The Blog Has a New Look

Hey everyone, how are you all doing?  Fortunately I took today off work because the jet lag has been hammering me today.  I woke up feeling pretty darn good, but before the morning was out I was starting to feel pretty sleepy.  This afternoon I had a nap (against my better judgement) but with any luck I'll be able to sleep tonight.  Tomorrow morning it's back to work, so lets hope that I'm a lot more alert by then.

You should have all noticed by now that the blog has an entirely new look.  I've been using the same template since I started the blog in 2007, and I think I was overdue for a refresh.  What really pushed me to make the change was when my good friend Richard mentioned that the original colour scheme was so hard on his eyes that he was unable to read my blog at all.  I've picked a new template, and then slightly altered it to suit my tastes.  The biggest difference is that to posts will now be in a dark font on a light background, which I'm told is much easier on the eyes for sustained reading.  I also boosted up the font size as I found it to be a bit small.

In this Blogger template, as it originally was the text was actually grey, and I found it to be entirely too light, so I changed it to dark blue.  Since it was a "travel" template they had some image in the background of a dusty desert road, but I pulled that out.  I originally thought to use one of my own photos, but on larger screens it tiles them in a strange way, and didn't look good.

As always, feedback is welcome.  I can tweak a lot of different things about this particular template, or completely abandon it if it's not popular among my readers.  Feel free to share your thoughts on the new look.

Last Day on the Bus

Well folks, this is it.  Tomorrow we're flying out, so today marks the last day of the bus tour.  I'm happy to report that it started out with me being completely intact.  I was a bit concerned about spending a night sleeping on tatami, but I feel fine.  I guess I've toughened up a bit since my last attempt.

We began by heading to a place called Dog Forest.  It's a pretty spot, lined with trees, flowers, and vendors selling unique and interesting crafts.

It also, as the name implies, seemed to have a lot of dogs running around.

For the first time ever I was actually disappointed when we were rushed past the vendors.  They seemed to have some pretty neat stuff, but I barely got a chance to look at it as we had a train to catch.

Just as busy as it looks.

I'm not sure if this is ever used as a commuter train, but it was set up to be quite scenic.  Most of the seats were turned sideways so that they looked out the windows.  I think that was the entire point of the trip for us, since we had our bus waiting for us a few stations down by the time we arrived.

We continued to wind our way along the twisty, scenic roads of the Izu Peninsula and made our next stop at Joren Falls.

I really love waterfalls.

I've got about a dozen more shots like this that I won't subject you to.

We had to hike up a steep set of stairs to get back up from the falls, which was probably good; my butt needed more work than it was getting by sitting all day.

There's a small group of shops and restaurants near the falls and we stopped there for lunch.  After eating I was wandering around one of the stores looking for something new and interesting foods to bring home when I spotted this: 

Yup, that's Wasabi Beer.

My first intention was to buy a pair of them for my brother, as I'm always looking to bring home strange foods for him to try.  However, since they had some cold and ready to go in a fridge, I thought that I should try one first.  I'm glad I did, as it saved me the trouble of bringing any home.  That stands proud near the top of my list of the most horrible things I've ever put in my mouth.  Should anyone ever offer you one, strike them, as they are not your friend.

We continued our journey through the peninsula, and made a brief stop at Suzenji Temple.

I can't help myself when I see these.  The camera must come out.

I love Japanese temple architecture.

It was a pretty place, and nice to visit, but as I've mentioned before I always feel a little weird visiting a temple as a tourist.  I was busy snapping photos of the building above when Euphy pointed out that there appeared to be a funeral happening in the building to my left.  My photography seemed wildly inappropriate at that point.

Having completed our disruption of people's daily lives we continued on.  We stopped for a bit in what I think was the town of Hakone (I'm never entirely clear where I am since I can't read the road signs) just for a break.

I see orange trees everywhere in this region, absolutely heavy with fruit.

Just around the corner from our rest stop was Odawara Castle.  Most of what's currently standing is a replica since the original castle was decommissioned during the Meiji period.  However, I'm told that the restoration used as many period-accurate materials as possible in an attempt to make a faithful recreation.

