Last days

My last couple days in Japan were pretty much exclusively devoted to travel.

I woke up my last day in Osaka, checked out, and hopped on a train back to Tokyo. The trip back was pretty uneventful. I napped for most of it, then read for the rest. Once back in Tokyo I made a beeline for Asakusa, where my hostel was. Asakusa is home to a large market, a popular temple (Senso-ji), and the Tokyo Skytree, none of which I had visited while I was previously in Tokyo. It's also home to Khao-san Kabuki, the flagship hostel of the Khao-san hostel empire. This hostel is also EXACTLY what a hostel should be. Cheap, well-located, comfy beds, clean showers, and a common area with a thriving social life. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable, there are tips and tidbits posted on the walls, and a corner where the hostels schedule of daytrips, tours, and services are all listed out. If I'd had my druthers, this (or someplace like it) would've been where I stayed all ten days in Tokyo.

My plan for my last day was basically cram as many souvenirs and sweets into my luggage as was humanly possible before heading back to the States. Once I checked in, I wandered through the market, cramming cookies, cakes, and jellies (and a NICE bottle of sake) into my luggage like there was no tomorrow. I spent a little over an hour wandering the shops and dodging the rick-shaw tour carts in the area.

Once done with that, I swung by the hostel and dropped off several bags of goodies before heading back out again, this time back to Tokyo Station, where I got completely and utterly lost, in the best sense of the word. I was shopping there for about two to three hours, and I swear shops kept shuffling around me. I filled what little space for snacks I had with some ramen-flavored pretzel sticks and rainbow colored Pocky, and, lo and behold, stumbled across something I'd failed to locate on earlier trips: Hasegawa liquor store, a shop that specializes in Japanese whisky. I had several folks online recommend stopping there to see all the interesting things that Japanese whisky had to offer, so I grabbed a couple of things that just are NOT available in the states (namely a couple of weird wine-finished whiskies), then started trying to find dinner. Here, I wandered into something ELSE I hadn't found on earlier trips to Tokyo Station: Ramen Street! See my previous post on Tokyo station to see why I was so excited about this. It's literally just a stretch of like 6 or 7 ramen shops, all of which have their specialties. I picked the punk rock looking place and, unfortunately, didn't really like it. They had a weird...chunky miso ramen that had a beef stew type broth. Interesting, but not what I was hoping for. If it weren't for the fact I was trying to stretch my last $30 worth of yen until my flight then next day, I would've tried another one.

I headed back to the hostel and played luggage tetris to make sure everything would fit. It did...barely. I still carried a couple things in my hands onto the plane. Thankfully no one said anything the next day! One of my roommates, Ray, was a student from Singapore who had just finished studying accounting in Perth (I swear, for a small, nowhere city on the west coast of Australia, like 60% of the people I meet abroad are from Perth). I went downstairs to chat with him, and ended up watching him and an Argentinian guy play a game of drunken Jenga that was honestly awe-inspiring. Isn't alcohol supposed to inhibit fine motor control? Not for these two, apparently. While watching, I was talking with a woman from the middle of nowhere Canada (can't remember the town's name) about what was worth seeing in Tokyo. She'd just landed the day before and was still jet-lagged as all get out. She'd apparently stood in line at a sushi restaurant from 5-7am that morning and wasn't really sure why aside from the fact other people were as well. I also got pulled into a conversation about Microsoft's engineering practices with yet ANOTHER Perth Australian, which was entertaining, then headed up to bed.

The next day, I basically just got up and went straight to the airport. Before I left, Ray made the universal-to-Asia gesture for 'hangover' (squint your eyes, furrow your brow, and hold a balled fist to the side of your head; I'd seen this SEVERAL times from people by the end of the trip) when I asked how he slept. After being pulled into a quick costume photo by the hostel's front desk, I caught the 'express' to Narita airport from Asakusa, which took about an hour and a half, and began the (surprisingly smooth) process of getting back home. Security was a breeze, emigration was as well (basically just got a second stamp in my passport on top of my original visa), and my gate was easy to get to (despite me reading my gate number incorrectly originally). I spent the rest of my yen on an udon soup lunch, an ice cream bar, and some more candy, bought some books for my kindle, then boarded.

