Happy New Year everyone!
I hope you are already off to a good start. I had a great New Year’s Eve / Day:
I started in Asakusa after spending the night in a capsule hotel there. Jay and I both decided to check it out the night before because we hadn’t arranged a place to stay and it was on both of our agendas as something to do in Tokyo. It turned out to be really cool. When we checked in, we bought tickets from a machine next to the front desk. 1 night is Y3000 / person, with an extra Y500 charge if you arrive after 2am. We were then given keys to a shoe locker, a larger storage locker and assigned a capsule. Inside the capsules we were provided:

• Fresh bedding
• Pajamas
• A bar of soap
• A razor
• A toothbrush
• Television
• Radio with an alarm clock
• Temperature control
• A comfy pillow

It was surprisingly comfortable and not as tiny as I had imagined. I think I’ll end up doing it again as it is cheap, easy and check-in is possible in the middle of the night if necessary. At most capsule hotels women are not allowed, but this one had a section for women as well.

In the morning I walked around beautiful Asakusa and visited two of the major temples there which were gearing up for the New Years celebrations. I took a lot of breaks (had a mister donut along the way!) as I was lugging around my full backpack, but managed to walk a couple miles before meeting Jay, Maddie and Dustin to catch a ferry to Odaiba. Odaiba is a sort-of tourist center by Tokyo bay that has a few major attractions like the Fuji TV headquarters and some giant shopping malls. When we arrived there was some Japanese girl-band performing on a stage in front of the Fuji building which was rather entertaining. The Fuji building has a large observatory that is open to the public and has an amazing view of the bay and the Tokyo skyline that includes the Rainbow Bridge and the Tokyo Tower (above) so we went up there and expected nothing more than some good photo-ops. We had no idea what was in store. Up in the observatory, they had everyone stand behind rows of railing in the middle of the room. Windowshades lowered, music came on and after a brief weird little light show a video started. It was a hilariously cheesy (and thus fantastic) virtual flyover tour of Tokyo complete with a cast of uniformed narrators. The best part, though, were the cameos by Hard Gay. Hard Gay is a popular comedian in Japan who does a lot of ass-shaking, woo!-ing and arm-waving. I have no idea what to make of it or what most Japanese people think about it but they seem to love him. The camera would fly by a big landmark and then zoom in and he’d be dancing around shouting something. I don’t get it, but I love it.

After that we joined up with Mayu, Shige, Kiyomi, Derek and Michelle at Palette Town (no idea why its called that) and hashed out the plans for the evening. Another great think about Japan is that you can buy alcohol at any hour and drink in public, but no one seems to abuse the privelege. So we hung out, enjoyed some chu-hai, sake and arcade games, then went to Shibuya for dinner. Our group was 8 people so we had a large room to ourselves and ate a delicious dinner together before attempting make it to a temple by midnight. Trying to mobilize the group proved difficult and we ended up being part of the massive crowd on the street in the famous giant intersection in Shibuya. It was madness.

From there we went to the temple, made some New Years wishes, had some New Years snacks, then went to Shinjuku for… Karaoke! We found a place that offered an all-you-can-eat-and-sing-and-drink all night until they close at 5am so needless to say thats what I did until 5. So much fun. Then Mayu and I went to Meijijingu temple, the largest and most famous (and most crowded) temple in Tokyo. Even at 5:30am it was full of people who had been partying all night.

Then, finally, sleep. Such a great New Years.

In some ways it feels like I just arrived in Japan yesterday, but its been almost 2 weeks! I have been having an incredible time, though, thanks to all my friends who have shown up this week.

I accomplished one of the most important goals of my trip to Tokyo: I visited the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum in search of the perfect bowl of Ramen. You can read my obsessive reviews here. Long story short: I was disappointed in the ramen but learned quite a bit about the history of the dish and its various styles. I visited the Tokyo Tower (worlds tallest free-standing steel structure, justtaller than the eiffel tower), took a day trip to Yokohama, visited the famous Tsukiji street market (largest fish market in the world - I ate some incredible fish there but left my camera at home) and visited the very weird atHome cafe (aka “Maid Cafe” in Akihabara). I’m leaving out all the details, but you can find most of them as descriptions to photos.