This is the outermost moat, and one of the first gates into the castle complex.

The gate doors are massive, and quite thick, so opening them would be a chore.  Hence they put tiny doors within the doors for day-to-day use.  Pictured here is a small girl who is quite put out about being used to model the smallness of this door.

The appropriately named "Copper Gate" which has been faithful restored in copper, just like the original.

After several gates and a fair bit of climbing we made it to the imposing main keep.

Not entirely sure how you'd go about assaulting something like that, but it couldn't have been easy.

We didn't enter the main keep, but instead pressed on towards our final destination of Narita.  Unfortunately we got in quite late due to the heavy Tokyo traffic.  Even more unfortunate was the restaurant that we ended up at.  We've had really good meals the entire time we've been in Japan, but that ended abruptly tonight.  I never thought I'd say this about anything in Japan, but the place was filthy.  Nothing was properly cleaned, and I only ate because I was starving.  I have sustained myself mainly with french fries because I didn't think they could harbour too many infectious diseases.  I have no burning desire to spend an entire day of travel tomorrow fighting of salmonella poisoning.

Speaking of a day of travel, I'd better get to bed.  Our flight out doesn't leave until 5:00 p.m., but due to the magic of time zones we'll touch down in Vancouver at 9:00 a.m. of the same day.  After a lengthy layover we're on to Toronto where we'll arrive sometime after 9:00 p.m.  So you'll have to excuse me, as tomorrow I'm literally going to have a long day.

Two Days of Fun

Hello again everyone!  Sorry for the absence of a post last night, but I had technical difficulties... as usual.  The hotel we were staying at had incredibly tempermental WiFi, and while I could connect to the network I couldn't actually get Internet access.  Such is life on the road I guess.

It's okay though, since yesterday was a bit of a wash, and today was considerably better.  This allows me to not only cover two days in one post, but to also end on a high note, which I greatly prefer.

Yesterday we checked out of our hotel in Yokohama and hit the road.  I thought that our being in Yokohama was a strategic decision to put us along a natural path towards Mt. Fuji: start in Narita; tour Tokyo; move southwest to Yokohama; move due west to Fuji.  However, we started our day by driving due east into Chiba... essentially where we'd left off the night before.  I don't mind a bit of zig-zagging in my travels, but unfortunately that drive set the tone for the rest of the day.  It was a long, slow slog through Tokyo's morning traffic which was particularly irksome since it was not only unnecessary for us to have gone that far out of town the night before, but also because I consider Tokyo's public transit system to be the best I've ever used.

The drive had me reflecting on my last trip here.  Graydyn, Jay, and I never spent any more than a few days in any one spot, constantly jumping from city to city.  This allowed us to cover a great deal of ground and see a lot of what Japan has to offer, but without really digging in to any one city.  Since then we've often discussed the pros and cons of this approach.  I have absolutely no regrets about the way we did things, but there is one significant downside: lots of lost light lugging luggage.  While this coach tour eliminates the implied heavy lifting, it still has that downside at it's core; we're wasting a lot of time checking in and out of hotels and moving between them every day.  I'm already yearning for a return to Tokyo with the intent of getting a hotel room somewhere central and using it as a home base for the duration of the trip.

Anyway, enough reflection.  We ended up in the rather awesome district of Akihabara.  Now, I'm sure some of you at home are asking "Colin, how can we really be sure that you're even in Japan?"

Ahem.

The real problem here was that we were in none of the cool stores contained within this photo.  We got dropped off at a duty-free store selling reams of touristy crap.  As you can tell, Euphy and I bailed out of there rather quickly, but only really had time to snap a few pictures before we had to be back at the bus.  I was within visual range of Yodobashi Camera (holy ground for gadget geeks) but didn't have the time to get in there and drool on everything.  That would set the tone for the day - having to pass up the opportunity to explore in favour of getting back to the pick-up point on time... and then waiting for the inevitably late bus.  It made for a deeply frustrating day, spent mostly waiting either for the bus, or on it.

