A week in Tokyo

Japan has always occupied a parking spot in the curiosity section of my brain.  I have snippets of memories from when I've lived and visited the Land of the Rising Sun before but they are incomplete snapshots of what I am sure were incredible experiences.

I've been to Japan twice in my life.  The first, was when I was four and my father was studying at Yokohama university.  During our year there, I picked up on Japanese pretty quickly and it was a shame that I lost it all when I immigrated to Canada and English quickly trumped both of my previous languages.  That was also the first time I went to a Disneyland, met Mickey Mouse and bought his alarm clock, of which still functions to this day (a clear testament to Japanese engineering).  The second was back in 2005.  At that point, I was still a pissy little shit when it came to dealing with my dad after a decade of having a shaky father-son relationship.  He treated me, my stepmother and aunt to a trip to Tokyo and Ito, of which I sulked most of the way through because I was with my father.  When I look back on that trip now, I wince at how I ruined the trip for myself and likely for those who went with me.  This also shows that when you're 22, you still are not mature enough to act like an adult sometimes.

So when my uncle offered me the chance to go with him to Tokyo last week to help him out with some business he had to do there at the Do-It-Yourself Trade Show in Chiba (just east of Tokyo), I didn't hesitate to say yes.  With only a few days of commitment to the trade show, the rest of the time, I had to myself to wander the streets of Tokyo.

Just when I think I haven't gotten enough of temples and palaces, there's always room for more.  Senso-ji and the Meiji Temple were both on my must see list in Tokyo.  Both are Old World Japan monuments nestled in the hearts of Tokyo's busy neighbourhoods of Asakusa and Harajuku, respectively.

Senso-Ji Temple.

I've been to Asakusa before on the trip back in 2005 - a charming little district with the Senso-ji sheltered by the Kaminarimon Gate and a long path of small souvenir and snack shops leading up to the temple.  These tiny stores sell anything from cell phone cases to those annoying dangly cartoon characters that hang off said cell phone cases and one of the weirdest items, and ear wax picker.  The food is fantastic - mochi cakes and waffle biscuits are all made to take the form or the large lanterns that hang from the gates leading to the temple.

The temple is a hive of activity.  People stand in front of the large incense burner and wave the smoke that billows out of the furnace all over their body for good luck.  There are fortune cabinets all around the exterior and interior of the temple.  Give the metal tin a good shake and a stick with a number comes out.  That number matches a cabinet holding your fortune.  As with all fortunes, the user should really try not to buy into every word - I will apparently have good fortune at my current job and love life...neither of which I have at the moment.

Shake the metal tin, get your fortune stick
and get your fortune out of the
matching drawer.

The Meiji temple is a slightly different experience from the hustle and bustle of Asakusa.  This temple is surrounded by an expansive park with walkways the size of boulevards and trees as tall as apartment buildings.  On a sunny afternoon, it is the perfect escape from the blazing fireball in the sky.  (In fact, the weather during the week I was in Tokyo was so hot, I thought I was somewhere in the tropics.  It truly lived up to the promise of being the Land of the Rising Sun.)

I had the fortune of listening in on a performance of the Tyko drummer in the temple - with each strike of the large bat (I swear it was larger than a baseball bat) on the vat sized drum, the boom reverberated in your organs as it spread out across the courtyard and out into the gardens.  I wish I could share with you some photos and video of the event, but I was quickly stopped by a security guard to let me know that no pictures were allowed - quite the surprise in a land where everyone has their camera on them at all times.

Moving away from a taste of the old world to a completely new world attraction, I headed to the SkyTree communications tower to take a look at the tallest structure in Japan and the second tallest in the world - opened just in May of this year.  From the base, it looks like a microphone for Godzilla to sing karaoke into.  As much as I wanted to go up to the top to look at the skyline, there was an hour and 20 minute wait for it as a shipment of mainland Chinese tourists got there before we did.  I shook my fist in anger and decided to save it for another trip.

The Skytree.

I ended my adventures around Tokyo in the shopping district Ginza.  On the weekends, the street turns into a pedestrian thoroughfare, so it's neat to walk down one of the busiest streets in Asia or sit on one of the many tables and chairs set out for tired shoppers.  Ginza is the Land of the Rising Department Stores and luxury goods as far as the eye can see.  However, due to the recession, some mainstream brands have entered including the ever popular UniQlo which takes up a 12 story retail environment that made me slap down some cash when I really shouldn't have.