The flight home was as uneventful as the flight to Japan. I napped, read, and watched movies, then twiddled my thumbs for the other 5 hours of the flight. Once we landed, I breezed through customs, remembered why black luggage was a bad idea at baggage claim, then caught the light rail home. It was WEIRD walking back into my apartment. It took me a few minutes to remember which switches went with which lights (seriously, leave home for a month; you forget stuff like that). I showered, changed, then went out for some basic groceries. When I got back, I took a 'nap.' I fell asleep at 1 pm. I woke up at midnight. Giving into the fact that it would take a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, I stayed up and read until 5 am (with a brief interlude at 3 when my floor's power went out) before taking a quick nap before church.

Osaka!

Getting close to wrapping thing up: a quick description of my time in Osaka. I was particularly lazy my last couple of days, so apologies for the lack of photos!

Day 1

Day one, I got all checked in and read through my guidebook to figure out what I wanted to see. To quote a girl at my hostel in Kyoto: "There's nothing to do in Osaka except shopping and eating." To quote me, "And who says that's a bad thing?"

Osaka is a little light on shrines, castles, and gardens, but it more than makes up for it in restaurants, food stalls, and shops. The epicenter of all this is the Minami area, who's epicenter is the stretch of road called Dotonburi. It's a group of pretty much nothing but restaurants and food stalls that runs for several blocks along the river. My hotel was just a few blocks from one end of Dotoburi, so my first night I decided to go and stuff myself full of street food. I got a big bowl of ramen, some grilled crab, coffee, and (my favorite) takoyaki. In my meandering, I also stumbled on a tiny little shrine, surrounded on all sides by restaurants and bars, and full of little buddhas, fuzzy with moss. I also found a tiny little bar just called 'Jon's Whisky Bar,' which sounded right up my alley, but when I walked in, the owner stood up and spouted a ton of Japanese at me. I wasn't quite sure what it meant, but it started with 'Excuse me, sorry sir...' so I figured it boiled down to 'We're closed.' A little disappointed, but more full and sleepy, I went home to bed.

Day 2

I woke up to...a conference call? I'm going on a road trip this summer with some college roommates, and had to sort out some details with them. Afterwards, I went to meet up with Eli, a friend from my second internship. He's travelling the world with a friend while they do startups, and happened to land in Osaka for one of the same days as me. We met up underneath 'the big, moving crab statue in Dotonburi' at 11 for lunch. Thankfully we both picked the same one, as we found out there are 3 or 4 big, moving crab statues on the street >__<

We went for conveyor belt sushi, and unfortunately got seated at the end of the belt farthest from the chefs, so a lot of stuff got picked over before we got a grab at it. Thankfully, they took orders as well, so we were able to eat a good meal. Afterwards, we went for dessert at ChocoCron and got some weird pastries topped with soft-serve. We wandered a bit after that, then split up.

After, I went to wander Kita, the area around Osaka-Umeda station (where I arrived). It's a huge block of department stores (which, in Japan, are 10-15 story behemoths with everything from electronics to groceries). Lonely Planet recommended I check out one in particular for its kitchen gadgets and food stuff, but I had trouble finding it. Three of those enormous department stores are all connected to the station, along with 2 metro lines and 2 different rail companies, so I got completely and utterly lost. I stopped off at a super swanky coffee shop (leather, granite, and hardwoods everywhere) to figure out where I wanted to be. While flipping through the book I also got to watch a Japanese business card exchange, which is a weirdly formal ceremony. The exchange of cards is a super-duper ritualized thing, where everyone has a place in the hierarchy and swaps cards accordingly. I snooped on that (hopefully not too obviously), then found where I wanted to go. Dinner was at a kushikaya (everything is deep-fried and on a stick) place in Dotonburi, where I finally got a taste of normal American bar/restaurant service: polite and friendly-ish, but not super deferential. It was nice!

Day 3

Day 3 in Osaka was pleasantly uneventful. I woke up late, grabbed a big bowl of ramen for breakfast/lunch, then went shopping. My primary target was the big underground mall that forms a cross shape smack in the middle of the city with Shinsaibashi, the FREAKING MASSIVE covered shopping street that starts at Dotonburi and goes way too far North. Seriously, stand in the middle of Shinsaibashi. Look one way, then the next, and you can't see the end of the street in either direction. It's a weird mix of duty-free shopping for tourists, hip and edgy clothing for kids, cheap kimonos for more tourists, and $15,000 kimonos for super formal occasions. The cross-street mall was much less interesting, but there were a few shops near the intersection of the two that were interesting. I really liked one in particular that seemed to be aimed at folks in the hipster demographic, particularly newly-weds or soon-to-be-parents. Everything from the china to the baby bibs to the chotzkies were local, artisanal, and hand-made.