There, got that off my chest.  Now I will tone down the belly-aching and try to focus on the juicy bits.

We had lunch at a mall called Decks, which is quick close to Diver City.  The malls near me need cooler names.  Anyway, it was a mediocre Chinese buffet (taking Chinese tourists to a Chinese buffet shows the kind of imagination normal attributed to a grapefruit) but it had a stunning view.

The mall name "Decks" seems to refer to the fact that every level of the mall has a deck out back.  Great place for photos.

After lunch was another pointless duty-free store that I ducked out of.  I managed to get a really nice wallet at a shop around the corner to replace my currently disintegrating one.  Then we headed over to what I believe is called the Senso-ji Temple... sometimes the primarily Japanese signs make it hard for me to tell where I am.

I enjoyed the beautiful architecture along with about 50,000 of my closest friends.

After we left the temple we began making our way out of Tokyo.  A combination of the bus being late and the rush hour traffic made for a long trip to our hotel at Lake Kawaguchiko.  The sun was just setting as the Kanto Plains ended rather dramatically in range of mountains.  Unfortunately it was fully dark by the time we got to our hotel, so I didn't get to admire the view, but I made up for that this morning.

The hotel features a Japanese bath, and we were encouraged to go experience the quintessentially Japanese activity.  I made my way down to the baths, and followed the appropriate procedure of disrobing, cleansing myself, and soaking in the tub.  The problem at hand is that I find sitting around, completely nude, in near scalding water, with a bunch of other dudes entirely unpleasant.  Maybe you have to be Japanese?  I don't know.  In any case I lasted about five minutes before I turned tailed and bolted for my hotel room.  Turns out that the girls didn't find it any more comfortable than I did, and they beat me back.

Okay, on to the events of today.  We woke up to a beautiful view of Lake Kawaguchiko.  I can see myself spending a great deal of time in this region of Japan in the future.  It's absolutely stunning.

My photography doesn't do it justice.

Our first stop was the Fujinoeki Earthquake Simulation Centre.  It was a small museum dedicated to the phenomenon of earthquakes, and featured a room that shook to simulate various magnitudes of quake.  I've never really experienced a true earthquake before and I was surprised at how vigorous even a level three quake is.

After the simulations we headed to Shoubuike Pond.  Despite the name it's actually a series of ponds with beautiful crystal-clear waters teaming with fish.  The real feature though is just how close it is to Fuji-san.

About that close.

The water really is beautiful though.

The sign at the very top of this image is probably illegible, but it dares you to immerse your hand in the icy water for 30 seconds, if you can.  In a truly Canadian gesture I politely refrained from scoffing for the duration of the challenge.

Did I mention the view?

This was really exciting for me.  On my last visit to Japan I actually climbed mighty Fuji-san, but since I approached in the night I didn't get to experience the view in the areas around the mountain.  It's particularly striking right now with all the snow still on its highest slopes.  You can even see a section, when viewed from this angle, where there's a clear path zig-zagging up the mountain.  I'm fairly certain that's the path that I took when I made the climb.

I should note for anyone considering a visit to this particular site that it was PACKED with people.  It's apparently a very popular tourist destination.  Despite the absolute crush of people Annie managed to find a really quiet little restaurant specializing in whole fish cooked over charcoal.  It was a really delicious snack.  Also, to Euphy's delight, they served Zaru Soba (cold buckwheat noodles served with a sauce for dipping) which is her new favourite dish.

After communing with the fish we headed for a small farm that normally grows all manner of flowers.

Not exactly the season for that sort of thing.

I, as is my custom, began wandering away from the main group and found a lovely path through the forest.  Unfortunately it quickly dead-ended at the parking lot where our bus was waiting.  There was a fence blocking the way, but it was just a few strings, and had slumped to only about two feet high, so I just stepped over it and started making my way along the fence toward the bus.  Then I noticed this sign:

My Japanese isn't so good, but my hieroglyphics translating abilities suggest that that "string" may have been electrified.  It was a bit scary realizing how close I'd come to rubbing my "boys" against it.  Would have made for an even more entertaining blog post though...

