hi there all and happy chinese new year to you - Xin Nian Kuai Le (shin knee-ahn quai leh)....this weekend the new year is coming to an end...15 days of craziness and fireworks i don't think can ever be topped, unless i am china next year for new year....definitely put the USA fourth of july fireworks to shame anyway....but i guess i am in the land where fireworks were created....next update will be all about my stay here in shanghai for the chinese new year, as it was incredible....but i still need to finish my update about japan....which is what is below.....
i am also in the process of updating and cleaning out my email list, so if you get these updates and have not been in touch some time in the last year and would like to continue to get them, please let me know...if i have heard from you in the past year, no worries, i won't remove you....i just don't want to clog people's email system or send them things if they never look at them....thanks to all who respond and thanks to all who read or at least look at the pictures.....
so where was i in japan....ah yes.....the toilets (paul this is for you....thanks for waiting!)
this is a typical japanese toilet - notice the arm on the left with all of the buttons...one so you can make a flusing noise and no one can hear you doing your business....one for the temperature of the seat and one for the bidet and the direction, pressure and temp of the water you want coming out of it...also, on the back of the toilet is the sink....so when you flush, the clean water from the back of the tank comes out of the faucet and you wash your hands with it and that water is what refills the bowl....so you wash with clean water, but the water in the bowl has been used to wash your hands....sooooooo smart....loved this....
i decided i needed to take a picture of one of the directional signs as well....see all the amazing things a japanese toilet can do....incredible....and i just found a japanese restaurant here in china that has one as well...so i can play again with the toilet....some toilets in japan also have remote controls to take care of all of these things...heavens forbid if someone got control of that while you were on the toilet....whoa...anyway...i give you the toilets of japan....amazing!!!!!
this update specifically focuses on tokyo....holy cow, what an amazing city....the metro is the biggest in the world...it is crazy how many lines there are and they go everywhere in this city....i was really lucky i was there over new years, as i only once had to deal with a crazy crowded car....it was the perfect time to travel if you do not like to be in crowds....but some of the restaurants and things were closed as this is a very family oriented holiday....in the shot above, this is the entrance gate to the Meiji-Jingu shrine, this gate is a called a torii....this torii was made from cypress trees in taiwan....and was incredible....there are a few to the entrance...and you walk through a forest to get to this gate in the middle of tokyo....also amazing.....
the shrine was preparing for new years....so these are the offerings that people could purchase and donate to the monks in return for a blessing to start the year....most japanese at midnight on new years go to their local shrine to receive a blessing and then over the course of the next three days, families go to the larger shrines to ask for even more blessings....this shrine in tokyo, along with another further below, are some of the busiest....what you see above is mostly cooking materials, with some oils for burning candles and some other basic food staples for the monks in the shrine...it was a beautiful place, i couldn't shake that i was in the middle of one of the busiest metropolitan places in the world...and it just did not seem like it, due to it being so peaceful.....
from the shrine i walked over to takeshita street....if you look closely at the picture you will see nearly everyone in this picture is a teenaged girl....this is the THE place to find the newest "must-have" fashion....it was wild....seems like one of the newest fads here in asia is the wearing of glasses frames without any glass....they were everywhere on this street...although so were really mini skirts with thigh high socks....and uggs in all shapes, sizes, colors with and without fur....and vinyl, shiny, puffy jackets....it was crazy to be here...i think i was one of the oldest people on the street....
from takeshita, i walked to the shibuya part of town....this is the area that has the cross streets where everyone takes their picture with all of the neon signs and crazy ads....its is also the area where everywhere you look you see malls or stores selling clothes...very high fashion district...and the hachiko statue (above) is also here....hachiko was a dog to a professor in the 1920's, who used to accompany his master to the train station here everyday and returned in the afternoon to pick up the professor and walk him home....one day the professor died of a stroke at the university where he worked and hachiko awaited his return...sadly he did not show....hachiko was seen at the train station waiting for his master every afternoon for the next ten years, until his own death...the locals loved the faithfulness of this dog and built a statue to him in the very spot he waited daily for his master in....very cool :) someone told me a movie is being made of this story....with richard gere as the professor (weird)....also, interestingly enough, it is a meeting spot and there is a smoking area right next to it, where many people meet in the city....that was another amazing thing about japan....people only smoke in the designated areas....even outside!!! it is just a population that really abides by the rules the government sets.......
later in the evening of my day of walking around, i wandered into the kabukicho area of town, seen above....also known as the red-light district.....very different from bangkok's red light district, as even though you knew what was being offered, it was being done very discreetly....those japanese certainly are discreet.....
i was staying in the shinjuku part of town....very lively and next to the red-light district....and just across the street from my hotel was this shinto shrine....as you can see on the sides of the front posts, there were evergreen boughs with lightning forms made from white paper...not really sure what they meant, but they were one each side of everyone's front doors....i think it was a good luck thing....i found out after i walked through these torii that this was the fertility set of gates, mostly for men who are having problems or for women who want to get pregnant....i don't really fit either of those descriptions, so i didn't stay long :)
this shot above is for everyone who has seen the "love" sculpture in philly or nyc....i thought it was way cool that there was one in tokyo as well...who knew....
