I'm baaack

Only this time I'm not, in fact, here for the eel. I am back in Japan though, and blogging. Please click through to the number one Alice and Mike blog on the web: aliceandmike.com

Beer Garden

This evening, along with our expat friends, we're heading to one of the beer gardens that has recently opened for the summer downtown. For around $40, it's an all you can eat / all you can drink spree for roughly one hundred and fifty minutes. That seems like enough time to do some serious damage! While the location has a questionable name (Malibu), it's advertised as having one hundred different dishes available for their patrons. Considering we had to make a reservation about a week ago, it sure seems popular enough!

Like a Boss

First Tommy Lee Jones, and now this. In the cut throat world of beverage marketing, it takes a lot to get noticed!

Japanese Alps

Currently lying on the floor at the hotel - 'in bed' on a futon. A and I opted for the Japanese style room for our bed and breakfast (and dinner!) stay in the mountains. The weather has been less than ideal, with not a minutes break in the pouring rain today, but our trip has still managed to be enjoyable. This afternoon we found a good indoor attraction by the name of Ninja-kami; a temple that was actually an undercover trap and secret passage filled fortress. (the 'ninja' name is more of a modern alias) Most impressive about the structure was at the time it was built, the maximum legal number of floors in a building was three - while it looked like that was the case from the outside, there were actually seven floors/layers inside!

Rickey's Euro Pub

Here's that video I promised of the bartender show last Friday. He's got some serious moves, and this five minute clip really only accounted for about half the time the whole show and drink mixing lasted.

I'd love to post about Kyoto, but Flickr has managed to lose my upgraded account info and currently isn't allowing me to upload photos. Thanks Yahoo team. First you unbundle from AT&T DSL, and now you're preventing me from using my paid service. (I'm not bitter or anything)

Big night out

After a wild and crazy bar night in Toyota City, I now need to go to bed for an early departure to Kyoto. A and I will be out till Monday, but I can't wait to post a video I took of the bartender this evening. He put on the most ridiculous show I've ever seen! On top of that, we were accosted by yet another collection of boozified Japanese co-workers, and their stories also need to be documented. This country continues to amaze me!

Happy Tax Day!

I've heard that being out of the country is cause for a tax filing extension, but that's already been taken care of this year. It's strange when these bits of important business crop up from home... If it weren't for this trip I'd probably be stating up calculating my taxes this evening, then scrambling to find a post office that stayed open late. Hooray for forced organization!

Takoyaki Signs

My favorite vendor food sign here is by far the takoyaki. (Octopus balls) They always look so happy, beckoning customers to their booths!

Zombie Attack!

Lets face it, zombies are serious threat we face in our modern world. I commend Japan for taking the lead in educating children on how to respond to the undead threat. (Despite the decaying appearance, you can tell the zombie is Japanese - it removes it's shoes when it chases the family into the house)

Seki - City of Swords

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend a sword forging demonstration in Seki, a city renowned for their cutlery going back to Japan's feudal era. The museum in Seki only does something like five demonstrations a year, so that one of them happened to be while I was here and had an available weekend seems like very good fortune. I'll admit that I'm a huge nerd when it comes to this kind of stuff; I'm not terribly keen on martial arts exactly, I just have an interest in arms and armor.

I went into the demonstration with a solid background in Japanese swords, but knowing how one of the things is put together says nothing about the basic construction. It's like saying you know how a car is made because you've seen the assembly line, even though you're unclear on how the individual parts were produced. I'd previously pictured the swords being produced by one person, when in reality it was a small team. 'Labor intensive' doesn't begin to describe the process. As part of the iron refining (the demonstration we were watching) the metal is folded over and over... in the roughly hour and a half we observed the team of four folded the iron twice, and swords can have more than ten folds. That's a lot of work before the thing starts looking even remotely sword shaped!

Run for your life!