Our next voyage took us through the mountains towards Hakone.  The roads along here are narrow and twisty, and there's a stunning vista around nearly every corner.  It was beautiful just sitting back in the bus and enjoying the views.  I still couldn't help but feel like our chosen vehicle was considerably too long and had two too many wheels...

We made our way up a mountain that has a series of sulphur springs which, fill the air with a delicious aroma.

It actually reminded me a lot of the area outside Aomori that we visited, except WAY more crowded.

One of the famous features of this area is that the locals use the hot spring water to boil eggs, which turns them black.

Deeeeelicious

Actually, once you peel the shell off it looks disappointingly like any other boiled egg.  Legend has it that eating one will extend your life by five years.  Difficult to prove scientifically, but I figured I'd give it a shot.  They taste very much like a normal boiled egg, but with just a hint of that sulphurous taste so rarely sought after by gourmets.

Since the black eggs are the region's claim to fame, all things must be black, including the ice cream.

I've actually had black sesame ice cream, but this was actually a really nice, smooth chocolate.

With the expected effect.

After extending our lives with the power of magic eggs we made our way to our hotel for the night.  This evening we will be staying in Izu, a small coastal city.  The drive here featured more of the magnificent mountain roads that I could drive on for hours.

Our hotel, the Hatoya Hotel, features traditional Japanese rooms, with tatami floors.

Also a really nice view.

Mindy, who adores all things Japanese, was beside herself with glee.  We haven't actually spent any time in the rooms yet, but she has already enthusiastically declared this the best hotel in all of Japan.  The last time I slept on tatami I couldn't walk right for about a week as it's much harder than I'm used to, and I must sleep on my side.  However, our mattress at home is a Chinese-style one (which I'm pretty sure is just a soft cloth over plywood) so I've toughened up over the years.  I'm not too worried about waking up battered and broken tomorrow morning.  Still, wish me luck.

Memories of Ginza

I would like to take a moment at the beginning of this post to acknowledge the immense dedication to this blog displayed by Jay.  He has commented on every post I've made during the trip, even when it wasn't clear that I'd be able to read them.  Having regained access to my Google account I was able to reply to some comments today, and the capchas used by Blogger to ensure that commenters aren't robots are brutal.  At one point I was starting to question my own humanity.  Jay, that must have been deeply irritating to go through on a daily basis, and I applaud your efforts.

Now, how did I start my day today?  Like this:

Milk coffeeeeeeee!  Jay and Graydyn know how happy I am.

Much to my surprise and delight there actually was a coach tour ready for us this morning!  Oddly, our hotel checkout time was 8:00 a.m. which made for an irritating delay since our tour bus wasn't scheduled to leave until 9:00.  Not a big deal though since I had the good people at Lawson Station to provide me with milk coffee.  No morning is truly bad under those circumstances.

It was a nice drive into Tokyo, and the air was so clear that on some points of the highway you could see all the way out to Mt. Fuji.  Quite the change from the perma-fog of Zhuhai.

Our first stop this morning was a mall called Diver City.  According to the P.A. announcement I heard at one point that's actually pronounced "Diversity."

Diver City in all its glory.  Behind it you can make out the Tokyo TV building, which is pretty cool.

Our noble steed.

Diver City is noteworthy as a mall for this:

Few malls these days are guarded by giant robots.  Something needs to change.

To my great delight, the Sakura are in bloom!

Just outside the mall I found this hysterically Japanese display.  The sidewalk was about 1-2cm above the level I was standing on, and hence needed to be painted bright yellow.  These signs were spread along the path to draw your attention to the DEADLY PERIL.

Just to one side of the mall stands The Flame of Liberty.  I'm pretty sure that's actually a missile in case the robot out front gets uppity.