Later, I wandered through the area just south of Dotonburi and accidentally stumbled into the restaurant supply district. This was probably one of the highlights of my trip to Osaka. If you've ever been to Japan, you'll understand why. There was one shop that sold nothing but the cloth hangings restaurants put over their doors. Another sold lacquerware. I passed three shops that specialized in the plastic food that Japanese restaurants put in their window to advertise what they sell.

The highlight, though, was undoubtedly the knife shops. These were absolutely incredible to wander around. Everything from a 2-inch long paring knife, all the way up to a three foot long, foot-and-a-half wide tuna axe, used to hack the car-size blue-fin tuna into manageable chunks

Dinner that night was real Kobe beef at a teppanyaki restaurant my concierge recommended, called 'Ken.' Tiny little hole in the wall place. It was good! The owners were adorable, and (I think) married. They had that vibe about them, at least. They swapped out cooking and house-keeping duties pretty fluidly, though the man spent most of the time cooking. He also had a very strange and awkward smile. Odd detail to remember, I know, but ask me to mimic it next time you see me and you'll see what I mean.

One-offs, pt. 5

Live from Seattle, it's the last one of these!

I have a quick, loopy signature (just a C and and R), and folks in Japan loved it. Both the front desks at my last two hostels and at least one waiter giggled when they saw it.

Japanese grills cook things lower and slower than American grills. Takoyaki (octopus dumplings that are my favorite Japanese street food) take FOREVER to cook, and they're basically just little balls of pancake batter.

Teppanyaki in Japan is much less showy and more formal than in America, but is still very much a thing. I went to a Kobe beef restaurant my last night in Osaka, and that's how they cooked it. It was more like grilling than stir-frying: not a lot of fat, and things weren't chopped up until right before it was put on my plate. The fried rice was really simple, too: oil, garlic, salt, beef, and rice.

There's an urban clothing chain in Japan called "Womb." Sounds kinda metal to me, but it's more skinny jeans and slim-fit shirts.

I love how vertical Japan is. Everything is built on top of each other, and not necessarily in any particular order. In Osaka, I saw a restaurant, built above a night club, built on top of...a dentist?

It's really, really hard to eat crab legs out of the shell with chopsticks. Just sayin'.

Joys of visiting a country where folks don't speak your language: touts for restaurants and clubs leave you the hell alone.

Side note: if they DO try to get you into a place, it's generally a bad idea. Talked to several folks who have stories of getting stuck with three and four-figure bills after getting lured into a place by a woman in a short dress.

I was standing on a bridge over the river in Osaka when a tour boat went under it. The guide on the boat was waving to people as they passed, and kept yelling 'Konnichiwa! Konnichiwa!' to them. When they went under my bridge, she went 'Konnich-oh! Hello! Hi!' and a boatload of Japanese people (literally) followed suit. 'Twas fun ^__^

There' a big Starbucks in Dotonburi in Osaka that has a HUGE seating area upstairs that looks like a library.

Last days in Kyoto

Merging the last three days in Kyoto into one post, since they were all pretty short.

Day 5 (Nara)

I woke up a little late on Easter Sunday and tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I’d initially been planning on taking a train to Ise, which is where Japan’s largest and holiest shrine is. I figured it’d be a fitting place to see on Easter (particularly since it’s a shrine to Amaterasu, the god of the rising sun, and I like puns), but when I looked it up, it was significantly harder to get to than I thought. It was a 2-3 hour, two-train trip on a train that wasn’t run by JR, so my pass didn’t cover it.

I didn’t feel like spending 6 hours on trains that day, so I gave it a pass and bumped my plans up by a day. I went to Nara instead, which is home to a herd of deer that were considered holy by the Buddhist temples in the area, so they weren’t ever harmed. After decades of this, the deer just stopped being afraid of us, and would wander around pretty much like they owned the place. The deer became a tourist attraction, and so vendors in the area started selling rice cakes you could feed them. If the deer weren’t afraid of people before, the CERTAINLY weren’t afraid of us now. Walk around with a stack of crackers in your hand and you’ll get swamped by a pack of hungry beggars.

