if you’re not tech savvy like my mom…

here’s what you do with the website of the photos i posted up on the last post: highlight the link and press both ctrl button and c letter button, go up to where you put in the website link and press ctrl button and v button, then press enter! There you go.

Look towards the future to see where I’ll be writing from next!! Also, check out my other blog that I write in now that I’m back from my trip at http://www.wordpress.com/chickensouptraveller.com.

Adios/Sayonara/Zai Tien/Au Revoir/Dag/G’night!

photos

Check them out here…

http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a165/kumikomatter/japan/

soon, i’ll add more captions. thanks for reading my blog!

Last night

Well Gaya will be leaving tomorrow morning and I in the afternoon. She leaves chiaki’s before 7am to catch an airport bus that leaves from a local hotel, and I’ll be doing the same thing around 11am. She made a last minute plan with her dad while in Kyoto to push off her flight from Tokyo Seattle by flying to jakarta and staying there for 2 weeks and then flying back to Tokyo to go back to Seattle. Confusing? I just have to take a non-stop flight back to Seattle.
Yesterday, we drove to chiaki’s daughter’s house in Niigata which is around 2 hour drive from Tokyo. Niigata is a ski resort town, so it’s pretty barren of people at the moment but it has a gorgeous landscape of the surrounding mountains! Ayako lives in a huge house with her family and we got to stay in a guest room. We started out the day by eating at a soba noodle restaurant, met some of her family at home and then went off to a famous onsen. It’s famous because a writer used to stay there and he also wrote a coue books, one of them being “snow country.” there is a room dedicated there to his works and the guestbooks that were used during that time and there is also another room for show that is the one that he stayed in there. Snow country has been translated into a couple languages, Gaya noticed one of their copies was written in indonesian. They also have the movie version of snow country playing in a special area. We had a nice soak in the onsen outside overlooking the surrounding areas. Then went over to ayako’s work which is run by her in-laws and the rest of their family works there too. We hung out there then drove back to the house. Ayako’s son, ryosuke, kept ducking into the carseat when he saw his friends walking by because he was embarrassed to be seen by us! So I jokingly opened the window and said “ryosuke’s in here!” and pointed at the empty carseat. Hehe
It was ayako’s husband’s birthday that day so went out for dinner that night at an italian restaurant. Went home and hung out for a while. Then we got to watch harry potter 5 because Gaya and I have been dying to watch the rest of them again since seeing the 6th one. Ayako’s husband is really into stereos and sound equipment for home theaters, so he has buttloads of really nice speakers, amps, subwoofers, DVD players, blah blah blah. One speaker system is really weird looking, tall and popular in scotland. And he says that two of them cost as much as a mercedes a class car!!! And he has two! That’s way more than my college education! Well, all the speakers helped make harry potter sound like we were in a theater. But Gaya fell asleep and I got really scared(it’s really a freaky movie, they all are.), so I turned it off about an hour in and we went to bed.
Next morning, we drove to my aunt’s house in saitama. I got to see my grandma and aunt and her 7 cats and a dog for the first time in a long time. Last time I saw my aunt was 7 years ago and 5 years before that for the last two trips to japan that I went on. I changed a lot since kindergarten and 5th grade so it was exciting to see them and emotional too. We stayed at her house and talked and Gaya had fun being an obsessive catlady. Then we went to a restaurant, ate and then we had to leave. So about the 2 hours I got to spend with my family will have to suffice for a couple more years if anything.
Gaya and I were planning to go to shibuya again but to see it at night, but we had like 4 naps each during this day and just woke up from another, after falling asleep on the floor, before we were supposed to leave that we were lazy to leave. But chiaki gave us the option to go to a yakitori restaurant for our last night here, right as we were getting up. So we jumped at it, ate excellent food and ate a lot of it. Had some grilled marinated beef and squid, salad, rice and soup. Yum.
All in all, Gaya and I had a lot of fun (and inside jokes now too) on this trip and are sad to leave. I learned some more Japanese (as did Gaya), like “toilet(toy-ray) as doko desu ka?” and learning that the word for cereal sounds like two bad words stuck together (think poopy-butt), which I was shocked to hear my aunt say today. And we did very interesting and cool things like the gion festival, Disneyland, kecak dance and surfing in Bali. This will be a trip to remember. And a trip for you to see pictures of once I post them! Sayonara!