Finally, a trip to Tokyo is not complete without some delicious Japanese food.  I really just gorged myself on noodles and sushi the entire time I was there.  I did make it to some restaurants, but nothing beat the $8 - $10 CDN you can spend and get a feast at the local supermarket.

All this from the supermarket for $8 Canadian.  That's some good eatin'.

So with all of these fun experiences, I plan on heading back to Tokyo in December with my friends Shelley, Marc and Jean to check out the nightlife the city has to offer...and also to get up early the next morning to see what the world famous fish market is like :D.

One bite at a time - Eating my way through Europe

There's a scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, where Julia Robert's character, Liz, makes a simple Italian meal for herself and plants herself on the floor of her Roman flat, where she spends an entire afternoon just savouring each bite of her food.  This scene is significant to me for two reasons - the first, is that I just finished reading the book on my European travels (Sidebar: did anyone else find it really hard to get through the India part of the book?); and the second is that I had several of these EAT moments in Europe.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie, but I can see how people were pissed that so much was missing from the book.  Definitely a rental.

From my acorn-fed jamon in Barcelona to the lasagna I had in Markaska, Croatia, to the (several) cheese and wine combos in Paris, I've gained two new friends - I've named my lovehandles "Carbs" and "Consequences."  (Those "C" twins are so evil.)

I stare at this photo when I'm hungry.  It's the way of encouraging myself to write a lot of award winning books, gain the income to hire the chef that made this award winning lasagna, and hire a trainer to work off the weight I'll gain from eating this for every meal, everyday.

I've had a great time in Europe so far - besides the excellent food, I've experienced so much in the past five weeks that have opened my eyes to the fact that I am still as not as well traveled as I hope to be, that there are still things I need to work (cough...communicating my feelings...cough) and that I can really get used to this life of just wandering from place to place and not doing anything.  Now if I can only find a way of making income out of doing nothing...


Traveling has also given me a couple of story ideas to tinker with and hopefully that will result in the income that will allow me to travel some more, which will result in more story ideas and more income...you see what I'm getting at here?  Sigh, it is hard not to get ahead of yourself when you have this much time on your hands to just dream.  (Insert the Bob Sinclair Love Generation song from the Lotto Max commercials here as I dream about my next vacation.)


There are several highlights of this trip (besides the food - wait, I said this already) that I can't wait to start blogging about in my following entries - they include:


- celebrating Spain's Eurocup win in Barcelona on Las Ramblas and watching people drunkenly climb the lamp posts and praying they didn't fall to their deaths, 
- meeting a seminary student on the train from Zagreb to Split, Croatia and talking to him about everything from politics to religion to Croatian reality TV for about four hours as our train was delayed by a fire on the track (no, not dangerous at all),
- waking up every morning to the sound of the Adriatic waves splash against our boat and then jumping into the clear blue waters after breakfast on my Split - Dubrovnik cruise,

Life is hard when you have to jump off a boat everyday.

- the most random Sunday I've ever experienced which included a Tim Burton-esque circus exhibit, followed by running into a random Brazilian drum band and random carnival rides that made my friend Lindsay and I sick.


Each place I've visited in the last five weeks have left quite the impression.  Portugal was a friendly destination where surprisingly everyone spoke English with you, because they are probably tired of foreigners butchering Portuguese or speaking to them in Spanish.  Spain was incredibly hot and a great place to meet interesting characters on our Trafalgar tour - including some older Aussies and New Zealanders who insisted that the Spanish speak English.  Croatia was relaxing after three weeks of bus tours and an eclectic mix of young Australians - there were only Aussies on this part of my travels, I was quite the minority as an Asian Canadian (or Canasian).  And well, Paris, it was all about living the life of a Parisien, so much so that I was even getting annoyed with the tourists and saying my "Pardon!"s with an annoyance that would make any local proud.


What makes life so great at the moment is that my European adventures are not over.  There's still the London Olympics and Scotland and all of its foggy glory left to experience!  


It's not hard to keep saying to myself - fuck, I'm so glad I decided to take this break.