Tomorrow I am leaving by train to Aizu-wakamatsu, where I am staying with Jay at his apartment. January 7th is a special festival in Aizu where the men in the town strip down to loin cloths, drink lots of sake and run up to the top of a temple in the snow, which of course I will be doing. On the 8th, I return to Tokyo for a night and then on the evening of the 9th, after a Sumo match, Mayu and I are going down to Osaka where we will be staying with her friend Yohei. I’ll be spending some days in Kyoto and possibly Nagoya before I return to Tokyo around the 14th (?) to catch a yet-to-be-booked flight to either Hong Kong, Seoul, or Auckland. My internet access will probably be sporadic for a while, but I will post more info here as I figure it out.

Hello from Aizu-Wakamatsu! This past day was one of the best of the trip so far - The highlight being the Hadaka Matsuri festival. Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

In the morning Jay, Mayu and I set out for Tsuruga-jo (a famous castle in Aizu) and a restaurant for an Udon feast. We walked a couple of kilometers in the falling snow to reach the castle and enjoyed a cup of tea there. Aizu is far quieter (and colder) than the insanity of Tokyo, and standing in the silence looking up at the castle was surreal. From the castle we continued to the restaurant and stuffed ourselves with udon in preparation for the festival.

A short time later, Jay’s friend Ryoko picked us up from his place and drove us out to the temple. There I met the rest of the Aizu gaijin crew: Arthur, Mark, Christian, Paul and Neil (all of us except Neil took part in the festival). It all began with lots of sake in a large tatami room. We each had to strip naked and be dressed in a fundoshi (loin cloth) by someone who knew how to tie it. Once everyone was dressed, more sake chugging and cheering commenced. We got the two-minute warning and everyone gathered near the door… then out! Into the bitter cold wearing nothing but our fundoshi (it was snowing hard!) to run up a long set of frozen stairs. On the way up we were doused with ice water. At the top of the stairs there was a basin of cold water into which we were supposed to toss our coins and make a prayer. Mark and Jay right before me both decided to jump completely into the tub, so I followed suit. I think that was the coldest moment of my life, but the adrenalin numbed the pain so I kept screaming and ran, naked and freezing, into the temple.

Inside, there was a horde of fundoshi-clad men surrounded by hundreds of photographers and bystanders, all cheering “wa-shoi! wa-shoi!”. The next and final part of the ritual is try to climb up a rope to reach the rafters of the temple. There is only one rope, and hundreds of men trying like mad to climb it. The noisy energy and adrenalin made me forget that I was dripping wet in the freezing cold and I jumped into the fray. At first, I was trying to just get my hands on the wildly-swinging rope and pull myself up, but it was nearly impossible to get above the sea of grabbing hands. Many times someone would get halfway up and slip down, knocking 2 or 3 others off the rope. I figured that the best technique was to get up on the crowded platform next to the rope and jump onto it just after someone had fallen and scurry up before I could be pulled off from below. I got in position after a few minutes, jumped onto the rope at the right moment, and struggled my way to the top! There were about 25 others up in the rafters watching the mayhem below and cheering the rest on. Arthur and Jay soon also made it up - 3 out of 6 gaijin is pretty good considering a relatively small amount of the hundreds reached the top!

After climbing back down I walked outside the temple into the snow and was stopped by a Japanese reporter. After about a minute of searching for the words, he asked me if there was anything like this in America. My bare feet had all but frozen themselves to the ground at this point so I blurted out, “Not that I know of!” and ran down the stairs. Ryoko said they’ll probably air it tomorrow so I’ll try to catch my own Japanese TV debut! At the bottom everyone ran over to another small building. Inside, we were each awarded a randomly-sized bottle of sake and then I hurried back to the room from which we started. Finally warm again (I had been naked in the cold for 2 hours), I went upstairs to the onsen and relaxed.

The whole experience was incredible. It’s quite a feeling to have participated in something that has been going on virtually unchanged every January 7th for 700 years.

Tomorrow I am traveling back to Tokyo to see a Sumo match on the 9th, and then onto Osaka and Kyoto!

After our lovely visit with Jay in Aizu, Mayu and I headed back to Tokyo to see one night of the Sumo tournament at the Kokugikan in Ryogoku. I made it in time for the last 2 hours of matches and was thoroughly fascinated with the whole event. I got to witness a somewhat rare occurance, also: in the last bout of the night, the only Yokozuna fell to his opponent, causing the crowd to throw their seat cushions into the dohyo. Having risen early to travel all day, I was tired and checked back into Hotel Hikari (where I am now a regular) for one night.