Dude

I just found out that my second cousin, masato, was an actor when he was younger!! He starred in 6 movies and tv shows! And he starred in a movie called “long way from home” which also starred Ken Watanabe!!! He is a very famous Japanese actor who has starred in the last samurai and memoirs of a geisha. Dude… This is sooook awesome. Chiaki showed us a bunch of pictures of him in the movies and filming and posing with the actors like ken watanabe!!!!!!!

3am

We woke up this morning at around 3am to go to the famous Tsukiji Fishmarket! This ain’t your average Pike Place “we throw fish!” kind of business. This is legit, huge tuna auctions and several stalls selling many other sealife that the Japanese love to eat. Tsukiji is the biggest fish market in the world!
We got there around 6am because the trains are a little stupid and I got a little confused about which station to go to, because there is a Tsukiji and Tsukiji-Shijo station. But we eventually got there using the Tsukiji even though we found out later that Tsukiji-Shijo is closer to the market.
We walked through the stalls to look at fish dying in their own blood, And then went to the auction area. The frozen tuna are frozen and then hallowed out and have put in the inside. Then they mark them with red paint I think because it marks who bought them. A bunch of dudes walk around them poking and prodding them. We were only allowed to see it from the entryway to the auction area as to not get in the way. But we did get in the way of many workers in the stall area as it is very crowded. I feel sorry for them for having to deal with annoying tourists. I would surely get annoyed at them if I was a worker. Earlier this year, they almost closed down the market to tourists because a few drunk Brits went in the auction area and straddled and licked the tuna!!
We started walking back and I bought a Santoku Knife for myself and a horning stone(?) for my mom. Santoku Knoves are pretty much the best in the world, in one of Anthony bourdain’s books, he said that many top chefs buy their knives in japan because they are great quality and cheaper! Yay! After that, I bought some tuna and cucumber sushi at a side stall, ate two of them, and went back to Chiaki’s and gave her the rest.
In approximately 1.5 hours, we will be driving a 2 hour trip to stay with Chiaki’s daughter and her family, soak at a famous onsen, and the next day see my grandma. And then the day after that we leave.

Hah-pee bas-day to yooooooo!!

Today is Gaya’s birthday; and what did we do to celebrate? Stupid stuff. But the kind of stupid that’s fun.
We went to ikebukuro for the day. And we started off at ikebukuro bosaikan, which is an emergency center that gives you information on how to survive different situations. Because japan sits on a fault, they get a lot of earthquakes so it’s probably necessary to know how to deal with being in one. We got to put out a fake fire, go through a smoky maze and be in an earthquake simulator. We also saw a 3d movie at the start about different peoples’ perspectives through the same earthquake.
We were getting hungry during that, so the next thing I had planned was to go to gyoza stadium/ice cream city!! It’s like a huge entertainment area and they have a special areas dedicated for the gyoza and ice cream and you can choose from different vendors from which one serves what kind you want to eat. So we chose a place that had a deal of 15 gyozas for 13 yen, or 6.50 each person. I made quite a fool of myself there; I splashed soy sauce all over me when a piece of gyoza slipped out of my chopsticks, and I also bent down to get something on the floor and when I got back up I smacked my head on the counter and yelled “ow” really loud, so the whole place went silent. And then we left after that and went straight to ice cream city and got some big ice cream cones. And we couldn’t find the exit after that and started downsome escalators but it went down to a haunted house. So I started freaking out saying I got to get out of there and ran straight up the escalators meant to go down because there weren’t any going up!!
We went to the building next to namjatown called sunshine city. On the top floor there is a place called “nekobukuro.” It’s literally a place where you can go play with cats! Gaya was so excited about this, I would be more ecstatic if it was dogs instead. There are a bunch of little walkways and beds for the cats and little window areas to look in at other cats. Either the cats were drugged up or it was their nap time because rarely any of them were moving around and they wouldn’t wake up when they told you to.
We tried to find a movie theater so we could could watch Harry Potter 5… Again. But the one we found would end after the trains stopped going for the night. So we went back to Chiaki’s and started watching a news segment on the Japanese national swim and synchronize swimming teams. And now we are watching a Japanese tv game show!

Back in Tokyo.

