ton to report about today. However, I do have some pictures of what sitting at home all day does to me:

In the evening, Mike and I went out on the town. We went downtown, and just generally hung out. Nagoya is a cool city. According to Wikipedia, “it is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba, and Hakata. It is also the center of Japan's third largest metropolitan region, known as the Chūkyō Metropolitan Area. As of 2000, Chūkyō Metropolitan Area has 8.74 million people, of which 2.17 million live in the city of Nagoya.”

Quotes aside, my impression of Nagoya is that it’s very open and western-looking for a city in Japan. Mike told me that the reason for this is that Nagoya was used for military weapons stockpiles at one time, and that the American presence during the rebuilding of Japan after the war, heavily influenced the building styles and layouts. But enough of the history lesson. Mike decided to take me to a cool shopping area called Osu Shotengai (Shotengai is the word for a covered walkway. There are Shotengais in many cities in Japan).

We also came upon a random shrine at one part of the shotengai....it really surprised me.

Friday was another day dedicated to “gorogoro”, the onomatopoeic expression in Japanese for lazing around relaxing. I did venture out a little bit in the form of a walk around the immediate area around Mike’s place, but I didn’t take any pictures, so I’ll just leave the narrative there. Later, after Mike got back from work, we decided to go out to dinner with his friend Kozue. We went for Kaiten-Zushi. It was delicious and inexpensive at the place we went. Here are some shots from that night:

Got bored in the back of the car on the way home...haha:

November 12th: Working from Dan’s and trip to Nagoya

2008-11-14T00:09:00.003-07:00

Not too much happened this day. Early day was dedicated to work and catching up on the blog, and whatnot. And Dan had some studying to do:

Plus, since there are only a few express trains from Takayama to Nagoya, we needed to make our way down to the station pretty early. And that’s what we did. But not before taking a few pretty pictures:

Dan and Takaho:

Dan and I:

Once in Nagoya, Mike met me at the station, and we made our way to his place to drop the bags…oye, I packed too much…anyway, we then went out to some gaijin (slightly derogatory term for foreigners) bars near his house. Apparently there is a relatively large Brazilian population here in Nagoya, and they are enterprising, for sure.

By the way, while walking around we came across some interesting bar names. I am actually going to putting up a separate post for interesting English stuff that I see here. I've already got a good collection going :-) Apparantly, Teni will be doing the same with MORE stuff that she has.

November 11th: School and Soba

2008-11-13T23:02:00.004-07:00

Today we woke up on the later side, chilled for a bit, I did laundry, and we headed off for school!!

The beauty seen from the school.

We were to teach the 3rd year students and the 6th year students at the nearby elementary school. We took the b-e-a-utiful walk from Dan’s place to the nearby elementary school that he works at. We were stars! As we got closer, we started eyeing kids from the road...and then they saw us! It was on.

As we walked up to the school, the few kids that were outside ran up to us and started with the inquisition. “Who’s this?”, “is he a friend?”, “Which of you is taller?”, “Oh wow! You speak Japanese? Amazing!”. As we walked through the halls on the way into school (after taking off my shoes, and putting VERY small school slippers on), kids ran toward and away from us, and every word out of their mouth that I could hear was about Dan and his foreign friend.

Made our way to the teachers’ lounge, got introduced to Dan’s fellow teachers, and killed some time before class. 3rd year kids are very similar to their counterparts in the US. Hyper, emotional, curious, and awesome. The 6th graders were much the same, and both classes were a blast…lotsa fun.

After school, we made our way home for a brief period, and then went to eat dinner with the lady who had previously planned our social schedules. It was a feast befitting a king (or like 5 or 6 kings). It consisted of nabe with all kinds of veggies, mushrooms, and more; Apple turnovers; persimmon; chicken; cabbage; and plenty of beverages. We overate, to say the least.

Then off to soba club. Soba is an entire culture and would take up its own post, needless to say, it was a lot of fun :-).

After we made the soba, we sat, ate soba, chatted, and drank lots of sake…it was a good day.

Nov. 10th: Adventures in the Mountains

2008-11-12T18:59:00.010-07:00

Hola!

Spent the day driving around the Hida Takayama, Hirayu, and other beautiful areas in the mountains here in Central Japan. Took some really good pictures and video. Hard to sum up today in any other word than beautiful. The area up here is stunning, even though the weather was overcast all day. I tried to take a picture of the cool thing that the clouds do here where they hug the mountain so closely, but I don’t know if it’s easy to see…you tell me. It’s really beautiful how they seem to swallow the mountain.

