Kyoto and Hiroshima

Hey guys, new video here

I got to travel to Hiroshima and Kyoto over the last week. Only have three more days before I'm finished with student teaching and head back to the states.

Thanks for keeping up online with me.

- John

I'd be remiss . . .

If I didn't post my first encounter with this guy . . .

This statue was created for Godzilla's 40th(ish) anniversary in 1995.



On an unrelated note, I have the best job in the world.

Hanami and Fuji

Konnichiwa, guys.

Sorry it's been so long - the last couple of weekends have been repeat visits to places I've already been, mostly. Put up a new video, here, give it a look. I went to Fuji and down to the cherry blossom festival.

Mt. Fuji

Sakura

More Sakura

Even More Sakura

Chibi-Godzi.

Japan in a Day

Konnichiwa guys -

Put up a new video, here.

Ridley Scott is hosting a film amalgamation project commemorating the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that happened on March 11, 2011. This is my contribution.

I visit Roppongi Hills and Kamakura in this one.

Tokyo Nightlife

Hey all -

I have another video up on the youtube. Click it:

It's about some of the nightlife districts I've been to here, for live shows and what not.


I also visited Golden Gai, a district built in the 1940s after the war. It's a bunch of tiny bars stacked on top of each other - seriously, the staircases are so steep you bang your shin on every one when you go up. The bars only seat about six people each, and it's the first place I've been that feels completely different than everywhere else.

Here's a couple more pics from the Tokyo National Museum.

Harajuku and bits of Ueno

Hey all -

Did a video blog this time. Check it out:



Also, here's some more pics that didn't make the final cut, but I still thought were interesting.

They have a T-Rex

Human and gorilla skeleton in the great apes hall.

World War II Bomber.

Plesiosaurus in the Japanese hall.
Apparently these things lived in this portion of the world.

Some kind of spherical model in the Japanese hall of the science museum.

Plant biology text.

This is supposed to show the necessity for hollow bones in flying creatures.
I prefer to think of it as a dance number.

A collection of compasses.



Here's a pic of a spider crab I pulled off the net,
just to let you guys know how ridiculous they are in real life.

First Three Weeks

Konnichiwa -

Made it here, alive. I've been in Tokyo for almost three weeks now, and it's been very good so far. I'm living in a district called Shin-Koiwa that's just outside the city proper, and I work in the fifth-largest one in Tokyo, Ikebukuro. The school is great so far. I have a class of 20 kids, all with varying degrees of skill in English, and as expected, they are a delight to work with. My supervising instructor, Doug, is great, and the Japanese side teacher, Yuka-sensei, is awesome as well.

Getting settled in was an adventure. I was given inaccurate directions regarding train/subway transfers and it took me almost three hours to find the school on my first day. For the first couple of days, I traveled back and forth between the two districts to get familiar. The area I'm staying is quite nice, around the train station are quite a few amenities, and the food is great. There's a little ramen shop about 20 feet from my front door, and they cooked me my first hot meal here. I've been back there a few times, and tried some ramen from another shop by my school. Next up is some tempura and yakisoba. I also tried the some local pizza, and it's pretty good.

The language barrier has been a challenge – there's English print everywhere, but most of it makes little sense or is quite separate from any sort of context whatsoever. The people are generally helpful, but there aren't a lot of English speakers around. Ordering at the ramen shop for the first time was an adventure – I went in and couldn't read anything, anywhere, and asked the guy behind the counter to make me “anything good, something he liked.” He made a suggestion, and I ended up loving it. Same thing with the pizza place – I tried to order pepperoni, and the waiter didn't want to tell me that they didn't have any, so he scrutinized the menu very closely for a few minutes, not wanting to say no, before he finally let me know.

I ventured out to Akihabara, the “otaku” district (that's “nerd”) last weekend, where they keep all the electronics stores, comic shops, and action figure stores. The back alleys were genuinely interesting, as that was where all the second-hand shops were shilling two- and three-year old gizmos. The toy stores were interesting too – Some were tiny, single rooms with rows and rows of robots and spacemen and movie figures, and some were 7-floors high. One I ventured in to had an entire floor dedicated to figures of little women in their underpants. Culture shock.

I took the train into Shinjuku that night, and I have to return to get some photos and video of that place. I briefly talked with an Irish guy that night, and he aptly described it as “fookin' madness.” This was the district where most of Lost in Translation was filmed, and supposedly where Ridley Scott got his inspiration for Blade Runner. Parts of this district were brighter at night than they would be in the day, with absolutely gigantic video screens covering most of the buildings, playing all manner of commercials. There were neon signs everywhere and a million people going every which way. It was completely out of control.

Shinjuku is one of the major destinations for visitors, and a one of the top three hubs for Tokyo nightlife. It's not quite the party hub (That's Rippongi, which I'd feel a little odd venturing there alone) but there were restaurants, nightclubs, shopping (a 7-story mall) and barkers everywhere. I found this place by googling for a rock and roll club (which I'm told are called “live houses”) and wandering down there to find it. Apparently, I had to cross the red-light district to get where I was going, and a rather odd number of black guys appeared out of doorways trying to usher me into their places of business (always politely, of course). I didn't put this together until I was returning from my destination that these were probably all strip clubs or the like.

The streets in Japan are not labeled – Street addresses mean little to nothing. Doug told me that they use a numbering system based on the age of the building in the block, so there is no sequential order to them. I got a bit lost trying to find the live house I was looking for, and doubling back I happened to see the sign for it out of the corner of my eye. The Loft (aptly located in the 2B basement of a high-rise) was a great little dive bar, with about 100 people in it when I finally made it in. They were having a new year's party celebrating the year of the dragon, and there were about five or six bands playing that night. A few of them were pretty forgettable, but there was one band, “Haco Mofu” (“Morph Box”) that was quite good.

The next morning I ventured down to the district I work in and visited an aquarium on the tenth floor of yet another high-rise. It was a medium-sized aquarium with a lot of weird sea life. They had a giant octopus, a variety of squid, sea dragons, huge stingrays, monitor lizards, otters . . . The list goes on and on. Of major note was the Japanese Spider Crab.

This aquarium was packed tight – There were so many people I often couldn't see the displays. I approached one display that had a large crowd in front of it, and made note of the signs at the top. There were signs for several types of fish, some of which I could see swimming above the heads of the people standing in front of me, and the sign for the spider crab. By the size of the tank, I assumed there would be eight to ten of them scurrying around the bottom. By the time I made my way to the front of the cage, I saw that I was completely wrong, and there was only one in there. It had to be five to six feet across, and took up at least a third of the bottom of the tank. There's no other way to describe it besides freaking big. I couldn't get a photo that aptly displayed the size of this thing – I tried several shots with people – children even – to get some perspective, but none did it justice. It was like an alien from a movie. The life on this planet astounds me sometimes.

More to come! Hopefully I'll have a video compiled together soon. I want to try to make it to another show by Haco Mofu and get some footage of them, and some shots of the absolutely amazing Shinjuku skyline. My next entry should include a stop in to Harajuku, the fashion capital, and Shibuya, the other non-party major stop. I also plan to visit the Emperor's palace and some of the city parks in the future, before I finally venture out of Tokyo and visit some more of the country.

i got the whole damn nation on their knees