We were given a couple of hours to do as we pleased in the mall, which also included time to grab a bit of lunch.  After that we boarded the bus and headed for the Imperial Palace.  It was pretty cool walking through that area of Tokyo since it was the first place I visited on my trip to Tokyo in 2007.  That trip started this whole blog, and inspired the purchase of the little netbook I'm typing on right now.  It was much hotter during my July visit, but my good friend Kusunoki Masahige is still here today.

Also, just off camera, the vending machines that provided much need lemonade 8 years ago.

A view of the Imperial Palace... nearly as close as they'll let peasants like me get.

Euphy loved the trees in what I guess is the Emperor's front yard.

The temperatures today are much more moderate, but a stop for ice cream still seemed appropriate.

After dropping by the Imperial Palace for a visit we headed into the Ginza district.  This is where I stayed my first few nights in Japan, and it was a lot of fun walking the bustling streets again.  We were turned loose for a few hours, and Euphy and I spent almost the first hour of that time walking around Hakuhinkan Toy Park, an enormous 4-level toy store.  We really enjoyed it there, and Euphy brilliantly kept me from spending all of our Yen on Star Wars toys.  After that we just walked around for a bit, enjoying the scenery.

Had to take a picture of the enormous Ricoh ad with my Pentax camera.  For those not aware, Ricoh bought Pentax awhile ago.

We met back up with Annie and Mindy for dinner in what turned out to be the second organizational snafu by our tour guides.  While we were given leave to go wherever we wanted for dinner it was suggested that we try a particular restaurant specializing in crab.  Annie was quite excited by the prospect, and was devastated when it turned out that they were fully booked.  In recommending the restaurant they hadn't bothered to mention that it's incredibly busy and that we'd be lucky to get in.  It didn't throw me off at all, but Annie was pumped for some crab, and we never really stood a chance.  They would have been much better off just turning us loose to fend for ourselves.  All this and more will be in my upcoming text book "Fundamentals of Running a Tour Group."

Fortunately we found a place doing Sukiyaki and Shabu-shabu (two styles of Japanese Hot Pot) and had a phenomenal meal of sukiyaki with both Kobe beef and Wagyu.  Couldn't really tell the difference side-by-side.  Both awesome.

After dinner we rejoined the group.

The Ginza lights at night.

We're now at our second hotel of the Japanese trip.  It's unclear to me at this point (as most things are) how often we'll be changing hotels, but at this point I think it might be daily as we move around the region.  We're currently stationed in Yokohama in an incredibly tiny hotel room.  I haven't snapped a photo yet, but there's just barely enough room for Euphy and I with our luggage.  Oh well, we're just here to sleep.

So I'm going to wrap things up, finish off my Suntory Highball (canned beverage, harsh, may have just carbonated a can of their whiskey) and call it a night.  I'm sure most of you are just starting your day back home, so have a good one!  I'll check in again tomorrow.

Land of the Rising Ire

So, bit of a long day today, which is normal for any travel day.  We got up at 5 a.m. it order to leave ourselves lots of time to get to the ferry terminal in Macao.  They've got a great system of ferries running between Zhuhai, Macao, and Hong Kong, including ones that stop right at the Hong Kong airport.  This is a great way to get to the airport as you can check your baggage in the Macao ferry terminal and it gets passed right along to your final destination.  Also, once you're in Hong Kong you have a separate set of check-in desks and security stations only accessed by other ferry passengers, which keeps the lines down.

We had a smooth flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo, and despite losing an hour in to the capricious gods of the time zones we still had plenty of day left.  If only we'd got to do something with it.

We're here in Tokyo with a tour group, but the tour doesn't really start until tomorrow morning; we were on our own to get to the hotel and get ourselves situated.  We grabbed a shuttle to the hotel... and they had no record of us.  We spent a great deal of time trying to sort that out, including a call to the tour office which went unanswered.  If, at this point, you're starting to think that we'd been scammed then you and I have something in common.  It was pure fortune that Annie and Euphy's discussions in Cantonese caught the attention of another Chinese-Canadian member of our group who was in the same predicament.  He and his wife have been travelling around Asia for several weeks now as part of one tour group or another, and this was the third time they'd found themselves being directed to the wrong hotel.  Fool me once...

