This is Japan (TIJ)

We borrowed this phrase from Chris' friend Matt. Sometimes there are things you can't explain about Japan, so you just have to say TIJ. Brad and I are going to keep this entry as a running post. There are so many interesting things here that are different than in the US but its hard to classify it. So here's all the misc. things we've found interesting/funny/weird. Hopefully you find it as interesting as we do!

Almost every restaurant has their menu made into wax models and displays them outside. This has been our lifesaver for ordering food (that and picture menus).

This is on the window of a pastry shop.

This was on a vending machine advertising Pocari Sweat. Its the Japanese equivalent of Gatorade.

"King Size" slippers at Himeji castle

"I have more exciting!"

Guess who the proud parents are doting over?

Yep.

Outside the monkey enclosure at the zoo

"Children are not our creations but our guests." This is a program that is played on the trains to help people learn English. They've also taught the phrase "Spare the rod, spoil the child".

Hot French fries from a vending machine anyone?

These vending machines are everywhere! I love the hot coffee though!

Tommy Lee Jones advertising some coffee

The bathrooms always stress the importance of washing your hands, but I have yet to experience hot water in any bathrooms and half the bathrooms (including this one) don't have soap, and none of them have paper towels. (Some do have the air blade though...)

The bathrooms here are (for the most part) amazing. A lot of the Western toilets (the traditional Japanese one's are mainly just porcelain bowls in the floor) have heated seats, bidets, water noises that play when you start to pee (to hide the sound of you peeing from your neighbor), sanitizer to clean the toilet seat, deodorizer etc. etc.

Since space is so limited here, the bathrooms are usually just one big shower. The traditional way to bathe is to shower and then soak in the tub. Japanese people do not take a bath to clean themselves. So in a lot of bathrooms you can shower sitting on the toilet and the whole toilet/bath/shower area is one big waterproof room. 

For as advanced as Japanese technology is I'm surprised how many differences there are between here and America. The Japanese make great cars (minus the whole Toyota fiasco thats going on now) but their houses are so drafty! They also don't have central heating or air conditioning. Each room has its own heater that you can control with a remote. Some of them are more advanced than others, but I still prefer central air. Another thing that surprised me is that almost no one has a dryer. People still hang their clothes off the balcony to dry them. Chris lives in a newer apartment so his shower doubles as a dryer. After you finish washing your clothes you just hang it on a clothes line in the shower and it takes about 8 hours for the shower to "cook" and dry your clothes. 

Osaka

Like I said before, Brad and I are trying to make the most out of our JR passes as well as see as much of Japan as possible so we planned a trip to Osaka for a couple of days. This was the weekend for indulging a little bit. We love experiencing the way Japanese people sleep on futons and sit on the floor, but you never realize how good sitting in a chair is until you’re on the floor all the time. So we were really excited about sleeping in a Western style hotel in Osaka.

 Japan has a lot of natural hotsprings which we have been really excited to try out. Here in Osaka there is a 6 story onsen (hot springs) called Spa World with different themes from around the world and a water park. This is not your regular onsen. The best part is that it only cost us 900 yen (about $9) to enjoy it for a full day if we wanted to.  You wouldn’t believe all the amenities that it included!

Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures (every onsen is enjoyed in the nude). But Brad and I had a good time trying to figure out the process of enjoying the onsen (there are different rules, rituals, and orders to bathing etc.). For instance, obviously shoes are not allowed, people are required to shower before going into any of the spa’s, you are supposed to bring a little hand towel with you but you’re not allowed to bring it in the spa and you’re not allowed to put your head under the water. There is even an order to how you’re supposed to bathe before going in the spa! Fortunately I think Brad and I figured it out ok and after enjoying the spa (Brad’s was European style and mine was Asian style) we were able to go up to the top floor to the water park and family spa area for a little while. It was definitely a fun experience! Here's the link if you're interested: http://www.spaworld.co.jp/english/service.html

This is the hotel that is attached to Spa World. Yes, that is a roller coaster!

