Quaff this Kind Nepenthe

I will admit I have been remiss. I blame it on that stupid Tumblr client that crashed and made me feel a bit meh about trying to update again.

But now I have hours to kill sitting on the Shinkansen on the way down to Kyoto.

We have been doing a lot of shopping. In total, we’ve sent 15 kg of stuff home via various mail services and there’s another 8 kg or so ready to go. Much of the weight is manga - Jen and I seem to have worked out the system at the second hand book stores Book-Off and Mandarake. (In what world does organising books by publisher make sense?) I now have volumes 1 to 10 of Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko and a stack of other manga I really like. I’m still hoping to find the last four volumes of YKK but it’s been out of print for a while so my chances aren’t great.

I’ve explored almost all the interesting shops in Akihabara (or Akiba as it’s known to friends.) I’ve still got to visit RT Corp (they’ve moved since the Tokyo Hackerspace made their video map of Akiba) and one of the radio labyrinths.

We’ve done the National Nature and Science Museum and the Ramen Museum. They were both awesome.

The science museum was spread over a couple of buildings and, in true Japanese style, involved climbing many flights of stairs. The temporary exhibit space had a history of Alfred Nobel and then a hall of Japanese Nobel prize winners.

The nature building had an impressive collection of fossils and taxidermic animals.

My favourite was the science building. The best exhibit may have been a working mechanical (spinning disk) television camera and display. There was a floor of Scienceworks-like hands on stuff. One exhibit I hadn’t seen set up at a museum before was a big loop of wire driven by an audio amplifier and a little headset with a pickup coil on a paddle. By moving the paddle about and changing the orientation you could listen to the music and get an idea of the magnetic field. Very prominent signs everywhere told those with pacemakers to stay far away.

The Ramen museum is a recreation of a 1958 Japanese town filled with ramen shops. Some of the shopfronts were fake and had surprises for you when you opened doors or peeked through keyholes. Ramen from different regions of Japan was represented at different stores. It was pretty awesome. The whole thing is inside and the domed ceiling is painted as sky. The lighting would change and air raid sirens would go off randomly.

We’ve visited the Buddha at Kamakura, which was beautiful. We paid the 20 yen to actually go inside the huge brazen statue. The stairs were terrifying. Also scary was that there was a woman chatting on her mobile phone inside a solid brass statue. Mobile phones never cease to amaze me.

We also visited the Asakusa shrine which pretty much fills our shrine quota until we get to Kyoto. We picked up a handful of souvenirs in the market out the front.

We’ve eaten most of the things we wanted to try. We had shabushabu (hot pot) in Shinagawa, okonomiyaki in Shibuya, (bad) takoyaki in Akihabara, tempura in a couple of places, sushi at the Tsukiji Fish Market and we’ve been doted on in a maid café in Akihabara. In the Maid Café, Jen lost the crocodile game and had to suffer the “Moe-Moe Plenalty”.

The restaurants have, in general, been fantastic. The only minor issue is that they sometimes allow smoking. This hasn’t been as bad as we expected. Japan has actually gone so far as to make whole sections of the streets of their cities no-smoking zones. It’s just another aspect of this country that is exceptionally civilised.

The lady with the trolly just came past. I managed to first ask (in Japanese) if they had orange juice and the order two bottles. Maybe I am getting better at this. Unfortunately my compass app can’t get a GPS lock so I don’t know how fast the Shinkansen is going but we seem to be barrelling along.

We’re into the final week or so of our holiday. I don’t seem to have a lot to write about for Japan but that’s because we’ve mostly been exploring or shopping in Tokyo. This is clearly only a small fraction of the country but we’ve explored it well and I don’t think we’ve wasted a day.

The Tokyo Motor Show is apparently on while we’re here. We might try to figure out where it is and how to get in.

Cheers Erin, i laughed long and hard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA-k95ZONf8&sns=em

youhaveafacefortheradio:

I watched this on two planes flying through China. The bastards censored all the swearing.

(via rose-papillon)

Tumbleroo ate my post (it’s a crappy client) so it’ll just be dot points.

