The ocean must be empty now

It's been raining for days. Last night the sky opened up and there was torrential rain and booming thunder all night long. Because of this, I haven't been spending much time outdoors or taking many pictures of the sights around Tokyo so there isn't much to see in the Tokyo album yet, but I'll be updating it.

Anyway, this morning we got up early and tramped accross town to witness the biggest fish market in the world, the Tsukiji market. We dodged trucks, forklifts and mad carts to get into the market then we were dodging fishguts and sea water. If only I'd followed local fashion and bought a pair of stylish rubber boots, I'd have been happier.

I never knew that so many fish could be pulled out of the sea in one night, it was really something. There were stalls upon stalls of freshly caught fish, mollusk, and crustacean all waiting to be bought by local restaurants and stores. There was even a tuna auction where a whole tuna can go for ￥1,ooo,ooo ($10,000)! I saw a man cutting up a tuna with a knife that was at least 4 feet long and another that was chopping frozen fish with a circular saw. There were so many different sizes of shrimp, from krill to almost the size of a lobster. I'm amazed that the ocean still contains any fish with our appetite for seafood. I actually hesitated before ordering fish today, but it's nearly impossible to order a seafood-free meal in Tokyo.

Later we went to see the exhibits at the NTT Intercommunications Center. It was an interesting blend of technology and art, some of which was interractive. For example, there was a room where a 3-D projection was controlled by a joystick and you could zoom in and out of the projection as well as navigate through it. There was an "inorganic" creature that resembles and acts like a living thing but survives on the energy generated by urban environments (it was a robot that resembled a huge insect/plant and had lifelike movements, and an interesting fictional description). There was also a room with a visual gravity-field display representing the people in the room and showing the gravitational field around each one. Anyway, it was cool. The next couple of days should be pretty laid back since we're gearing down to go home. I'll have more time so I'll post again tomorrow.

Kimono exhibit

Today I visited the Suntory Museum of Art because of their Kosode exhibit. These are kimono worn by upper class Japanese in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries as fashion and art. Kosode masters produced books with pages of black and white designs from which women would choose new ones to be made. The amount of work was incredible, for instance many were made of patterned silk (where a complicated pattern was woven into the silk first) then they were resin dyed (where resin is painted where you want the silk to stay white then removed after dying), hand painted and embroidered. Apparently women had different ones for each season and occation with appropriate themes. This was another highlight of the trip for me since some of the pieces were really spectacular. I've attached some pictures that I got off the web, so they're not the actual ones that I saw, but they're very representative and you get the idea.

Tokyo!

On the final leg of our travels, we're now in Tokyo and it's living up to its reputation as a big, busy, stimulating urban jungle. Last night I saw the entire city from above and it was like an ocean of lights that stretched into the distance in all directions. Honestly, I think that it'll take me a couple of days to adjust to the crowds, noise, lights and excitement.

Now for the exciting news! We found the place where they sell the fake food - Kitchenware-town in Asakusa district here in Tokyo. I spent the morning wandering around the restaurant supply stores and shops that carry all the fake food you could ever want from whole fish to mixed drinks. I was really impressed by how well-made the food is, which is probably why one item costs upwards of 5000￥($50). After spending some time perusing all that food we were hungry and went for lunch.

Other highlights have included a visit to Senso-ji (a very big and active Buddhist temple), a Kabuki performance last night (none of which I understood), and a visit to Electric-town where they sell all things electronic. I'm a little tired from all the hustle and bustle so I'll get a good nights sleep and post more later.

Impressions

The last couple of days were pretty hectic as we covered a large part of Shikoku in two days. Both days were somewhat dissapointing since the things we'd planned to do didn't turn out but were interesting none-the-less because we still had some adventures. The whale-watching trip turned into a whale-waiting trip, but we landed in a fetching little village and met a really nice Japanese couple who rented us their entire house for very little money. The hike in the Iya valley turned into a frantic hitch-hiking adventure, but we slept at a rustic guest house tucked away in the mountains and overlooking the rapids of the gorgeous Yoshino-gawa (river) in the Oboke gorge. The guy who lives there uses the river water, has a goat... and a cell phone.

I'd like to tell you about some of the stuff which has become comonplace for me here, but which you might find interesting. For instance, I'm in an internet cafe right now but they call it a media cafe. There are probably 200 computers in here in various rooms with different music piped into each one. They also have books, blankets, showers, tanning beds, meals and beer... oh and you can buy a 10 hour pass if you want.