The next morning we left for Osaka, with a planned stop in Nagoya to meet up with Yu, a friend of Mayu’s. On the way there I finished Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a great book given to me by Jay. When we arrived in Nagoya, Yu showed us around a bit and took us to restaurant where we had some fantastic misokatsu (a local specialty: tonkatsu prepared with a special miso sauce). The streets in Nagoya are noticably wider and there are more cars than in Tokyo. Yu said it’s because Toyota has a strong presence there (and are moving their headquarters there soon). He pointed out that more than half of the cars of the city are Toyotas. I also noticed quite a bit more Nihonglish (Engrish) around town than most other places. After a few hours in Nagoya, we continued toward Osaka. On the way, I bought a copy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Hakuri Murakami on recommendations from Jay’s friend Daniel and Mayu and started reading it. Now I can’t put it down!

This post is split up to allow for different locations on the travelogue map. This one is set in Nagoya.

We arrived at 11:00pm and checked into the Super Hotel (in Minami, close to Nihombashi station). What a great hotel! It’s cheap, they give you tons of super-cute Japanese amenities and the bathroom is right out of a sci-fi movie: a cozy, shiny white capsule with automatic everything of space-age design. It felt like space shuttle bathroom. Its only two downfalls were the bad in-room internet connection and the weird hostel-ish rule of being forced to leave your room between 10am and 3pm each day. The front desk guy pointed us to an amazingly delicious okonomiyaki place just down the street where we had dinner. The next morning, we walked around and explored Minami a bit and I stopped at the bank to make a money transfer to secure my flight to New Zealand. I now have my ticket to Auckland booked - I leave Narita (Tokyo) January 18. From there I’ll be going to Rarotonga on February 9, then back to Auckland on Feb 14 to catch a flight to Taipei. After Taipei I’ll fly to Hong Kong…

Osaka feels different than Tokyo. Its smaller (though still a massive city at 3 million people) and it feels a bit less vertical, but still has much of the same crazy energy. The people here have lived up to their reputation of being funny and friendly, and the food has been nothing short of incredible. A local specialty is Takoyaki, cooked dough balls with a bit of octopus inside. There are takoyaki stands everywhere, and they all seemed to be good.

After finishing the ticket-booking business, I went off to visit the famed Osaka Aquarium, home to a giant whale shark. I arrived to find it closed, so instead I wandered into the Suntory museum right next door and saw a really great Alfonse Mucha exhibition. Later on I met up with Mayu and we roamed around drinking chu-hai and beer, playing plenty of taiko-game along the way. Turned in early to rest up for the trip to Kyoto the next day.

The rest coming soon…

Kyoto is a gorgeous place. There are shrines and temples in every direction… we started at Sanjusangen-do. It is amazing. Inside, there is a long main hall lined with rows upon rows of near-identical (but each distinct) statues of the buddha. In all, there are 1,000 of them - too many to take in all at once. Each one is life-size, finely detailed and covered in gold leaf. After that, we walked from temple to temple all afternoon, stopping along the way to see the local shops and sample all the snacks and sweets. The next big temple was Kiyomizu. The place feels like a postcard - its stuck up on a hillside with picturesque views of the city. We walked around slowly the rest of the day, ending the temple visits with Heianjingu. After a mediocre dinner (or at least compared to my high kansai-cuisine expectations) we spotted a shop selling glasses for unbelievably cheap prices. 45 minutes later, we each walked out with a new pair of glasses for Y5000 ($43) each! That includes an eye-exam, frames, lenses, case, etc. After that we headed to the Funaoka Onsen (recommended by Lonely Planet) which turned out to be fantastic. They have an outdoor cypress wood tub, an electrified one (as in it shocks you gently and continuously as you sit in it), as well as several other fancy ones that are too hot for me. We headed home tired but relaxed.

Japan has a long and colorful history, and more of it shows through in Kyoto than anywhere I’ve been so far. Its common to see a 500-year-old shrine surrounded by modern buildings, or a 2nd or 3rd reconstruction of a temple or castle that is itself nearly 1000 years old. There is a lot I still want to see in Kyoto (including the famous kinkakuji) so we planned to return the next day.