Tokyo Fish Market

I haven't felt so much like I was trespassing in Japan quite like I did at the Tokyo Fish Market. That place meant business, and the folks working there were right on the edge of tolerance and outright annoyance at having tourists weave their way through the narrow isles. (followed closely by rampaging motorized pallet movers seemingly hoping to run absent minded visitors down) It's a bit like touring a construction site - you'll probably see some really cool things, but you'll also be in someones way and it might be a little dangerous. ('visit at your own risk' type signs are posted on the bridge to the market, but if you keep your eyes open you'll be fine.)

The volume of seafood-based commerce taking place was astounding. The variety was equally impressive - not only was virtually any edible (and some I suspect not) sea dwelling life form available for sale, even the rarest seemed to be available in bulk - alive or on ice.

A constant stream of trucks and small motor bikes were leaving the market, bound for the kitchens of establishments across the entire city. The fish on ice arrive packaged in styrofoam cartons, which are slowly discarded as the morning's sales add up. While I'm sure they do a good job of recycling like everywhere else in the country, the styrofoam holding area they'd set up outside was the second 'oh my gosh I've never seen so much of that in one place' moment of the day. The day was unusually windy, and a good gust made the entire parking area look like it was in the middle of an unbelievably chunky blizzard.

I wish I was going to Hakodate

How can you not want to visit after seeing a tourism video like this?

Photo Captions

I've been slacking on the blog posting recently in an effort to catch up on my photo captions over at Flickr. I'm only uploading a pretty limited selection, but it's still a large enough number that I'm getting behind!

If you're interested in a preview, everything through this past weekend has been uploaded and is available for viewing. The next few days are shaping up to provide a bit of catch-up time, so stay tuned for the latest photo commentary.

Okkawa Float Festival

Prior to the Tokyo trip over the weekend, A and I attended the Okkawa Float Festival just outside Nagoya. I admit to being ignorant of the religious background of the festival, but the gist of what occurs is large teams drag enormous ornately carved wooden floats between two shrines. The route includes a short, steep hill, which for a tower rolling on wheels that look like something out of the Flintstones is rather perilous.

The surrounding streets are filled with food and game booths, and these festivals always offer tasty food at relatively low costs. I got a decent fried noodle / pork / cabbage dish, and A got a chocolate covered banana on a stick. In stark contrast to the Tagata Shrine festival (Giant wooden phallus, remember?) we spotted only a handful of other foreigners, which was a welcome change. It was arguably just as cool, but apparently a better kept secret. In fact, it's so underground that A's blog is currently the #1 English Google result for coverage!

Tokyonaut In Training

Tomorrow I'm departing on some sort of spaceship for a trip to the futuristic land of Tokyo. The Shinkansen 700 Series is not the fastest bullet train Japan has produced, but it's the newest and in widest circulation - and a top speed of 177 mph is nothing to scoff at, even if it is #2! The trip would take nearly five hours by car, but by train is only an hour and a half. Barely enough time to finish my 'bacon and egg bun' I bought at the grocery store this evening and play some video games! (Game Boy Micro is the final word in travel entertainment, and I'm sure it's pleased to be on this reunion tour of its homeland)

I nearly died last weekend

On Sunday A and I attended the Hounen Matsuri festival at the Tagata Jinja shrine. It's a raucous and slightly naughty fertility festival popularized for the two and a half meter wooden phallus that gets paraded around. While I'll certainly fill you in on that in a later post, prior to the main event a sword demonstration was taking place in the courtyard in front of the shrine. Quite a crowd had gathered, pressing observers in close to the action.

The individuals putting on the demonstration looked like they were part of a hobby martial arts team, sharing a few swords between a large group. Each member would take their turn slicing through a piece of bamboo or rolled tatami mat, going through the full routine of drawing, cutting, and sheathing. And then someone decided to get fancy. You've seen a samurai movie where a character makes a cut straight out of the sheath; instead of pulling out the sword, taking a ready stance, and then swinging, the execute sort of a 'quick-draw' attack and swing the sword as it's pulled from the sheath in one motion. It's not just movie silliness, it's an authentic technique, but one which I imagine requires considerably more skill - skill that this team wasn't demonstrating.

In the photos above, the demonstrator has just executed his cut using this method of attack... sort of... If you examine the photo on the left, you can see the handle of the sword behind his hand - as in, he's not holding it any more. In the right photo, you can see the tip of the razor sharp sword spiraling away behind him, but it happened so quickly none of the audience members have even reacted yet. The flying sword clattered to the ground without striking anything (or anyone) but holy crap did that seem like a close call. If he'd held on a little longer, it could have been flying right towards A and I!

Oddly enough, the demonstration continued on as if nothing had happened, although several of the spectators who witnessed the event got behind someone else in the crowd, or left the area entirely.

Daikon Baby!