The next day we traveled to Himeji which has one of the most famous castle’s in Japan. This castle  was also featured in the James Bond film, You Only Live Twice.

I am still not familiar with Japanese history but apparently the dowry of a Princess in the 1600s was used to build the main part of the castle. There were also 3 different areas. Merchants lived on the outermost region of the castle village, the samurai, in the middle, and the lords/upperclass in the middle. 

What the castle looks like now.

They have filled in some of the moat now but the main part of the castle is beautiful. A few years ago they renovated what used to be part of the Samurai village to a garden called Kokoen. The garden was beautiful even in February! Both Brad and I thought that Himeji is definitely a place we would like to return to. If only we could go back in a couple of weeks when the cherry blossoms are out!

The cherry blossoms are starting to come out but I bet in another month the area is going to be beautiful! 

We also got a chance to check out Dotonbori street which is famous for all the lights they have at night as well as the restaurants that are available. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go at night but it was still really fun to see how different it is from any street I had seen before in the US. 

This sign was HUGE! Probably about 50 ft high and 2 stories off the ground.

This was a really tall ride overlooking the street and the river.

Another crazy advertisement.

Tokyo Disney!

The day after Valentine’s Day, Chris and his girlfriend Yoko, invited us to go to Tokyo Disney with them. Brad and I haven’t been to any Disney parks since we were little so we were really excited to go. It’s amazing the effect that Disney has on the culture here. You can pretty much go anywhere and see children and adults alike with something Disney on them, whether it be a keychain, a character doodad on their cellphone (I don’t know how to explain it but pretty much everyone here has a keychain thing with different characters/jewels/symbols hanging off their cell phone), shirts, hats etc. And when you’re in Disney the craziness just intensifies. You can’t help but get caught up in the excitement either! It seems like everyone at Disney had some sort of Disney hat on featuring different characters like the ones that Brad and Chris are wearing here:

On the train after Disney, EVERYBODY had at least one bag.

When we first got into the park we got a fast pass to ride the new Monster’s Inc. ride. This allows us to have a reserved time to go to the ride so we don’t have to wait in line. You can get a fast pass ticket to any ride about every 2 hours…as long as they still have times available. When we got our fast pass to Monsters Inc at 11, our reserved time was already for 7:30! Then we went to check out the Toy Story and Space Mountain ride. Unfortunately it started to rain soon thereafter but besides some of the bigger rides closing down from the rain we still got to do the majority of what we wanted to do. 

Waiting in line in the rain. 

There were different flavored popcorn machines throughout the park. This one was my favorite because I love honey and Pooh is one of my favorite characters! You could also buy a special popcorn buckets to put around your neck in your favorite Disney character design. 

Up (or Grandpa Carl's Flying House, as its known in Japan) is one of our favorite Disney movies. 

Turkey is almost nonexistent in Japan. Yoko said one of the only places she knows of to get it is at Disneyland. So...here's Brad enjoying a turkey leg! :)

 

Brad and I are really excited to try the other Disney park called Disney Sea and to also go back to the Disneyland park when it’s a little warmer out. 

Valentine's Day

In Japan the tradition of Valentine's Day is a lot different than in the US. Here girls will get their crushes/boyfriend/husband etc. chocolate and that is it. If the boys who received chocolate like the girls in return they will give them chocolate back during another holiday that is exactly a month later in March. If they do not like them back then they will give the girl and cookie. There is not a big rush of making a reservation at a nice restaurant, flowers, presents, cards etc.like there is in the US. Don't get me wrong, I love Valentine's Day the way its done in the US but we did it low key this year. Unfortunately Brad and I weren't able to sneak away to get flowers/chocolate so we treated ourselves to a day at the zoo and went out to dinner instead.

Happy "St. Valentine's Day to you". These signs as well as a lot of chocolate were all over the malls and train stations.

A red panda. Unfortunately the Giant Panda Ling Ling, died a little a while ago. 