• Went to Ikebukero to check out Bic Camera (themesong now firmly stuck in my head), Book-off and Tokyu Hands. It was raining and I bought an umbrella from the combini. We checked out the robo toliet set conversion kits. (Most are made by Panasonic). • At Tokyu hands Jen started stocking up on Japanese stationery. They had a pretty awesome craft / DIY section. • The top floor of Tokyu hands is Nekobukuro (a little scale town inhabited by cats). • Had a quick poke around Akihabara. Got lost in the Akihabara Radio City labryinth.

• Ghibli museum was just awesome. Beautifully put together. It’s specifically designed not to have a single path so you are forced to explore. The zeotropes and film process area was great. The little shop was packed full like a Japanese train. We climbed a thin spiral staircase (which was really awkward when a small child freaked out halfway and had to squeeze past to get back down). There was an unofficial system for taking photos at the Laputa robot on the roof - you’d offer to take the photo of the people in front of you and the people behind you would do the same for you. • Not many cosplayers at Harajuku (we’ve seen more in Akiba). The Meiji shrine itself didn’t move me much but the park it’s in and the giant torii you walk through was spectacular. There were at least two weddings going on at the shrine. • K-books and Mandarake. Picked up a few bits and pieces. • Akihabara’s main drag is closed on Sundays for pedestrian traffic but we only saw a couple of guys dressed up as maids. • M’s Pop Life department store was a let-down. Very little different from a SexyLand back home, except that it was more cramped. • The ramen shop we stumbled into for dinner seemed to specialise in spicy ramen. Delicious, though.

• Pokémon centre in the morning. Jen was bouncing off the walls. We’re now about due to send a souvenirs package home. • More exploring of Harajuku. We somehow missed the main drag and did most of the streets around it before finding it. • Spent money at a sock shop, one of the fashionable outlets and Body Line. • Got a second key for the room so Jen could go to more book shops while I went for another tour of electronics shops. • Tempura for dinner.

There was an unofficial system whereby you’d take a photo for the group in front of you, and the people in the line behind you would take a photo for you.

Honey Lotion (“bear sweet lotion!”) picked up at M’s Pop Life Adult Department Store today. It has a cute bear mascot.

We stumbled out of bed slowly on our first day in Tokyo. Partially because we didn’t get to bed until 1:30 and partially because there was no hotel breakfast to wake up to.

We decided the best course of action would be to head over to the train station and see what could be found. Outside the hotel there’s a 7-11, which is a comfort as they are open 24 hours and have ATMs that accept international cards.

We had a poke around the 7-11 just to get a handle on the small array of essentials on offer. I was happy to see porn on sale - there was something creepy and disturbing in China where the strict laws meant the most risqué thing on offer at magazine stalls was FHM. That sort of repression did not feel healthy.

The pedestrian crossings in Japan (at least, every one I’ve so far encountered) are silent, which feels like a bit of a backward step in an otherwise technically advanced country. At some times we saw a policeman with a whistle doing the same thing an automatically-beeping crossing would have but it seems only to be at select times and at select intersections.

We crossed the road and took a wander through Shinagawa station. After a quick peek out the west side of the station we picked “New York Sub’s American Dinner” for breakfast. 

They were on the lunch menu by the time we got there but we stumbled through and I even tried out some Japanese. Jen used the wrong word for “two of” but our breakfast arrived in due order.

We did a little more exploring of the area around the station, finding many ramen shops and the post office. We were sort of looking for a laundry as we were both running out of clean socks. We returned to the hotel room to spend some time on the internet trying to find a coin operated laundry service. Such things do exist in Japan - apparently in reasonable number.

Unfortunately Japan doesn’t have a terribly ordered address system. Neighbourhoods have numbers and houses are numbered in sort of circular order in the neighbourhood. It seems most streets that aren’t main drags don’t have names. Google Maps and Open Street Maps both seem to have trouble with the Japanese address system (it clearly doesn’t fit the data model right) so putting in addresses of places we found mentioned on the internet kept turning up bum results.

Eventually we found a forum thread with some working links to maps and descriptions of how to get to Wash & Fold near Shinjuku station.

We jumped on the Yamanote line (I’m getting more confident with the Japanese train system, which makes me feel much less lost in space) and got off at Yoyogi station. We struck out eastward. The little roads on the map were, I will grant, wide enough for a car. A single car, mind you, with not much room for pedestrians if there was one. They felt much more like wide footpaths or bike tracks. This didn’t sit well with Jen who was trusting my sense of direction. When we hit a dead end (a locked gate) that was clearly not on the map we had to double back a bit.