I'm not kidding, it's basically the size of the infant. This is one of the biggest radishes I've ever seen - it's taken over a week to eat the thing! You could feed a family with these. End world hunger. Or just make tons and tons of trendy salads.

Japan Loves Ferris Wheels

They're everywhere! This particular example was at a small amusement park at the port in Kobe, but they're present in even smaller cities throughout the country. I'm reasonably certain this ferris wheel is larger than the one at Cedar Point, which seems completely out of whack - that park is one of the highest regarded in the world, while this one was scrawny and was situated next to a mall and numerous pachinko parlors.

This park was closed when the photo was taken, so I have no idea how many riders they actually have... my experience so far is that Japanese people love to stand in line for just about anything, so if they do a good job not letting riders on very quickly, I'm sure they build up a nice line of happy visitors.

Welcome To The Future: Pod Bathroom

Allow me to give you a tour of the bathroom of the future, which was located in the hotel we stayed at in Kobe. The toilet had more buttons than the remote for my DVD player, several of which involve activating jets of water in places you might not expect. The sink and shower/tub utilize the same faucet, and I can't decide if that's efficient or inconvenient... I suppose it's both.

The interesting thing was that the bathroom-ness was contained within a pod-like structure, water-tight at all seams. You could cut loose with the shower and spray any of the walls, even the door, and it all would have drained away nicely. (I wouldn't be surprised if the hotel staff use that strategy for cleaning.) Since the setup was so self-contained, it seems like the perfect kind of thing for some converted industrial loft - so long as you had the plumbing hookups, you could put a comfortable bathroom anywhere!

Kobe Beef in Kobe, Japan

When people hear Kobe, they think cows that get massages and drink beer. And let me tell you, now that I know from experience, those cows are delicious. We had lunch at a steakhouse called Wakkoqu - The lunch was reasonably affordable, provided you consider $30+ a plate for lunch affordable. Compared to the dinners ringing up over $100, it seems like a deal.

It turned out to be one of those 'cook at the table' places, so that was an unexpected treat. It was a show on top of a delicious meal! The plate behind the steak there has tofu, bean sprouts, potato, garlic, peppers, and sweet potato goo. When all of those veggies were cooked along with the steak, they also pick up the flavor, and Mmmm, what a meal! With all of that on top of a salad, miso soup, and tea, it was the best meal I've had in Japan to date.

Kobe Earthquake Museum

The first stop on the Kobe tour was a memorial / museum dedicated to the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which took place in 1995. I didn't remember hearing much about this taking place, and the more I learned about it the more it seemed to parallel our semi-recent Katrina natural disaster.

I'm not sure if we happened to visit at an odd time (12:30?) or what, but A and I were the only two visitors in the group. We were significantly outnumbered by the museum staff that was supposed to be watching over us, which was a little awkward at times, but after watching two movies we were released to browse the collection of items and photos taken in the aftermath of the quake.

One of the more interesting sections of the museum was how to avoid similar disasters in the future. The event will still happen, but if people are prepared and buildings are designed with earthquakes in mind, the impact will be greatly decreased. The museum had a few hands-on engineering demos where the importance of cross-bracing and isolated foundations was highlighted in nice, simple terms.

The museum was interesting, but if you're looking for must-see attractions in Kobe this might not be it. While they were very accommodating of English speakers, the content may not be appealing enough to warrant time in a limited schedule. For my part, I'm still glad I went!

Kobe + Osaka = Busy Weekend!

It might have been overly ambitious of us to undertake such a packed itinerary spanning both Kobe and Osaka, but in the end I think it was worth it. Tonight I was playing with the weekend's photos, which are currently still split between iPhone (undercover pics) and D40, but by tomorrow I plan to have them all up and ready for review.

In advance, I will say that Osaka was my favorite location of the weekend, while the 'best meal' award goes to Kobe. While Kobe was eerily empty, Osaka seemed at times uncomfortably crowded. While the large crowds of people can make it a little tedious to get around, at least you have the reassurance that whatever you're doing was such a good idea that everyone else is doing it too. The only thing everybody else seemed too be doing in Kobe was staying home or traveling out of town!

Out for the weekdend

I'll be out of contact for the next few days, with some overnight plans in the lineup. Saturday I'll be in Kobe, and Osaka on Sunday. It's a busy itinerary, but making the most of the weekends feels good.

I have the slightest bit of guilt regarding the driving situation here... At home, I rarely drive, preferring instead to walk or ride my bike to work and local establishments. I opted not to get my international drivers license before coming over, assuming it wouldn't be that important. Now I feel a bit bad, considering the amount of driving that A will be doing over the weekend. At the same time, not being able to drive is a bit of a relief. Driving on the left side of the road seems like nerve-wracking experience, and that's even with my professional driving history!