When I got to Nara, I was starving, and given that the night before had been the funky Japanese meal, I was craving comfort food. Lo and behold, when I stepped off the train I saw Colonel Sanders face smiling down at me from across the street. I sunk my teeth into a two-piece meal and felt much closer to home (despite the biscuit, which tasted strongly of disappointment).

I started following the signs to the deer park, but didn’t really need to worry: like Kamakura, the road from the train station to the tourist attractions was impossible to miss. I decided to put off souvenir shopping until later (glad I did, I’ll get to that in a second), and just headed straight to the park, stopping just long enough to buy some crackers. The deer were as adorable as promised, and much less stressful to feed than the monkeys. Trained by years of living with Japanese folks, the deer would bow when begging from you, which was hilarious and adorable all at once. They didn't like my camera at first because of the clicking noise it makes, but I wanted a closeup, so I started holding crackers right underneath the lens. Worked like a charm ^__^

Hullo.

My rail pass was just a little too big to fit in my pocket, so Nara was the only time I’ve really had to worry about pickpockets here. Not that I was worried someone would snatch it and sell it, I was worried someone would snatch it and EAT it. The deer have an insatiable love of paper, and the guidebooks and concierges in the area all tell stories of folks who had their maps, tickets, and passports snatched out of their hands. It was funny to pull out a receipt, crumple it, and watch all the deer in the vicinity perk up and turn to stare at you. This was also why I was happy I put off souvenir shopping. Some girl at the park hadn’t, and one of the deer grabbed ahold of her paper bag, yanked it out of her hand, and ran off with it, scattering its contents all over the place. She was laughing too hard to be mad, and the deer looked just absolutely tickled with his trophy.

The bamboo is something called a 'sweet pick.' I have no idea what
I was supposed to do with it.

After the deer, I didn’t really want to do the rest of the sights in the area (more temples, which I was kinda burned out on), so I wandered through what appeared to be some sort of county fair, then went back to the shopping street. I grabbed a couple of souvenirs (a washi paper journal and some Japanese wall hangings, as well as some local plum wine and sake), watched a shop make some fresh green tea mochi, and headed home. I made a pit stop at Kyoto station to get some traditional matcha green tea, which is tea that's been ground into a powder then whisked into hot water. This is the way it's done in traditional tea ceremonies, but since I wasn't staying at a ryokan, it was harder to find a place that'd do one. There was a shop in Kyoto station that did traditional tea service with wagashi sweets, though, and I did that. I was reminded yet again that it's apparently not dessert in Japan unless it involves red bean paste, as EVERY sweet there looked radically different, but was just a different preparation of mochi and bean paste. Dinner that night was soba and tempura, which was excellent. It came with buckwheat shochu and buckwheat tea, so not a meal for the gluten intolerant.

When I got back to the hostel, the Germans in the hostel were having a beer tasting of several Japanese beers and invited me to join them. The verdict was that Asahi was the worst, and Sapporo Gold and Kirin Best Malt tied for first.

Day 6 (Toji market and shopping)

On the 21^st of every month, Toji temple (a Buddhist temple just south of the station) holds an antiques bazaar on the temple grounds, so Easter Monday I spent most of the day shopping there. I didn’t grab much (a few teacups and a sakura blossom painting by a very nice Japanese man who threw in a small one of a good luck cat), but it was fun to wander the stalls. They had everything from junk that wasn’t worth the plastic it was wrapped in all the way up to crossguards from old samurai swords. I met up with the Germans guys from my hostel and we wandered together a bit before splitting up. It started drizzling, so I grabbed some chicken on a stick (yes they really have it here) and waited the rain out in a tent.

Okonomiyaki on the grill

From there, I went back to Gion to do a little bit more souvenir shopping, and ended up stumbling into an arts and crafts store that specialized in Japanese rice paper. If you know me, you know I have a deep and abiding love of art supply stores, so it won’t surprise you that I ended up buying waaaaay more than I should have. Oops. I kept lying to myself while shopping, just saying 'Oh, I'm not buying THAT much,' but that illusion was shattered when the shopkeeper handed me a shopping basket and I realized I was, in fact, carrying that much in my hands.