Have you ever seen a Asiatic lion before?

A Sumatran tiger

This funny gorilla kept the burlap sack on its head the entire time they we were watching them. 

We caught the sea lions at lunch time. 

It was fun seeing some different kinds of animals that you don't see back home. It was kind of sad though because the zoo's biggest attractions was the giant panda and there isn't even a panda at the zoo anymore. The zoo still has a giant stuffed panda that you can take pictures with and plenty of panda souvenirs though... Anyway, we had fun on our little outing.

Hiroshima

Tokyo is definitely a train based city. I would not ever want to drive a car here! Before coming to Japan, Brad and I bought JR passes. JR owns the most train lines in Tokyo, and the pass is only available for tourists and lets you go on an unlimited amount of train rides over a certain period of time for one set price. Since we are able to go anywhere in Japan with these passes for a couple weeks Brad and I are trying to go on a couple bigger trips to make the pass worth it as well as to experience the the Shinkansen (bullet train).

The Shinkansen that Brad and I rode on.

And let me tell you...the Shinkansen is the way to travel! The trains always run on time, you never have to be there way before it leaves (we got there less than 10 minutes before it left), and you have more than twice the leg room that an airplane has. Brad and I left last Wednesday and got into the hostel that we stayed at pretty late. We were starving so we pretty much just dropped our bags off and then went to find a place to eat. Never thought we would do this but the Hawaiian place that we tried specialized in Spam (not joking. no we didn't know this when we went in the restaurant). So Brad had his first (and hopefully last) Spam burger. I had some nice noodles with Spam...it was easy to pick out the Spam.  

The Japanese style room we stayed in. The futon can be folded up and stored in the closet to make more space for living in during the day. 

Anyway, the next day we woke up early and planned on spending the day walking around Hiroshima seeing everything we wanted to, but it decided to rain. Hard. We went to the Peace Memorial Museum which was a really good experience. It definitely had an anti-nuclear weapon message, but was very informational and objective. The beginning of the museum talked about events leading up to the bombing, then they showed pictures of before and after, had a couple of exhibits on how nuclear power works, and then had artifacts from victims, and some of the after effects. I thought it was very well done, and very moving.

Diorama of what Hiroshima looked like before the atomic bomb was dropped. 

 

Diorama of what Hiroshima looked like after the bomb was dropped from the same angle. 

This was a pocket watch that a man had with him on August 6th. The watch stopped working at 8:15 which is when the bomb hit. 

A shirt that a student was wearing when the bomb hit.

Me with some artifacts that were collected after the bomb hit. 

The only known picture taken the day of the bombing. "I fought with myself for over 30 minutes before I could take the first picture. After taking the first, I grew strangely calm and wanted to get closer. I took about ten steps forward and tried to snap another, but the scenes I saw were so gruesome my viewfinder clouded with tears." -Yoshito Matsushige

View of part of the museum. It took us 4 hours to walk through the whole thing.

 

Paper crane's folded by Sadako.

Paper crane's folded by children all over the world. They are replaced with new ones every year at the peace festival held on August 6th.

The A-Bomb Dome

The day after we visited the museum we traveled to Miyajima to see the famous floating gate before heading back to Tokyo. The gate or torii is part of the Itsukushima Shrine and is one of the most popular places to visit in Japan. The shrine is located on an island off of Hiroshima so we had to take a ferry to access it. 

View of the torii with the shrine in the background from the ferry. 

There were "semi-tame" deer all over the island. This is me "yelling" at the deer. (not really!)

Brad with the deer.

The deer eating a pamphlet somebody had in their pocket, thinking it was food. I guess people have been known to get mobbed by the deer if they discover you have food. 

A pagoda that was near the shrine. 

Brad and I had a lot of fun on our little excursion and hope to make at least one more bigger trip while we still have our passes. We'll keep you posted! Let us know if you have any more questions about the trip! Its hard to fit it all in one little space...