Nabano no Sato

Last weekend A and I visited Nabano no Sato; a park that does a yearly holiday illumination display that is exceedingly popular. I'm not sure how appealing this would be in cooler weather, but with the cherry blossoms just starting to open in the background, the park was pretty pleasant to walk around.

While it was fun to see the early cherry blossoms, the real show began when it got dark, with light displays that were elaborate and massive in scale.

It was the first time I've dealt with a real Japanese crowd. They seem to take any excuse to stand in a line - lines so long there's no possible way to know what you'd even be standing in line for. Personal space isn't quite the same here - the crowds are shoulder to shoulder (or sometimes in my case elbow to shoulder) and bumping up against the people around you seems to be par for the course. Certainly nothing to apologize for or really even take note of.

This was one of the more impressive views in the park, both for the hundreds of yards of light tunnel, and also the hundreds of people crowding through it. Luckily it thinned out about a third of the way through as the novelty of enormous lighted tunnel wore off and people picked up the pace to get to the other side. But it was a perfect example of 'what am I in this line for?' - the line stretched around a corner and out of sight of the tunnel, where people were waiting when it was still light out! How interesting would this view be if it wasn't in the dark?

In addition to the lights, another big attraction at this park was the food. (as mentioned previously) Half the price of admission went towards vouchers that were redeemable with the parks various vendors, restaurants, and gift shops. With about $20 in vouchers between the two of us, A and I managed to eat well, and still come home with several pastries. Any light show that includes tasty leftovers is a success in my book.

(The pastries are, starting at the bottom and going clockwise, an apple turnover, a potato(?) croquet bun, a fancy latticed croissant thing, and a chocolate goo filled bun. The juice box looking thing is actually hot chocolate)

Water line maintenance continues

For the past week or so I've been dealing with maintenance outside. All morning there's jackhammering and digging, and all afternoon there's compacting asphalt back into place. It's slightly better when the crew is working in an area they've already torn up, because that requires far less work with the jackhammer, but it's still an obnoxious part of my work day.

The work was taking place particularly close to the door to the apartment building today, and I was pretty much exiting into the middle of their construction zone. These work sites all have uniformed safety officials, and on the way back from lunch my approach was noticed, and the safety guy came over to assist. Had I been walking down the road just passing through, I would have crossed the street and avoided the mess altogether, but the safety official seemed ready to usher me completely through all of the ongoing instruction so I wouldn't need to alter course. Luckily I was able to duck back into the building before he started interrupting workers in order to let me walk by.

Food on a stick

While I haven't yet had the opportunity to sample any local eel, food on a stick comes in a close second for things I'm excited about eating while in Japan. This weekend we visited Nabano no Sato (more on that another time), one of the major attractions of which was a variety of tasty vendor food. Octopus balls (taco yaki) were my choice, which I found to be tender and delicious, and A went with some sort of cheese filled gelatinous vegetable stick. The flavor was agreeable, but the rubbery texture made it unappealing.

Thing is, I didn't know what these were until I'd taken a bite. (actually I was half way through when the food was identified) Knowing the names of the food really wouldn't have made for a better or different decision, since I've never had anything comparable. It's all about the context - this was sort of a fair atmosphere, and when was the last time you ever had bad food from a fair? Worst case scenario, the item on the right might have been a corn dog.

Custom Racing Van

Japan's interest in racing and tuner cars has been the subject of much pop culture fodder, but up until now sweet custom vans have largely been overlooked. No longer! This is an important part of Japanese automotive culture, and this particular example can be yours for only about $15,000.

While America has generally turned its back on a noble heritage of custom vans, it's somehow comforting to know that it lives on, and is in fact stronger than ever. With the declining popularity of SUV's in the US, I suspect it's only a matter of time before the van makes a comeback, followed closely by the sweet custom van. Start shopping now to get the best deal!

When Bentos Attack!

Nothing too strange here... starting in the upper left and working clockwise, we have tomato, potato salad, and lemon, delicious lemony fried chicken, random pickled vegetables, and a bed of rice topped with a pickled plum. An excellent Friday lunch.

This was picked up at a nearby restaurant, which was a semi-classy takeout place. (Maybe a chain?) The menu was located on the front of the counter, out of view of the cashier, which made my charades version of ordering more difficult. Ever polite though, the employee came out from behind the counter to see which menu item I was pointing at and hooked me up. I'm told fried chicken is a very Nagoya food, and really it must be... have you ever heard of fried chicken being big in Japan? I certainly wasn't expecting to be eating it here.

Here's the thing, this is effectively fast food in prep time and price, but the care in presentation is noteworthy. This is how it looked when I brought it home; notice how the top of the bag is actually taped shut? Maybe they're just trying to prevent me from stealing things on the way out of the place (why it's done at the department stores), but it still shows a great amount of care for a restaurant without anything to pilfer on your way out. I'd like to think they were just doing a nice job packaging it.