I spent a long time wandering Gion, and the day was coming to a close, so I went home after that. I stopped by 7/11 on the way to grab a few sandwiches for dinner, which everyone recommends doing at least once. Strange, but not too weird if you know anything about convenience stores in this country. 7/11, Family Mart, and Lawson’s are the holy trinity of corner stores here, and they stock EVERYTHING. Need a snack? Of course. How about a pack of local sweets for a gift? Got it. Spill something on your tie? They’ve got spares. Want to mail something? They sell stamps and boxes. The sandwiches are as good as advertised, too.

Day 7 (Travel to Osaka)

My last day ‘in’ Kyoto was just a travel day. I mailed some souvenirs home again (which ended with the post master chasing me down the street when he realized he forgot to charge me for the box I bought), then hopped on the Express train to Osaka. The trip was only about 20 minutes, since Osaka and Kyoto share the same metropolitan area. When I got to Osaka-Umeda station, I was lost for a bit, as the station is HUGE, and the metro trains I needed are nowhere near the express trains. That's a problem with some of the largest stations here: things are so far apart that a lot of signs don't even mention all the trains that stop there. I ran into the same thing at Shibuya Station; I found out my last day that there were two metro lines that I didn't know stopped there. 

I eventually figured it out, though, and managed to find my hotel pretty easily once I got to the metro stop. The staff was very nice! They all spoke english, too, which was a nice surprise. The hotel was called Yamatoya Honten, and had traditional Japanese-style rooms, which means tatami mat floors, rice paper windows, and, instead of a bed, futons that you rolled up and stuffed in a closet during the day. It was nice enough, though the hotel really just needed a good tune-up and scrubbing. I spent a couple hours planning, then went out to explore, which I'll cover in posts about Osaka.

♬♬Leaving on jet plane. Don't know when I'll be back again.♬♬

(I swear this song gets stuck in my head every time I fly.)

It's been an amazing vacation, with tons of tasty things, many cool people, and a lot of pretty stuff, but it's time to wander on home. I'm sitting at Narita airport, waiting on my flight to board. I've got my last meal in Japan (a big bowl of shrimp tempura udon), and got all my souvenirs and snacks and sweets for people back home, so all that's left to do is wait for the cabin door to open.

I'm obviously a few days behind on posts (though not as bad as I expected!), so finish those up state side. Hopefully I can knock a few out on the flight. Lord knows I'll have time. I'm also well behind on photos (which I did expect) so I'll get those up in the coming days.

Ten things I am looking forward to when I get home

1. A mattress more than 2 inches thick (my dear, sweet bed: I'll see you in 48ish hours).
2. Being able to walk into a store without having three people yell at me. At every shop here, every shop employee is pretty much required to yell 'Irashaimase! (Welcome!)' at you, with some rehearsed statement that they don't even look at you for. Today, an employee at Uniqlo kept yelling this shpiel at me while I was standing next to him; he was restocking shelves, I was looking at T-shirts. It really wasn't necessary. Yesterday I went to a restaurant and the waiter only paid a minimal amount of attention to me and it was glorious.
3. Coffee that is less that $3.50 a cup.
4. Interacting with people on the street, in any capacity other than 'Sumimasen (Excuse me)'.
5. Ordering something and knowing EXACTLY what I'll be getting. I can't remember the last time I ordered a full meal without some sort of surprise waiting for me, be it a plate of pickles, a topping or sauce I wasn't expecting, or an extra course I didn't know was coming.
6. Filling awkward silences at meals. I'm looking forward to not having to re-read books on my phone to make up for the fact that I'm eating alone at a counter with no one else that speaks my language.
7. Cooked fish.
8. Forks. 
9. Desserts that are not French pastries and do not involve bean paste.
10. Milk. For some reason, milk here has a funky twang here. I'm chalking this up to pasteurization/homogenization differences between countries (Europe had a twang as well, though a different one). This includes everything from milk in coffee and coffee drinks to ice cream (which almost invariably has a twang, or is icy, or both).

Abalone

Just watched a chef drop a $40 shellfish on the ground, look around like "Nobody saw that, right?", pick it up, dust if off, and keep cooking it.