The little neighbourhood alleyway spiderweb was unquestionably more confusing than the named roads I’m used to but that’s an outsiders perspective. If I were to live there I’d consider the very human nature (and human friendliness) of the roads a plus. The road way forced any cars to crawl along, making it a safe place for people to be. The bitumen was a shared space rather than a car space that humans may cross to get to the other side.

We found the laundry in the end. I had to look up the word for “detergent” and got to try my Japanese out asking the staff where I’d get some. I’m at the stage of the language where I can string together I want to say and speak it but as soon as the response comes back in rapid-fire Japanese I’m lost. Thankfully I caught the word “otomatic” and we figured out the washing machines had detergent reservoirs internally. 

Washing the clothes cost us 400 yen. (More importantly, it cost us four 100 yen coins and I’m starting to realise that the 100 yen coins, being accepted by vending machines everywhere, are something you should have lots of.) The display started ticking down from 30 minutes so we grabbed our bags and continued down the lane to find some food. 

We were checking out the menu for a nearby Potoham (I think) Indian restaurant when a guy stuck his head out the door and asked us in fluent-ish English to come in. I think the fact we were hearing a real English voice convinced us more than anything to follow him.

It was his first night on the job. We asked what was recommended and he conferred with his mate, Rakesh (the cook) before telling us the Chikan Kurai was the go. We ordered a single serve between us and drinks. Jen had a sweet lassi which was excellent. I regretted having ordered a Coke. 

The place was oddly non-Japanese. The staff were Indians and spoke to each other in their native tongue. They played dance club versions of Ke$ha and Katy Perry from YouTube on a laptop. 

The time on the washing machine was ticking down so we asked them to make ours take-away. We got back up to the laundry with 3 minutes left to go and set ourselves up at the chairs facing the street to eat our dinner. 

The kurai was excellent. Maybe the previous day of aeroplane food had left us empty but not hungry. Maybe we craved all the butter and oil in it. The food really hit some particular spot that we’d both needed and we both felt twice as human for finishing it. 

Halfway through dinner we moved the washing to a dryer. All up it cost us 700 yen for the load and took a little more than an hour. 

We took a different route and made for Shinjuku station. The trains were getting busy and we found ourselves getting to know the locals - or at least radically redefining our concept of personal space.

The next morning we slept in again, then puttered down to reception to ask if we could change rooms.

The room has twin beds rather than a double bed (which is Flight Centre’s fault) but it’s also a bit gross. The wallpaper is peeling in places, the walls are thin and you can hear the TV in the adjoining room, there’s a weird brown stain on the carpet and areas that aren’t part of the normal cleaning routine are covered in layers of grime. The air conditioning (which seems to have stopped working) outlet vent has painted the surrounding ceiling and wall area with dark gunge over time. 

Unfortunately, they had no easy room for us to swap to. There were scattered holes in the schedule with a double bed room free but we didn’t want to constantly be carting our crap from room to room so we’ll endure.

We bought breakfast from a market and ate it back in the room before heading out to Tokyo.

We walked around the shops under Tokyo. There were a few Lego and toy shops but it was mostly high street fashion which neither of us could summon the interest for. I was beginning to feel like a CHUD so we found a stairwell to emerge into the sunlight. We stalked up and down the area east of the station but didn’t find much other than little food shops. We took a walk through a bookshop but the manga range was limited. 

We decided to jump the train to another station to see if the adjacent area would be more interesting. We got off at Akihabara and wandered out the Electric City exit.

I stumbled into the Akihabara Radio Centre labyrinth and managed not to lose Jen. I was surprised how many of the stores were run by old women. It was a pretty awesome array of bits. Going down the stairs was a little scary as the ceiling was low. I’ll have to go through again.

We found an exit and started wandering up the east side of Chuo Dori. We found a retro gaming store and walked through a couple of comic stores. The comic stores were 7 fairly tiny floors each. The first had three levels of yaoi and BL. The second had three levels of straight hentai doujinshi and manga. 

There were a couple of girls out in maid uniforms handing out pamphlets for their cafés. I suppose a maid café should be part of our Japan experience. 

We made our way back to the hotel for a rest with the intention of heading back out after dinner. I’m not sure how late things are open. Hopefully it’ll be like Hong Kong and everything will go until late.

