the holidays are over

well, I haven`t written in a long time. There are some very good reasons for this.

1.) My good friend, Tom came to visit me.
2.) I had a 10 day vacation and spent it touring around.
3.) The future called and asked for its money back.

I was going to do a big thing about my trip. But you've probably seen most of the pictures of Kyoto. I will instead have to give you the highlights when I remember them.

For now, I will talk about Tokyo. i spent the last few days in Tokyo. We did almost everything you can do in that city. Everything from Shibuya, the busiest intersection in the world, to getting stuck in the National Museum for 5 hours in a freak tropical storm.

Her I am with Tom in Asakusa, where the biggest paper lantern in Japan is. It's a healing place...too bad we got there too late smell the incense from the huge burner. But It was really cool.

This is the pagoda near the shrine. Asakusa shrine is probably the most famous shrine in Tokyo next to Meiji-jinja.

This is the mandatory city view of Tokyo with Tokyo Tower (a red replica of the Eiffle Tour) in the background. It was a beautiful day and the city literally sprawls to the horizon in every direction. It is immensely big. And actually has the same population of all of Canada!!!

This is Tom in a pachinko parlour. Nuff said.

We also stayed in a capsule hotel. Mostly in order to experience all of the possible accomodations Japan has to offer. We stayed in a ryokan, a traditional inn in Kyoto, so aside from a Love Hotel we went slept nearly everywhere. (Sorry Tom, not with you, buddy). But in the capsule you get your own radio, alarm, and TV. When i turned it on there was some Japanese porn on the tube!

This is me when I realised they only have one channel!!!!

We also went to a lot of museums and galleries in Tokyo. My favourite was the 21_21 Design Shift gallery. They curator basically created my dream exhibit. I pretty much designed this kind of art show all through university, but it was never realised. This guy took samples of ever kind of writing throughout the world and typeset it. It was all very beautiful. Unfortunately we weren`t allowed to take pictures...but my camera "accidentally" went off and I got this one, blurry image.

Throughout Tom's trip the weather was perfect. Hot, not too humid, and sunny. The very last day, there was a storm that hit. We were lucky both times it rained. The first time we were in the National museum. We walked through the whole complex twice, reaching the final building just before they closed. The second time we were eating at this nice restaurant. This is the beautiful picture that resulted.

Heaven and Hell

Last weekend I climbed Tateyama, the second highest mountain in Japan.
We had to take a cable car up to the top. From there we took a bus to the base station. Then we go from there on foot.

This is the mountain. The tip is covered with a massive cloud, but you can make out the gift shop at the top. Yes! you heard me! A GIFT SHOP!!! For centuries there was a shrine at the top. The monks built a house, then when tourists came, the house became a shop for charms, now it's a gift shop.

The whole mountain was still covered in snow. About 2 meters actually. If you slip down the side, there's no coming back. You'd slide straight into the valley a 1000 meters below. Man, I swear I'd piss myself in fear for the first 3 seconds, then I'd shout "Guys, take a picture! Take a picture!"

This is near the top. The area near the summit was just rocks. Not Fuji style rocks, either. Real rocks.

The summit was incredibly misty and cloudy. The shrine is actually the highest point on the mountain. Totally covered in white, it was a little like being in a waiting room in a virtual reality game.

Yuka taking a picture of Erin and Will.

The climbing was good and the sunset beautiful—although I sadly didn't get a picture of it...However, to me the most interesting part was the area around the base station. The Buddhists claim that Tateyama is holy because it contains 9 views of heaven from the summit at 164 views of hell around the mountain. This sign points towards the area known as 'Hell's Valley'.

Here you can see it literally looks like God wiped his ass on this portion of earth. (And smells like it too).

The signs warn you not to walk on water like Jesus in this area. Also under no circumstance should you fight the gas clouds!

The path you follow is through a sulfur pit. I never knew that sulfur leaves green stains on the ground. But I guess it makes sense.

While everyone else was taking pictures of the green water, or the grey rocks, I couldn't stop snapping pics of the pipes and barrels lying around. I suppose my idea of Hell is like a dirty, fart-smelly place always under construction. I have like 50 pictures of a barrel in this landscape, but I won't bore you all with them.