After rolling out pretty leisurely at about 11 or so, we drove around for a while, then went to a cool little village area where we got some lunch. Here, we ran into a person that Dan knows. A nice old lady with a perma-smile and a warm personality. She told us – yes TOLD US – that we were going to come to her house for dinner at 5 tomorrow before we go to the soba club meeting. Apparently, this happens to Dan all the time. The people in this quaint little country town “take care of” Dan by organizing his social calendar ahead of time, and letting him know later…interesting. That’s Japanese hospitality for you.

After that, we drove around a little more, stopped at a few places, and drove around some more. Walked around, found this:

Another Picture:

I like the idea of Café Mustache…tasty.

As we were exploring, I took an alternate route up a hill, and ended up on the wrong side of this sign…oops, hehe.

This is a cool picture of me I think….the clouds are doing that cool thing in the background…Thank Dan for this one.

Later, we walked up to a really cool waterfall called Hirayu O-taki (Hirayu large waterfall):

This is more of that cool cloud effect again :-)

This is a sign that says “Ashi-Yu place”, which means “foot hot water place”.

I meant to take a picture of the actual thing, but forgot because of the Taiwanese people that were asking me to take pictures of them….oops. Right after the waterfall walk, we soaked our feet for a while and drank some interesting juices from berries grown in the region. Really relaxing and good feeling in the cold, cold weather.

More pretty pics from Monday:

November 9th : Teni’s return and off to the mountains

2008-11-12T18:00:00.002-07:00

In Takayama! Well, not really. Today started with a taxi ride from Lauren’s to the nearby station with all our bags at 10:30am. Yup today, Teni was going home. :-( Heading from Kurihashi station, we went to Ueno, changed lines, went to Nippori, and caught an express (Skyliner) train to Narita airport. Next was checking Teni in, and then we went off to do some shopping in the terminal (which basically is a mall as well with restaurants and stores). Teni bought some last minute gifts, and feel-good things for herself and I before we decided to eat.
In the nine days we’ve been here, she hasn’t eaten sushi at all (and, in fact she’s never had it before in her life), and we decided that this was a problem, and that we should get some of her first bites of sushi. It just so happened that there was a Kaiten-sushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurant nearby, so we stopped in. There are videos to follow after I get a way to post them (probably not till after I get back to the states), but kaiten sushi restaurants are very cool and uniquely Japanese. Basically there is a conveyor belt that goes all over the restaurant and people sit around it. There is always sushi going along the conveyor belt, and when you see something you like, you just take it and eat it. After you’re finished, the people at the restaurant count your plates (which are different colors representing the different prices), and tally your bill. Really fun stuff.

Finally…dropping Teni at the gate, which was a really sad experience. I didn’t want her to go at all. We’ve had so much fun traveling together and this will also be the longest single period of time we’ve been apart since we’ve been together. It was a slobbery, pathetic mess of “I miss you already”s and “I love you”s, and various other amorous language. After she went through security, and I lost sight of her, I made my way out of the terminal and down into the station to catch an express train to Tokyo, where I could hop the Shinkansen to Nagoya to make a change and head up to Takayama. This trip is LONG. The train from Narita airport to Tokyo is an hour if you take the fast train, the Shinkansen to Nagoya is 2:40 ish, and the final train up to Takayama is another 2 hours. Here’s the trick though, the train up to Takayama only even leaves every few hours. This added another hour on to my Journey.

So, got to Takayama station at 10:07pm. Met my friend Dan and his girlfriend Takaho, and headed off to Dan’s house…which was another 30min drive from the station. Oye. I’m sick of Traveling today. Anyway, Settling in for bed now after some chat and shower, so goodnight. Will post again soon. :-)

Nov. 7 and 8 --Teni's Last 2 Days in Japan

2008-11-11T23:38:00.009-07:00

Nov. 7 -- After so much traveling and sightseeing the day before, Andrew and I took the first half of the day to sleep in and relax a bit -- sometimes you just need a little breather break, no matter where in the world you are. After our rest, we rallied ourselves and headed down to Ueno Station in Toyko; the park by the station, Ueno Koen, had seemed like a fascinating place when we briefly passed through on the 2nd, and I wanted to explore it some more. Unfortunately, this time of year it gets dark early, so we didn't have much daylight left. We ended up taking advantage of the cheap entrance fee and late closing hours of Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science, where we visited exhibits on physics and space (go figure -- physics is way harder in Japanese!), animals of the planet, science and technology (which had A LOT of hands-on stuff -- AWESOME!!), and nature observation. Check out the stuff we saw!