On Saturday, A and I visited Nara, a city in the mountains east of Osaka. It's religiously very important, being home to several notable shrines and temples, but is also home to a large population of sika deer. These aren't the sort of viewed at a distance deer you might be used to; although their 'sacred' status was revoked after WWII, they are protected as national treasures and are absurdly tame. They're content to go about their business, pose for photos, and generally be pleasant, until they spot someone buy a bag of 'deer cookies'.

Small stalls in the park sell stacks of round, baked wafers specifically for feeding the deer. If you've seen someone attempting to feed pidgins in a city and getting completely swarmed, you know where this is going... just imagine getting swarmed by persistent deer! If you run away, they'll only chase you, and do you really think you can run faster than the fleet-footed deer?

I didn't see any smaller children have problems - they were always quick to hand over the cookies when approached by the deer. For some reason, it was usually the older people who rather than handing over the food, thought they'd somehow manage to take a step back and regain control of the situation. As if the deer would allow that to happen! It's full court press from the moment they spot you with food until they're fully convinced you no longer have any.

While dodging the random deer droppings throughout the city can be a little trying, the deer add to the uniqueness of Nara and contributed significantly to my enjoyment of the place.

Cherry Blossom Holiday

While there isn't technically a holiday associated with the cherry blossoms, people here seem to have taken it upon themselves to act like there is. On Friday, the whole American crew (M, L, A, and I) headed over to Tsurmai Park, which we were told was the place to have an evening picnic under the cherry blossoms. We came prepared with adult beverages and tasty snacks, but nothing could prepare us for the view we found when we exited the subway...

The park itself was striking - a large grove of sprawling cherry trees was lit with hanging lanterns. The number of visitors in the park was the real shock - nearly every inch of space under and around the cherry trees was covered with a blanket and picnicking party people. We were expecting a crowd (it was a local university's 'welcome week') but I was a little overwhelmed with the number of people.

We staked out a decent people-watching spot on the edge of a small pond in the park, and proceeded to get our snack and drink on. After finishing sandwiches and our first round, we were snapping photos when a pair of passing guys offered to take a photo including our full group. Happy to accept, we handed over cameras and got some nice pics.

Then our evening took a turn. One of the guys (in the middle) was very insistent that we should join their group closer to the cherry trees, and lacking a good reason not to we packed up and followed them back into the thick of the partying.

It turned out we'd actually walked right by their group earlier, and I'd been impressed by the folding kneeling-height tables they'd brought along. When we were seated at the table (sitting there in our socks, shoes left at the edge of the blanket), I was impressed again by their eagerness to share drinks and food with complete strangers. While I suspect we were the butt of a few jokes, I can't say I really minded. I never would have tried grilled intestine on a stick or tiny whole bbq squid (yes, they were eating it all too - it wasn't just 'feed the foreigner funny food') on my own, and the return to treats I'd tried earlier in the trip like takoyaki (octopus balls) was a nice bonus.

Notice they're all in suits? They'd come straight from work, where they were engineers and architects for an apartment building construction company. This photo was taken around 10pm, so these guys have been at it for a while. What an evening! If you're ever in Japan, I recommend you get picked up by strangers at least once.

Bathroom etiquette

It seems like every time I use a bathroom in one of the subways, just as I get down to business an older woman comes in and starts puttering around cleaning. I might have been more concerned had the bathroom not been quite crowded the first time it happened - the other bathroom patrons went about their business like she wasn't there. It's decidedly stranger when you're alone, and someone of the opposite gender comes in to start mopping the floors. At home there'd be jail time, here there's an apology for the wet floor.

Another good example of lacking bathroom modesty is the arrangement shown in this photo: no bathroom door. This facility was at a botanical garden in Tokyo, and while the bathroom was sort of out of the way, it still seems hard to justify this arrangement. I never anticipated my American sense of bathroom privacy would have me so out of place here!

Helium for sale

I noticed this odd booth at the Okkawa Float Festival a few weeks ago. These aren't really balloons, although they're filled with helium... they're explicitly for inhaling to make you sound funny. I'm told the booth's banner mentions something about 'duck voice', which is actually quite a good description when you think about it. Hooray for random festival merchandise!

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.