There were also some natural scenery like this geyser spouting off evil clouds of gas just asking to be punched in the face.





More of hell. Those clouds are actually indescribably BIG...

...and indescribably smelly.

Yakushima

I just got back from Yakushima, a small island 5 hours south of the tip of Kyushu, the southermost of the main islands. The whole island is covered by an ancient rainforest and has been a World Heritage Site based on exceptional natural beauty as well as showing the importance of on-going natural development. The island has some of the world's oldest trees. Japan's oldest stands at 7200 years old, and there are a number of other 2000 plus trees on the island. Anything over 2000, but under 3500 is called ko-sugi, or baby sugi!

The closest city is Kagoshima, the gateway to Yakushima and Tanega-shima (Japan's space port). Kagoshima is also an interesting city. It's home to one of Japan's only active volcanos, Sakurajima. Apparently, this is the most volatile volcano in Japan, with activity as recent as 2005.
We took a ferry out to the volcano, walked around the base until we came to a spot where we had a clear view of the top, sat down and drank some beer. Getting near the active cone is forbidden, but we found ourselves next to a shrine to the volcano. After 2 or 3 cans of beer, I noticed that my foot was covered in tiny, little black dots. I guess the wind shifted and when we looked up, it was raining ashes on us. A fine black mist, really. But you could smell fresh lava on the air. The volcano is really pretty to look at—pretty and menacing. The last real eruption joined it to the mainland by a tine isthmus, altered the tides and spewed out an enormous amount of lava. (A rarity for Japan, because every other Japanese volcano has explosive eruptions, rather that lava flows.)

When I got to the island, the old man at the inn greeted me with "Welcome, you who are called." When I asked what he meant, he explained that the island calls people. You don't choose to go there, but you are summoned by the island. This makes sense when you learn that the oldest tree, called Jomon sugi is about 5 hours walk from the nearest road. (That's a 10 hour day!)

The path takes you through thick forests, some of the most beautiful scenes with monkeys and white-tailed deer wondering around freely, fearless of humans. There are spiderwebs of old roots everywhere.

More roots.

This is actually an enormous root crawling over a bolder. You have to pass under the root on the way to the big tree.

After the 5 hours walk up the mountain, you first get to Wilson's stump. The stump itself could easily fit a large living room inside it (I promise I will post a movie of this later). Then you climb farther to Jomon sugi, the 7000 year-old hulk. It is indescribably big...And there is no way a photo does it justice. I wanted to lay a pencil beside it to show scale, but you actually can't get close to it due to too many tourists eroding the soil around it. At one point there was a family of deer that stood next to it, but I couldn't get my camera out in time. The whole place reminds you of Princess Mononoke.

A montage from the movie, in case you haven't seen it.
If you haven't, go rent it now!!!

The island also has some natural hot springs. One in particular that I liked is a sea-side spring. It is only accessible a few hours before and after high tide, and during that time you are basically bathing outside, naked with any strangers who might want to share the warm water with you.
Like this guy, for example. The water smalls of sulpher and is salty, but it is incredibly relaxing to hear the waves and soak.

The last great thing about the island is the beach. It has beautiful clear water.
The local fish is called tobiuwo, or directly translated "flying fish". They are very different from the fish Gavin had hanging on his wall as a child, but they have wings, do pop out of the water in schools and do kind of fly. While I was swimming, a school of them virtually jumped over me in a blue-silver rainbow of fish.

I got a nasty sunburn and returning to Kagoshima, the only moisturizer I could find was some made from volcanic ash. "It's good for your skin!" the salesman said. So I bought it and when I covered my sunburn that night, laying on the bed, I looked and smelt like a burnt piece of bacon. Like yaki-nikku, a little too well done.

KOBE!!

Known for it`s Chinatown, Kobe is an exciting city. It`s very modern because of rebuilding after the 1995 Earthquake, which left about 5000 people dead.

This is the Chinatown. It`s lively and offers delicious food. Remi and Erin posing for the Camera.

We couldn`t go up the mountain, so we decided to ascend the Port Tower to get our spectacular night view.

This is Harbourland! Fun fun fun! Erin and I rode some mechanical animals, and Remi hung out with Pikachu!