Toilets are very odd. They have so many buttons, many of which turn on automatically, that you can't find the handle to flush. The seat is heated, the toilet blows air and can spray water in four different ways, there's even a musical note which plays the sound of water running.

People on public transit are pretty funny. In every case, every bus, plane, train or boat that I've been on, everybody is sleeping... Everybody! One time I swear the bus driver was sleeping too. They don't curl up and lay down either, they all sit with their heads forward bobbing along and almost falling over, it's crazy. The worst part is that I've started falling asleep too!

There's this ridiculous music that's played on public transportation, in stores and at cross walks, It's kinda like the music on kids shows or jingles for chewing gum, which is probably to wake people up (Pawel loves it!).

My favourite is the fake food. In the front of restaurants there's sometimes a display window with dishes of the food that they make inside but it's all fake AND it looks delicious. I still can't figure out who makes this food, if there's a fake-food-factory somewhere in the country side where they pump out tons of rubber food items to be made into complete dishes or if the dishes were once real and have a thick layer of shellac to seal in their yummy appearance.

There's also vending machines everywhere, usually for drinks, and even the bottles on display here are fake!

Hiking no more

We are in the city of Matsuyama in northern Shikoku taking a few days off from travelling. It looks like our hiking days in Japan are over because Pawel slipped on a steep trail a few days ago and is injured. It's only a pull or tear in his quad muscle but he won't be climbing any mountains for awhile. Our hiking trip has now become a backpacking trip, which is fine with me because I've seen many beautiful natural sights in Japan and now I'd like to spend some time experiencing more of the cultural side. That said, we spent today visiting a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple in Dogo. As you can see from the pictures the Buddhist temple was very ecclectic and is considered to be one of the most unusual ones in Shikoku. There was a secret passage behind one of the main buildings that led to a tunnel through the hillside. It was filled with stone and gold Buddhas and ended in an eerie garden. At the end of the garden was a big gold dome (that looked like a UFO) which was filled with all these crazy looking wooden Buddhas. The whole experience was surreal. After walking back down the hill we had some beer then took a dip in the royal family's onsen. Tomorrow we will take the train down the southern cape of the island and take a whale-watching tour, then head back toward the center of the island to the Iya valley.

Here are some highlights from the last few days. We took a sand-bath in Ibusuki, where we put on a yukata (cotton robe) then lay on the hot sands with a view of the ocean while an attendant burried each of us with more sand. This was actually really nice but the sand was something like 50 degrees C so I lasted less than 15 minutes. It was really cool to see all these heads sticking out of the sand in neat rows along the beach. Afterward there was a lovely onsen and a cyprus sauna with the Olympis playing on TV. The steam in the sauna was extremely hot, but it smelled amazing.

We spent a couple of days on the island of Yakushima, where we hiked in the most incredible forest I have ever seen. The rainfall there is between 4 and 10 meters per year so conditions are perfect for the trees to grow to be thousands of years old (called Yaku-sugi). The entire forest is a tangle of vines and trees growing on other huge trees, all is covered with moss and the rivers are strewn with boulders and rocks. Trees are growing on the stumps of giant cedars that were cut down 400 years ago. We saw 7 or 8 trees that were over 2000 years old, around 30 m high and 9-10 m in diameter. We even saw wild deer on the trail and monkeys by the side of the road. The whole place was unreal, I felt like I was on the set of Lord of the Rings.

I've included a bunch more pictures for your viewing pleasure, let me know what you think. Talk to you soon!

Kyushu

This is the first chance that I've had to post an update because we've been travelling quite a bit and many small towns don't have internet available. This is what I've been up to. On the 11th we undertook our first backpacking trip into the mountains in central Kyushu, starting with a series buses which got progressively smaller until we were in a large van destined for a small village in the middle of nowhere. The scenery was breathtaking with huge stands of poker straight cedars covering the hill sides and ledges of rice fields leading down into valleys covered with small settlements and farms. We optomistically started our hike in the afternoon and after hitching a ride part of the way up, we started "hiking" for real. I say "hiking" because this treck can only be called "climbing" since it was so steep. In many places here there are mountain huts set up for hikers and we spent our first night in an amazing log cabin complete with solar panels, windmills, a composting toilet, blankets and running water! It was nicer than most cottages back home. The next two days were arduous to say it gently, as we climbed three peaks with our huge packs, and we emerged from the forest exhausted and soggy. Fortunately we didn't offend the mountain gods too much because we managed to hitch a ride the 20km or so down to the nearest town (in the back of a pickup truck). The views on the way down were amazing, but because it was raining I don't have any pictures.