In short, we determined which hotel we were meant to be at and made our way there, but it was about 7 p.m. by the time we got checked into our room.  So much for our afternoon in Narita.  We're certain now that we're in the right place since we were able to meet up with our tour guide who Euphy prevented me from beating to death.  I desperately needed to kick someone's head out from between their ears, and he was RIGHT THERE!  Something about "it's not his fault" was apparently supposed to placate me.  Justice, my friends, has gone un-served.

I'm happy to report that a hot shower and some really, really good sushi have substantially improved my mood.  While I'm not convinced that someone shouldn't be thrashed for what I perceive as trying to pull a fast one on us, I'm resigned to the fact that we're here now, and I may as well make the most of the situation.  As it was a travel day I really didn't take any photos, but I'm now able to post them here, so look for a more thorough documentation of the days to come.  Right now though, I think it's time for bed.  Good night my friends.

Oh Em Gee Photos!

That's right ladies and gentlemen, I'm back in action.  I was able to get on a Facebook chat with my mom and have her read me the verification code from my phone, thus enabling to log in with my Google account.  For the first time on this vacation I'm composing a blog on Blogger's own site instead of via email.  What this means for you, intrepid readers, is that I can finally sate your burning desire for photos.

Now, it's been a long day (more on that later) and one completely devoid of photos.  As such, I'm going to do two posts today.  First, since you've all been so patient, I'm going to put some photos up.  Then I'll make a separate post for today's events.  As I haven't really had the time to do an in-depth review of my (many) photos, this will be a mostly random selection.  I've got a few specific venues that I'd like to revisit in their own dedicated posts, but I'll have to work those in as time allows.  For now:

I have over 700 photos from the China portion of this trip, and this is representative of a fair number of them.  We spent a lot of time just catching up with family, and I love photos like this that show Euphy spending some happy, quality time.  This is her and Mindy with their Nai Nai (paternal grandmother.)

I'd mentioned the construction of this opera house in a previous post.  Looking forward to seeing in completed, but for now it makes for a ghostly picture.

I'd boasted about the Las Vegas levels of a grandeur displayed in the Chimelong hotel that we visited, and just thought I should back that up.

Same place from the outside.

This is Ocean Kingdom, the aquatic theme park that we visited.  That model of a whale shark is very, very far away from where I was standing to take this photo.

An image of the worlds largest piece of acrylic.  Also some fish.

I loved this!  This is at Ocean Kingdom again, in the Manatee tank.  These guys in scuba gear were just wandering around with brooms tidying the place up.  I saw one giving a little scrub to a manatee as well.

This is a restaurant.  The food is prepared somewhere in that building in the background.

I just thought this was pretty.

This little garden was on the roof of our hotel.  It was a pretty spot to just sit and relax.

This is part of the Summer Palace.  That building is where Euphy and I got into costume for some of our wedding photos.

A shot from within the Summer Palace.

Euphy and her friends.  All participants in this photo have drank a lot of tea.

Our lovely room at the Venetian last night.  It was very pretty in there, but they embedded a light in the stairs which I couldn't figure out how to turn off.  I think it was meant as a night light to prevent you tripping in the dark, but I find even a little bit of light very bothersome when I'm trying to sleep.

I thought Jay in particular would get a kick out of this.  This leather box, as the decoration would imply, contain only a small coil of CAT-5 networking cable.  I'm familiar with opulence, but I'm not entirely sure what this is...

I'm not entirely clear on what this is.  Object d'art perhaps, or maybe it serves some other purpose.  Either way, that's as close as I got since it was in the centre of a roundabout, and I didn't feel like running into traffic just to get a close look.

When in Macao, take pictures of birds.

You all know by now how much I love playing with long exposures, so this offering should come as no surprise.  I was pretty happy with the results.

Lastly, here's a random shot of Euphy by the canals in the Venetian.  I just really liked this one.

There you have it folks!  Some random images from my vacation.  I'm going to get right to work on recapping today in a separate post, so I'll talk to you all again very, very soon.