This old train was part of the museum's outdoor collection:

Andrew and I compare hand temperature to see who's hotter (in Kelvins) in this hands-on exhibit. He won =)

The Japan Gallery ceiling, built in 1930:

The museum is known for this life-size statue of a blue whale! It's huge!!

This isn't technically part of the museum -- it's actually the Tokyo Culture Hall (home of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra), and it's also in Ueno Koen. In any case, the building all lit up was too pretty not to take a picture =)

After exploring the museum to our heart's content, we jetted off towards Akihabara, a *major* electronic shopping area in Japan where you can buy just about anything electronic. Our purpose for this visit was to get Andrew an electronic Japanese-English dictionary, which he lost on his way to Japan (on the plane, he thinks). We ended up walking around a bit (surprise!), check out what we saw =)

This was so funny to me -- a group of middle-aged Japanese men in suits, standing outside of an electronics store watching a video game.

Nov. 8 -- Teni's last full day in Japan, a sad day indeed! Our evening commitment included teaching a dance class at Tokyo's swing venue, C-Jam Swing, so we spent the earlier part of the day packing bags and planning our lesson. We gave ourselves some time to explore our pre-dance destination, and set out. Our destination was a toss up between Ginza, the ritzy upscale shopping district of Tokyo, and Shibuya, a cool area with a very famous intersection (with gigantic screens on the buildings) and cute shops. In the end, we decided on Shibuya. We arrived at the station, found the exit, and...WOW!!

Shibuya crossing is said to have thousands cross...every time the pedestrian light turns green!

Of note, the famous statue of Hachiko, the dog who waited for his master's evening return at the station every day. When his master died, Hachiko continued to wait for his master at the station every evening until his own death, 10 years later. The statue was built as a tribute to the faithful dog, and it is now one of the most popular meeting places in Tokyo (sorry, not the best of pictures).

A wall of the Shibuya station -- I'm guessing this is also commemorative of Hachiko.

Our evening ended with a super-fun lesson and dance at C-Jam swing. The people were awesome, the dances were fun, and Andrew and I did a little dance and had a fun steal jam. Good times! Here's a picture of us with some C-Jammers =)

Nov. 6 -- Adventures in Kyoto, Continued...

2008-11-10T22:36:00.009-07:00

We woke up in Osaka, packed our stuff, and hopped on the Shinkansen bound for Kyoto again. Upon our arrival, we decided to explore the Kyoto train station a bit...and realized just how *huge* the place really was! We took about 6 large escalators to get to the food court at the top of the station's attached department store (U.S. equivalent of a mall), where views from the top afforded us a bird's eye view of pretty much all of Kyoto. It was fantastic! The building itself was gorgeous! And, as you can see, they've already begun to prepare for Christmas...

What you think is the bottom there...is still about 4-5 stories up. Yeah...it's a tall building.

After lunch, we hopped a bus to Heian-jingu Shrine, a Shinto shrine build in 1895 to commemorate Japan's moving of the capital to Kyoto 1,100 years ago. It, like pretty much all of Japan's shrines, is a working shrine. As you can see in the pictures below, a *gigantic* torii marks the entrance to the shrine -- apparently, this is one of the biggest torii gates in all of Japan. Sweet!

A tree of wishes

A couple, strolling along in traditional kimono

After taking in our fill of the Heian-jingu Shrine, we strolled back towards Gion (again) to find the subway back, and to hopefully see a geisha (geiko in Japanese) or a geisha in training (maiko); we were succcessful with the subway, but not with the geisha =( The pictures here are from our walk back.

*gorgeous shot by Andrew*

How cool is that? We found an old-fashioned printing press machine in a print shop!

This is a public bathroom. Seriously.

Concluding our Kyoto visit, we hopped back on the Thomas the Train decorated subway (talk about random!) back to the Shinkansen, where we headed back to Tokyo.

Nov. 5 -- Adventures in Kyoto and Osaka

2008-11-09T23:25:00.011-07:00

After a good night's rest, we left the Osaka Love Hotel district and struck out for a day trip to Kyoto via then Shinkansen (about a 10 minute trip), though not before stopping to take some pictures of the cool architecture of the Namba subway station in Osaka.