This is the money shot. Remi by the harbour.

niagara falls

Just before New Year's Eve I went to Niagara to do the number one touristy thing in Ontario — see the falls! Thanks to my mom, we stayed in a beautiful hotel overlooking the falls.

Without further delay here are some of the pictures I took:

This is the US side. There are two sides to the falls. The United States has the crappier one and so many people flock to the Canadian side (also gambling is legal there!) During the night, they illuminate the falls.

The Canadian side is much bigger and forms a horseshoe shape. There is so much water falling at such a strength that it forms a cloud of mist in the middle of the falls. It's pretty impressive how big the cloud is.

This is the view from our hotel window. You can clearly see the horseshoe shape.

Me a the top of the falls. you can get very close the the falls on the Canadian side. And they tell you stories about people who tried to go over it in barrels in the old days. Personally, I think that's a serious death-wish considering how powerful the water is.



This is a picture from below the falls. There are a series of caves behind them and you can literally see the hundreds of thousands of litres flow over the edge. It's very loud, but beautiful and awesome how powerful nature can be.

This is the lobby of the casino. It was amazing! I didn't gamble because I'm notoriously unlucky with money, unlike Gavin who scored BIG on pachinko when he came! ("TRIPLE GOLDEN 7s!!!!!") But the casino looked impressive and it even had a garden with full trees inside.

Tojimbo

Last weekend, I went to a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn to have a meal. We drove about an hour and a bit into the next prefecture. Fukui, is a relatively rural prefecture on the Sea of Japan, known for delicious crab and their funny accent.

The Ryokan was right on the sea, perched like an Eagle's nest on top of these cliffs. The food was incredible and YES! I managed to take a photo of it before eating this time!

The food was absolutely incredible! It was served with hand-made clay glasses of beer or sake. Along with the sounds of the waves breaking below on the rocks. We could actually see the ocean through the windows in all directions. I took some pictures but it's pointless to show because it couldn't possibly convey the feeling of it.

The ryokan also had a hotspring! There was no one else in the mens' onsen, so I thought I would sneak in a camera to FINALLY take an onsen picture for my blog.

The onsen was also right next to the sea. I could actually hear the women in the bath next to me, but we were unable to have a conversation because the waves were to loud.

After the delicious meal and a soak, we drove to Tojimbo, the main tourist attraction in Fukui. It's basically these enormous cliffs that reach like grasping hands into the ocean.

Here's my hyper-UNrealistic picture of one side of the rocks. On the background there's a long red bridge leading out to an island.

When we got there the sun had just started to set. And there was a massive hawk floating around the sky, looking for fish.

My own version of Hokusai's The Wave.

Erin taking a picture of the ever-present hawk.

Takayama

This weekend I took a trip to Takayama. The name means "high mountain", and truly it is high in the mountains. Until semi-recently the town was inaccessible by car, as the town was kind of a hidden secret. You can still see very traditional thatched-roof houses in the area, which are covered with a thick layer of snow in the winter.

The steep roofs protect the houses from caving in in the winter under the weight of the snow. This town looked like I had stepped back in time to a much older age.

The lifestyle here is also a lot slower, despite a heavy influx of tourists. You still see people in traditional rice hats, farming, gardening and making crafts.

The interior of the houses, probably look something like this. The all used to have a small fireplace in the middle, where people cooked and heated themselves in winter. Nowadays they are still sometimes the centre-piece of a dinner.

The outside doors were slid open and a wonderful breeze blew into the house. This was actually, the government administration building, so it had a large garden in the middle.

This is what I saw.

Outside the narrow streets were bustling with action. The city is actually a city of carpenters! About 80% of all stores sell wooden goods. They were such specialists in their field that the Edo government would often call upon them to build palaces and temples. And in fact, many of the ordinary things were made of wood.

Bowls, forks, spoons: all wood!

The city is still very self-sufficient and lives in relative harmony with nature. If you go into a convenience store, you are likely to see the person behind the counter sanding or carving a wooden toy. The famous food from the area is called 'sansai', and is actually a collection of miscellaneous mountain plants. Most of which I didn't recognise. Some looked like ferns, others like a sweet asparagus (a kind of grass maybe?), yet others like potatoes. All very delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ate it all before being able to take a picture!