Our hotel has many service.

We landed in Narita at about 9:00PM. It was a bit of a relief to be in a first-world country. We blearily tunneled off the plane, found our luggage, had a consfused chat with customs about our silk and changed our yuan into yen.

It took a little messing about with trollys and escalators to find the office to get our JR passes and tickets for the train to Tokyo. Our tickets were for reserved seating in car 5. On the station there were a fairly bewildering array of stickers and signs pointing to various carriages of various trains and lines. We thought we were in the right place but as the train pulled up the cars were numbered and number 5 stopped farther down the station. So we hightailed it that way and jumped on board.

It seems this particular car 5 was the first class car and a stewardess very politely showed us to the cattle class. We probably should have stayed where we were when boarding.

The rapid express to Tokyo then proceeded to sit at Narita terminal 2 for half an hour. It was the slowest rapid express I’ve ever taken. I finished one book and started another. Eventually it took off and we got to Tokyo.

Some pointing and map scrolling with a Japanese businesman that sat next to us in Tokyo had us believe the train was going back to Narita so we hopped off and found our way to the Yamanote line which is the Tokyo inner city circle line.

The trian came in about 10 minutes and took about 15 minutes to get to Shinagawa. In stilted Japanese we asked various uniformed people the way to the hotel. Thankfully it wasn’t far from the station.

Upon checking in, we found they’ve given us a twin room instead of a double (we’ll try to change in a day or two) and there’s no wireless internet. Thankfully the SIM card I rented had arrived and was waiting for us.

The room is a let-down after the Novotel. Breakfast isn’t included. There’s only really room for one of our suitcases and the bathroom is cramped with a shower-above-bath and moldy plastic shower curtain. When we ask about changing to a room with a double we’ll find out how much an upgrade to a nicer class of room is, too.

The toilet does, however, have… functions. Man, I’m totally putting one of these in when we have our own place. I’m not a fan of the seat warmer. The rapid train had heated seats, too and it becomes uncomfortable.

Still, we’re in Japan, in the heart of Tokyo. Now we just have to decided what to do next.

We decided to order room service rather than go out again. The prices were reasonably high but it’s all silly money to me anyway. 

We probably should have gone out. The food was, well, atrocious. My spicy Malaysian curry wasn’t even spicy by white man standards. Jen’s char kway teow was missing squid and the prawns still had their poop chutes. We finished maybe half of it and left the rest there in disgust. 

Other than the room service (and cigarette smoke everywhere) the Novotel Peace Hotel was really nice. 

We had to be up early the next morning for our Great Wall tour. 

After a quick breakfast (only one course each this time) we sainted into the lobby to find our guide waiting for us. We were still feeling a bit bleary from the 8:00AM start but we were the last of the group to be picked up so it’s hard to complain.

The tour group consisted of a French couple with a tiny bit of English between them and four Koreans with even less. Sally, the English-speaking guide mostly directed her spiel at us. 

Our first stop on the tour was the Ming Tomb. We were ahead of most of the tourists so it wasn’t too crowded and we could get a few pictures without thousands of people in the background. Sally pointed out various features of the tomb and the sites of adjacent tombs with other emperors of the period. The architecture was the real attraction, though. The aren’t many buildings on the tomb site but it was quite pretty.

On the way out we were instructed to go through a spirit gate while yelling “I’ll be back” so the emperor wouldn’t hold on to our souls. Other tour groups were instructed to watch us do it so they could do the same when it was their turn. 

The next stop was a Jade factory where we were given the perfunctory tour and shown into the shop. It was less objectionable than it was when it happened to us in Xi’an, possibly because I expected it and knew the drill. 

The guide tried to show us how to ascertain the class of jade by hitting bangles with another piece. The denser the jade, the higher the pitch of the ringing. Of course, she used a smaller bracelet to exemplify the higher quality jade which would ring at a higher frequency anyway, but let’s not let physics get in the way of commerce. 

There were some quite impressive jade carvings on the show room floor. The largest were carved from single pieces of jade as large as a cubic metre by my guess. 

The area also had a few things we’d seen elsewhere - there was a hanzi carver and some silk clothing. There were sand paintings and they could do your name or a Chinese character while you waited. The sand paintings on display actually showed a few tasteful nipples, which struck me as odd given how much smut is illegal in China.