We got back this morning after a long and uncomfortable busride from Kyoto. Gaya slept like a log and I got cramps in my neck from sleeping in a chair. I guess that’s always why I prefer the window seat on airplanes. After we got to Chi-Chan’s apartment, we took out the bedding and went right back to sleep until 10:30am. Then chi-chan got us bento lunches of tonkatsu, which I’ve eaten about a million times on this trip and then got on our way.
First, we hit up Shibuya, which is known for the really crowded Hachiko crosswalk. Walked around, went to the really popular starbucks and then listened to music clips at the music store next to the starbucks. If you don’t know these musicians, search up “Koda Kumi” and “New York City Boys.” Two of the stupidest musicians I’ve ever heard. We saw nyc boys on tv the other night and they look like gay 15 year old boys dancing like britney spears while wearing uggs. Oh jeez.
After shibuya, we took another train over to Harajuku. Known for the crazy fashion styles and by teen stefani’s “harajuku lovers” line, harajuku is known to have teenage girls pop up looking like Bo Peep or some gothic chic. It’s quite creepy. The main street was packed the whole way down. It’s called Takeshita street (use your imagination to think about what we call it). And there’s a bunch of those stupid costume stores lining the street.
We went home after this and a had a little break. And then we had some fun by going at the 100 yen store, which is our dollar store comparison. I bought some souvenirs for other people and stuff for myself as well. We also went into a 300 yen store in Kyoto, and I tell you, the stuff at both of these stores are so useful and are good quality unlike what dollar stores are in America. The 300 yen store is like a college students dream, with bathroom and kitchen necessities and other cute stuff!! It was awesome going through both places. After that, we chi-chan took us to kichijoji for dinner. I was trying to tell her what I wanted to try, but I forgot the japanese word for it. So I just kept on saying “it’s Japanese pizza” over and over until I looked over my side and saw it… Okonomiyake! It was good but chi-chan ordered too many so we felt like we were going to throw up. So mom, keep telling her to feed us less.

Kyoto-Tokyo

Both cities have the same letters in it!
Gaya and I will be taking an overnight bus from Kyoto station to Tokyo. We leave at 10pm and arrive at around 6am. So we have nothing to do all day until then, so we’re going to chill out.

I slept on the bus?

Well today, we woke up and do the usual. Then we went off to downtown Kyoto because the last part of the Gion Matsuri festival was going on. The first three nights, everybody just walks around the area and looks at the floats in their still spots. Then the morning of the last day, the floats are moved around the block by men. The big ones have dudes on it playing the festival music, with drums and bell things. Whenever the big floats move a jolt, the whole crowd claps and “woah!”s like they’ve never sen it the 50 times before on the other floats before that one. Woah. After we watched a couple, we ate at McDonalds and chatted there for a while. Then made our way over to Nanzen-ji Temple. There’s a bunch of building/temples in the area and you can see them all. However, we didn’t go in all the way because they require separate charges. The onlyone without admission is… The bathroom. But it was really pretty there and we had a mini photoshoot by the aqueducts, mainly pictures of Gaya because of my skill with the camera.
Went back to the hostel, slept on the bus. By the way, my bus day pass fell out of my pocket on the first ride, so I had to pay five bucks for that and 2.20 for every other ride on top of that. So like fifteen bucks! That sucks. There’s also a japanese rasta dude at the hostel with dreads all the way down to his feet!!! I gagged for a good minute when I saw his hair! That’s got to be annoying to take care of.

Stormy weather

This morning was pretty unsuccessful. We tried to find an onsen my mom told me about. From what I read, she said it was in the middle of Kyoto… Not true. It took us like an hour and a half for the bus rides and another hour and a half to walk there. We had no clue where we were going and when the 5 different store people who gave us directions said it was far, we gave up. We were just too tired and so pissed off that it was a long walk, so we went back on bus to Kyoto station and then an hour long bus ride from there to the hostel because of traffic. We got right to showering and lunch and then chilled. I have made a habit of trying to scare Gaya whenever possible. So I stayed a half hour in her bunk bed with the curtain to it drawn so it was covering me, and waited for the perfect moment when she came by it to jump out. It worked. Woohoo!! And at night is even better to scare her because I can gasp at anything and she’ll think some killer is behind it. But now I do it so often, she expects it most of the time.
After scare time and when night started upon us, we went with the hostel group tour to the gion festival. And bowl cut dude was the guide!! Everytime we see him we start laughing out loud and we’re always searching for him too. I found out his name is Tsutomu Ueda, and sometimes he calls it “Stormy Weather” because that’s what it sounds like when said fast. Anyways, it was super crowded around the area where they had all the floats around. They have old wooden floats that represent every region of japan. Gion festival started over 1000 years ago because of a sickness that spread over japan and they set up these floats in kyoto to offer to the gods to protect them. I ate two hot dogs on a stick and some shaved ice. Oh, and a lot of the people dress up in their yukatas and kimonos, especially the little kids!! I had so much fun, we’re going to see it tomorrow night! Hopefully, bowl cut will lead the tour again! Hahahahaha