on one of my wanders through town i headed to one of the highest parts of town to get a look at this city from above....i ended up in roppongi hills, a rather posh mall, with a look-out on top of it....i even paid the extra price to go out on the sky deck - which is also a helo pad....waaaaaaaaaay cool....in this shot i am looking towards central tokyo....they have a tower that looks every similar to eiffiel's in paris, even if it is not the same color....
this is me of the helo deck, with the area of shinjuku in the distant right (where i stayed) and the botanical gardens in the distance behind me....this city is HUGE and there is no way i could get to it all...maybe i would go back, as it was probably the easiest city to get around in ever, but i am not sure....just a bit too perfect for me....
this is a better shot of the tokyo tower....with some good lighting, due to the sun setting....it is a cool tower, but i never had the time to make it to the bottom of it....it is a bit taller than the one in paris, and i think they did that so they could say that (kind of like the arc de triumph in bucharest, which is bigger than paris')
in the shot above i am headed into the other large shinto shrine getting ready for new years...this was the 30th of dec and it was crazy busy....this temple is called senso-ji....and you do not walk through a torii to get here....you walk through a ton of vendors selling everything a person could or couldn't want....this was the area of town i was told to have tempura....so i followed the suggestion and was very happy i did so.....yummy!!!!! this shrine had a buddhist temple on the grounds near it, so it was cool to see the differences between them....the majority of japanese are shinto, but there are a small few who are buddhist....
while wandering back from the shrine, i came across this tourist trap section of riding in a rickshaw....really they are not in tokyo (or shanghai) anymore except for tourists in very busy areas....most of the rickshaw drivers were going after japanese tourists....and not ex-pat tourists....actually, there weren't that many ex-pat tourists i came across....i wonder if people are still worried about traveling to japan because of the earthquake and tsunami last year....there was no evidence of it in tokyo or anywhere else i was....except for the places where you could donate money, clothes and food for people who were affected by these disasters......
along the river in tokyo are these three buildings...i took a boat down the river (sumida-gawa river) to see the sites along it, the two buildings on the right are the asahi brewery....notice the one in the middle is gold with white on top - its supposed to represent a beer glass full of beer....very cool....and the other building with the golden swoop is their headquarters....the other tower is known as the tokyo sky tree and was under construction while i was in town....it is the tallest tower in the world (not the tallest free standing structure though - that's in dubai, soon to be surpassed by something here in shanghai)....this tower is 2080 ft. (634 m).....crazy.....they had to build it to be able to broadcast tv and radio to all of tokyo....amazing!
this shot above is from new year's eve....and was the local temple i went to....i got there at 11:50pm thinking it would be packed and no one was there....but literally 2 minutes before midnight, people poured out of their houses....i found out i was on the correct side to enter the shrine once others were there....girls on the right and boys on the left....and that the "totem" animal of this shrine is a fox...it was cool to watch, although i think the japanese were confused about why a westerner was there...oh well, i got my blessing and went home!
these last couple of shots are some of the crazy things i saw every where in japan....i have never seen so much fake food anywhere else in the world i have been...it is in every restaurant and bar....there was an entire shopping street in tokyo for fake food...it was incredible, and rather expensive....and boy-oh-boy did some of it look real....this shot was taken outside of a restaurant in a mall...as you can see, they had lots of offer...i think the japanese consider designing fake food a real art...it blew my mind!
also very interesting to me were the stores around new years...my friend randy and i were wandering through a store on january 2nd and these guys were wandering around blessing all of the stalls and vendors for the new year, in hopes that the seller would be profitable....they blessed all of the people as well with the gold ball thing in the guy's hand....myself included....i think the thing on the rights was a dragon, as it is the chinese new year of the dragon....but i am not sure....
and finally the metro....i LOVE this picture as this is what happens to all of the japanese on the metro...literally all of them....they are not allowed to be talking on the phone, and they really don't, so they are either texting or sleeping....no one is talking....it was so nice to be someplace sooooooo quiet after being in china, where everything is sooooooo noisy....what i also find amazing is that most of them have their naps timed perfectly and don't miss their stops....sure there were some panicked faces when folks woke up and realized they had gone to far....but that was few and far between or they just didn't show it....sleeping on the metro...an art in japan.....
of course there is one more shot....me wishing you a happy new year - western or chinese version....you take your pick....japan was an incredible place to visit....so easy, and the people are so helpful....if you looked stranded or lost people just start stepping up to help you....what i also found amazing about this part of the world is how easily old-world tradition is seen right next to the most modern thing you have ever experienced...the people i met and talked with and saw, honored all things of the past in their daily lives and it did not seem out of place....this is something you do not experience many places in my opinion and it was really cool....like watching a real geisha walk down the street shopping...all made up and buying the latest cell phone....incredible.....
if you have never been to japan...i highly recommend it, especially if you are not a seasoned traveler....the japanese have everything orderly and laid out for you....i would say you should like seafood and be willing to go without dairy products....but if you like meat, teppanyaki is for you...really, its beautiful, historical and so easy to get around.....just be warned it can get expensive depending on what you are doing....but go and be sure to try the takuyaki - ocopus balls - they are to die for.....
so there you have japan...land of the clean toilets, old world history and the most modern and largest metro i have ever experienced....next up will be chinese new year here in shanghai...of course i will try and write that sooner rather than later...but you never know when it will happen....i wish you all a happy chinese new year of the dragon (a water dragon, by the way) and i hope you have a terrific lantern festival (that's tomorrow here!)....more on these things soon....