Even the manhole covers here are cool!

Discovered a tasty beverage at the convenience store...yum! Sadly, I don't think it's available in the U.S. ... booo!

The Kyoto train station was pretty sweet too...more pictures of that on Nov. 6th...

Our first stop in Kyoto was Fushimi Inari Shrine, a Shinto shrine known for it's thousands of small torii (shrine gates) that form a tunnel lining the path leading up the hill behind the shrine. I hear that it's gorgeous, but due to an unfortunate spider incident (think GINORMOUS green and black MONSTERS), I didn't get to walk through them. But I did see the shrine, and it was wonderful. Inari, by the way, is the god of rice, sake, and prosperity, and his messenger is said to be the fox (kitsune), who is said to love the fried tofu that wraps Inari Sushi (my favorite kind too!)

Next we tried to go to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, a Tendai Buddhist temple located at the top of a long, steep hill. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, it was closing, so we only got to see the entrance shrine. Boo on that. The little shops surrounding the area were great to look through, though. Incidentally, in one of those shops is where we learned of Obama's victory =) Anyways, unfortunately, the pictures are difficult to make out.

From there we walked towards Gion, which is pretty much the best-known Geisha district in Japan. We explored a bit of the main street as well as the little side alleys we found; after snapping some cool pics of the architecture, we headed back to Osaka for an evening of merry-making with Ian and Andrew's other friend Krieger.

KARAOKE!!! I wish I had taken some pictures of this, but Japanese karaoke ROCKS!!! Basically, you get a little room to yourself, complete with comfy booth-like seating, a center table, and a big screen up on the wall in front of you. It's just you and your friends singing, so no need to be embarassed. Oh, and the alcohol they serve up helps too =) Two hours of karaoke later, it was time to call it a night.
Andrew and I found a new love hotel to crash at, Hotel Diva; I liked this one better than the first one. The other hotel we checked out was Hotel 6, which had a very promising exterior...but the rooms didn't compare. They did have a little "poem," which I've posted for you. It made me laugh.

Hotel Diva

Hotel 6

Nov. 4 -- Shinkansen!!!!!

2008-11-07T18:16:00.015-07:00

November 4th was a pretty easy day; we got up once we were rested, we packed up clothes for our trip down to Osaka and Kyoto, and we hopped on...the SHINKANSEN!!!! That's right, we took the bullet train!! Very exciting indeed. Only two countries in the world have a bullet train: Japan, and (we think) France. These trains go around 200mph, which is FAST! They got us from Toyko to Osaka (upwards of 500 miles apart) in less than 3 hours. They're really nice, too. The seats are comfy, the train doesn't feel like it's moving...it's much like an airplane in that sense. It even looks kinda like an airplane from the front. Before leaving Tokyo, we stopped at a little Ramen shop where we each got a big bowl of ramen to fill our bellies. Yum! My mother, though, would die in a ramen shop (as I kinda am too!) -- slurping and lip smacking is the proper way to eat your ramen. Oye. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. Oh well!

Osaka at night

Anyways, we arrived in Osaka in the early evening, where we were met by Andrew's close friend from CSU days, Ian. Ian offered to let us shack up with him, though in the end we stayed at love hotels instead (more on that later). We went and grabbed dinner with Ian, eating at an awesome little Okonomiyaki (literally meaning, "cooked how you like") place; I'd never had it before, but essentially, they're like thick savory pancakes made from egg, lettuce, meat/seafood, and various other ingredients that they griddle up in front of you. Yum!
After dinner, hang out and catch up time ensued, and Andrew and I didn't head off for our love hotel til late. Now, let me elaborate on the love hotels -- love hotels are slightly gaudy little hotels created for the sole purpose of lovers. They're incredibly cheap to stay at overnight, since the majority of the clientele only stay about 2 hours. Some have themes, like the cartoon one and the Puppy Hotel, whereas others just have ridiculous almost-provocative names, like Hotel Dress. Though it was late and we were tired, we checked out almost every
hotel in the Love Hotel district before settling on Tokai 24, which we chose because it had a "traditional" style room, complete with tatami mats and sliding doors with paper windows ("shohji"). Tired from the traveling and the walking, we slept like rocks.