After the jade factory we were taken to a cloisonné factory. The guide showed us vases in various stages - shaped copper, then with wire soldered on, then filled with the enamel powder, after first firing (seven applications of enamel powder and firing are used in total) then sanded with sandstone, yellow stone and charcoal before finally being gilded. 

The (not so little) shop had Christmas ornaments on special. There were vases and animals and some jewellery. There were also Terracotta Warriors from the factory we’d visited in Xi’an and painted scrolls. 

We had lunch at the cloisonné factory. There was a little stilted chatter in English. It turns out the Koreans had two nephews in Melbourne who own a Little Cupcake shop near Flinders Street Station.

After lunch we were driven out the Badaling section of the Great Wall. Sally asked whether any of us wanted to walk up the road to the base of the wall and climb or take a cable car to the base and climb. We all opted for the cable car. 

It was still no small exercise. The incline was bad enough in places that you could reach forward and touch the steps in front of you. The views were pretty spectacular. The plants weren’t terribly green - it was one of those of high-altitude areas that probably looks best when covered in snow. 

At the start of the climb we were wearing gloves and scarfs. By the top I was down to my T-shirt and kinda wishing I’d worn shorts. 

There is an inscription somewhere by Chairman Mao stating that if you reach the top you are a real hero. We felt pretty heroic when we got there. 

Smoking and spitting has been part of our Asian trip landscape but it was only at the top of the Great Wall that it really annoyed me. Perhaps because I was gasping for air and getting a lung full of second hand cigarette smoke was really unwelcome. Especially as it’s meant to be banned on the wall. I rather wish they’d had one of their many goose-stepping guys in green uniforms there telling people off.

We descended from the peak down the other side of the tower for a couple of sections before deciding we’d had enough and turning back. 

The chairlift was as thrilling (terrifying) going down as it was going up but we survived. The souvenir shops didn’t have anything that felt appropriate so we hobbled off to find the bus. By now both Jen’s feet and my feet had gone on strike. 

Mad respect to the girls we saw get to the top and make it back down wearing stiletto heels.

After the Great Wall we were driven to a silk factory. The tour was actually a bit interesting. The guide showed us how they unwrapped the silk cocoons (one at a time, by hand). Cocoons with a single worm have a single thread and are unwrapped and used for cloth. Larger cocoons with two or more worms have two or more threads tangled and cannot by unraveled. These cocoons are cut open at the bottom and stretched out to form blankets. 

The French couple and Jen and I each took and edge of a cocoon and stretched it out to add a layer to a blanket they were making. 

We were then shown to the shop were Jen and I spent money. We bought a silk blanket, blanket cover and a pair of pillow cases for about $450 AUD. It was a bit of a splurge but what else are holidays for?

The factory compressed our package down and strapped it in packing straps for us to take away. 

The next section of the shop had a range of silk clothing and lingerie we had a look but nothing really caught our interest. 

Then it was back on the bus for the long drive home. As a special treat Sally took us past various stadiums and sites used in the Beijing Olympics. The occupants of the bus were either asleep or showed absolutely no interest. 

The smog had gotten slowly worse over our stay in Beijing. by our last day you could look at the sun directly in the orange sky without even having to squint. I ached to be somewhere cleaner.

After relaxing at the hotel for a little while to out some life back in our feet we decided to head back to the shopping centre we’d found Da Dong in for dinner. This time we chose a Thai place. 

It was quiet and beautifully appointed. We ordered the 8 hour braised pork belly and a Malaysian yellow curry with scallops. Jen had an apple and lychee drink which was pretty good and I had a lemongrass and pineapple one which was okay.

The choice of restaurant was regarded as a huge success. We were too exhausted to go food hunting and the place was quite nice.

Our final morning in Beijing was a leisurely one. Breakfast was multiple courses, we borrowed some scales from the concierge and littered around packing. We checked out and were picked up in the same luxury sedan that had dropped us off with the same guide. Jen noted she seemed a bit miffed when we explained we would be spending more time in Japan than China.

There was no drama getting through security this time. Jen had spent the flight amused by a girl wearing glases with no lenses who spent almost the entire flight primpering herself with a little mirror and toolkit.

The flight stopped in Shanghai and we were booted off the plane, only to reboard and take the exact same seats half an hour later. I suppose it gave us a chance to walk around a bit. Then it was on to Tokyo.