Mt.Fuji – A Bike Trip Round Lake Kawaguchi, originally uploaded by walrus713.

It has been more difficult to update than I had imagined. With only two weeks in Japan, I try to “accomplish” as much as possible during the day for maximum experiences in the smallest amount of time, but this has the inevitable result of a tired body. But enough excuses.

So, I’ve been at Mt.Fuji area from the 28th to today, the 30th (it is now 9:30 in the morning.) The train ride (bullet train, or shinkansen in Jap.) here was absolutely gorgeous, for only after 20 minutes departing from Tokyo, the landscape changes from heavy industry and packed residences to mountainous regions with farm land and quaint villages. As I watched the transition, I didn’t get the sense of a huge contrast of culture from city to countryside. It made me realize that despite having been in a large city, the people, in general, were quite peaceful and relaxed, despite their (probably) busy schedules going to work or school. So, it was a uniformity among the culture that I realized going from city to country…and that is fairly uncommon.

It has been cold and cloudy here for the last couple days and started to rain this morning. Yesterday, I took an incredible bike ride around the lake which I’m on. There are 5 lakes surrounding Mt.Fuji, and I am on a lake to the north of the mountain. Unfortunately THE mountain (of Fuji) has not been visible due to the clouds .You can make out only 1/3 of the bottom. While it’s unfortunate, people usually consider themselves lucky if they get a clear day on which to see it. However, as you see in the photo above, there were plenty of other beautiful mountains (around 1600m) for the eye’s delight. My bike ride led me to see a bunch of small villages which gave me a lot of insight to the culture. I’ll post my writings from my notepad at a later time.

So now I head to Kyoto, which is one of Japan’s most important cities, for it’s one of the few historically significant areas that has been untouched by the bombings of World War II. It contains thousands of temples and shrines. I’m quite excited to see these things in person, but it seems somewhat of an oxymoron that I desire to see these attractions of a religion that believes that desire leads to suffering…hmm… well, I think I would suffer more knowing that the money to get over here would be a waste if I didn’t make the most out of it.

Thank you for the comments so far, those of you that had posted, and I look forward to seeing you soon when I get back.

I arrive in Kyoto this evening, and I hope to post first impressions when I arrive. Arigato gozai-mas!

IMG_5286.JPG, originally uploaded by walrus713.

So, for all of you who have been losing sleep because daninjapan.theeggman.net has not been updated since arrival, I am very sorry; sumimasen. As you might have imagined, I have been quite busy in these past few days.
I meant to post on the 24th, however i had two images I based those posts off of, and was having difficulty getting the size reduced through my blogger so it didn’t mess up my page. Fortunately, www.flickr.com has helped me solve this problem, as you see in the photo above.

Despite my not being responsible with posting, you can accurately infer that as a sign as me getting out into Tokyo and trying to experience everything I can experience.
I don’t want to fill these pages with a focus on, “I saw this, I saw that,” because that is not very interesting. You can look up the famous shrines and temples on any website. While I might talk about the sites a little bit, I think it’ll be much more interesting to talk about my impression of the culture, based off the observations and interactions I’ve had with them. To say the Japanese are a unique culture is almost an understatement because literally everything about the culture is different than any I’ve heard of or experienced. I’ll do my best to explain, but really, visiting Japan is the only way you can truly understand. And, of course, if anyone wants to go to Japan I’d be glad to come (again) with and show them around (albeit they pay cover all of my expenses! )

So, when I arrived I met a lot of awesome people that I’ll tell you about more of later, but i have to mention my first Israeli friend, who we all call Izzy. Izzy introduced me to a bunch of people in the hostel who I ended up befriending and getting to hang out with a good majority of my time in Tokyo. He’s incredibly funny, and enjoys trying Japanese drinks for the first time by adding vodka… This is Izzy:

IMG_5351.JPG, originally uploaded by walrus713.

Haagen-Dazs Machine, originally uploaded by walrus713.

Haagen-Dazs machine

Hey everyone,
I meant to post this 2 weeks ago, but the two pictures I wanted to include in here weren’t properly being resized by wordpress and so I didn’t post at the time, and so this entry was unpublished for a couple weeks. Here it is~

Live from Tokyo~

Here’s a treat for the first image…literally~ This is a haagen-daaz vending machine in the Shinjuku district. The awesome part is that it’s right outside a corner Haagen-Daaz store, so if the store is closed, you can get the ice cream vended to you in a 1-serving size cup. Similar to ATMs in the front of banks. I tried the Green Tea Ice Cream (3600 yen, I believe,) and it tasted pretty good, albeit, it wasn’t as sweet as I would have liked it, but would probably be my American taste buds kicking in.

This will be another short post because i have a big agenda of walking around today (large post tonight,) but I will say that I’ve made 8 friends so far, 5 of them Australian, 1 Israeli, and 3 Swedes. We sang karaoke last night/this morning (more of the latter…hehe) for several hours. I’ll go back again sometime and take pictures in the karaoke place , because it’s an important aspect of modern Japanese entertainment, obviously invented by the Japanese.

Today I will be familiarizing myself with this region (Asakusa) of my hostel, K’s House Tokyo, and trying to really pick up the language on a (now) intimate level so I can feel more comfortable going into some more esoteric establishments.

Arrival was a success! Ok guys, fess up, those of you who thought i’d chicken out…i’m waiting….still waiting…..well, i’ll continue to type while i wait.

I wrote some things in my notebook on the airplane, but I’m too lazy to dig that out right now and transcribe – will add that on my “to do tomorrow” list
haha, a “to do tomorrow” list could be hilarious, considering that whenever you read the list, you’ll always have an extra day to do it…ok, i thought that was funny…anyways

So one word so far. WOW…despite significant reading I did regarding tokyo, i’m in a state of shock. I got to go out a little bit tonight with a friend i made at the hostel here who’s from Israel, and we walked around Shinjuku which is a similar idea to that of the magnificent mile ave. in Chicago, but this would be a complete joke to compare (no offense, chicago, i love you dearly.) Ugh, so many things just in the last 2 hours I could type. But i think a lot of that will wait till tomorrow. But for now, here’s a few things to wet your rice (rice should never be soaked in soy sauce or combined with other dishes, unless it is meant to be):

Toilet in hostel has 12 buttons, a couple of which I know their function:
One sets the temperature of the toilet seat that you sit on
Another activates the man bidet, another the female
Another plays classical music while you drop an exposition or two
Another plays jazz, so you feel all groovy while taking your…poovy (sorry, that didn’t work)
still have yet to find out about the other 8

I tried Haagan Daaz green tea ice cream tonight from a haagan daaz vending machine – will post the picture tomorrow.

What a day
Anyways, small lame post tonight, but big unlame post tomorrow evening – i’m incredibly fatigued right now. Take care, guys