Nov. 3 -- Not All Who Wander Are Lost

2008-11-06T20:20:00.015-07:00

Oh no!! We're behind!!! We know, we know...in all fairness, we've been in Kyoto, with no internet access, for the past couple of days. But we've been taking LOTS of pictures =)November 2nd we spent in Tokyo. We took a train to Tokyo station and proceeded to wander for the next 6 hours or so. Let me tell you, our feet were TIRED that night! 4 years ago when Andrew was here, he wandered out of Toyko station and stumbled across the Imperial Palace...we tried to replicate that, and wound up...elsewhere. Well, kinda. We found the back of the palace, then tried to walk around to the front. After almost completely circling the palace, we gave up, and headed off in a random direction.

We're all ready to go!

Our train station

This is what we found upon exiting Tokyo Station:

A corner of the Imperial Palace!

Oh, it's picture time!

So we set off away from the Imperial Palace grounds, having been unsuccessful in finding the Palace front, and frankly, because we were getting bored of looping round the Palace. In our non-Palace wanderings, we managed to walk right into Yasu Kuni Shrine, a controversial shrine where WWII war criminals are enshrined. Go figure! Andrew says he's got luck when it comes to wandering and finding, and it certainly proved true in this instance! Check it out:

Oct.31-Nov. 2

2008-11-02T19:36:00.007-07:00

Wow! Talk about a long travel! Andrew and I left Denver at 8:30am on Friday morning; we took the same flight to San Francisco, then went our separate ways for our flights to Tokyo, his on ANA, and mine on Asiana Airlines, a Korean airline. Andrew’s flight was direct, and he ended up getting in around 3 pm on Saturday. Yeah, Saturday. My flight had a layover in Seoul (ummm, confusing airport…), and landed in Tokyo close to 9 pm. Having slept very little the night before our flight, we were both exhausted. Andrew’s friend Lauren met us at the airport; we’re staying with her for most of the time I’m here. Off we went to take three different trains to her house. Not much to tell, other than that we got to here place really late, and after a tour of her awesome little house and a shower, we both passed out and slept like rocks.

My meal on the plane...it required instructions to eat it. lol.

Our room at Lauren's house. It's a wa shitsu room, with tatami mats. We're sleeping on Japanese futons. .

Nov. 2

Wake up was around 9:30 am. Lauren and Andrew prepared breakfast, we all got ready, and off we went down to Tokyo (Lauren lives north 55 km). Ueno Eki (station)/Ueno park was our destination, where we were going to spend the day with a volunteer teacher/English exchange student friend of Andrew’s from CSU days, Sano Sensei. Sano Sensei was a very outgoing, bubbly, kind older Japanese lady, and we had a lovely day with her. She treated us to the Edo-Tokyo Museum (which was GIGANTIC and awesome, and is listed in the Lonely Planet’s Tokyo Encounter book as the #7 highlight of Tokyo) and to a Tempura dinner. In between we also hit up Senso-Ji, a working temple located in Asakusa, an older area of Tokyo, as well as Nakamise-dori, a pedestrian shopping street with tons of little shops and food stands that overwhelm due to the sheer amount of stuff to see in each little shop. Dinner was eaten in sitting on the traditional tatami mats and low tables. We drank tea, beer, and ate sashimi (my first time!), tempura, a really tasty clear soup, and various other yummies (I don’t typically eat seafood of any kind due to an aversion to how the commercial fishing industry practices its trade, but I’m shelfing my protest for the duration of the trip due to the integral part seafood plays in the traditional food here). After dinner we headed home, and exhausted, pretty much immediately collapsed into bed.

Pictures from the Edo-Tokyo Museum

Pictures from around Ueno Park area in Toyko

Welcome!! Konnichiwa!!!

2008-10-27T22:46:00.001-06:00

I'm not entirely certain why we decided to make this blog, only that all the cool kids are doing it...

No, but really. Plus, it's my suspicion that it'll be easier to post pictures and whatnot on this than to try to get gmail to email out all the pictures we're gonna be taking while we're in Japan.

Oh yeah, WE'RE GOING TO JAPAN!!!!! We leave October 31 for what I'm sure will be an awesome visit; I'll be there until the 9th, and Andrew will be there until the 22nd. We're pumped. Andrew was there a couple of years ago for a semester studying abroad, and I've never been. Lucky for us, Andrew speaks Japanese (Andrew wa nihongo ga wakarimasu); me, on the other hand...watashi wa nihongo ga wakarimasen. Ok, so I'm trying. And Andrew encourages it.

So, we're looking forward to this trip. If you want postcards, let us know!