On the 13th we took a train into the Aso caldera to stay in a small town at the foot of mount Aso. The caldera is a huge crater (24km across!) inside which are four or five more volcanoes around which complete towns and farms were established and the bottom of the crater is a patchwork of fields. As a reward for our bravery and perseverence, we spent all of yesterday soaking in onsen in Kurokawa, which is a village of 20 or so luxury ryoken (Japanese style hotels with outdoor onsen). Onsen are spas where the hot mineral water coming out of the ground from all the volcanic activity is harnessed to create luxury baths. You first sit on a little stool naked and soap up until you're squeaky clean then rinse off completely and slide into the super hot water to soak. Some baths were reddish from the iron, others were milky white, but all were outside in an idylic setting of rocks and trees and fountains... heaven!

I should be able to post some more in the next couple of days because we're going to a small town that has an internet cafe where I might be able to download some pictures. I want to write about some of the cool Japanese things we've seen, like the fake food, the vending machines ect... so keep checking. See ya later!

Getting out of Dodge

So getting back to the mainland is not as easy as we first thought. The reason is that the ferry company that operates out of Ishigaki (to Okinawa) went belly up in June and you can't leave by boat anymore, only by plane. The way we figured this out was pretty funny since no one we talked to spoke much English. First we took a taxi to the main port where they told us that there was no boat to Kyushu (mainland), but we knew this and took a second taxi to the smaller port where the long distance ferries are supposed to leave from. When we got there we were in for a shock because the whole place was deserted and run down and boarded up. There was one old cleaning lady who looked at us like we were crazy. I can only imagine what the cabby was thinking when he dropped us off! So we eventually caught another taxi to the airport where they told us that flights to Okinawa (which is still a small island in this chain but from which we could catch a long distance ferry) ￥29 000 each ($290)! So we caught a flight to Okinawa. Once there we got a room for the night (where I wrote my last post from) and went looking for the ferry in the morning. Three taxis and a lot of patience later we found out that ferries only leave a 7 am each day and take 25hrs, and you have to get there early because there's usually a huge line for tickets when the office opens at 6 am. After some discussion we decided to get another room for the night and hang around here until we could catch a flight (which　I'll be boarding in 10 min) to the mainland. In the meantime I got to make my own crafts at the Naha Municipal Arts and Craft Museum (which was really cool) and the pottery museum. We also wandered around Ichiba market where locals buy tea, fish, seaweed and sweets. Ok, gotta go!

Konnichiwa

Hello from Japan! I'm in Okinawa waiting for the ferry to Kyushu (which should take anywhere from 16 to 36 hours according to Pawel). After flying for 15 hours we arrived in Tokyo, slept briefly, then hopped a 3 hour flight to Ishigaki in the Yaeyama islands, then took a short ferry to Iriomote-jima, a tiny island in the East China Sea which is very close to Taiwan. My first impressions of Japan are that it's the most civilized and clean place (showers everywhere), everything is really small (like everything), and the people here are really nice (even strangers on the street will go out of their way to help you). It's really hot here and the humidity is probably 100%, but the food is really good (although I just point to something on the menu and take what I get).

The last 5 days were spent on Iriomote-jima. We pitched our tent at a campground next to an incredible little beach where each grain of sand is shaped like a star (Hoshizuna). I watched the sunrise and set everyday on this beach which was littered with washed up coral and dotted with volcanic rocks. Other highlights included touring around the island on a rented 100cc scooter, hiking through the jungle and walking through the stream of the waterfall, visiting my first onsen, and snorkeling at the coral reefs of the north coast of the island. The coral reefs were amazing, it was like National Geographic (the picture is from the Ministry of Environment website, since I forgot buy an underwater camera). We took a boat tour and stoped at 3 different places. I must have seen over 50 different kinds of fish, not to mention all the brilliant colours and interesting shapes of coral. I even saw a few families of clown fish in their anemone homes. That was yesterday, it was an amazing day and I only got a mild sunburn. Last night we slept in a nice tatami room hotel (which is a room with mats on the floor for sleeping) which had a nice balcony for hanging up laundry, and free internet. Today we'll find out what the ferry schedule is like and when we can leave for the "mainland" of Japan.