03/30 - Nagoya

Today was a relatively calm day in nagoya. The weather was rainy, so that wasn't too fun. we got in a settled at around noon and dima went off on his own. Keegan and I made our way to the Toyota industry and technology museum and tried to take a
train there, only to find out no trains went there. Of course we found that out after stepping into a train. After a 30 minute detour we were back where we started.

we walked to the museum, which was actually a pretty neat museum. Toyota has it roots in the textile industry and had a large section based on that, with many interactive displays, which was pretty cool.


the car section talked about how toyota cars started and had information about the research towards metals, which was neat. there were replicas of the first toyotas, demonstrations on metal forging, casting and stamping and many interactive displays ranging from the engine, transmission, all the way down to the glass and bumpers. It was very in depth and really neat to see. The only negative was we wanted to make a small model car, but they only get junior high kids do it.

There was a technology land where we played in a wind tunnel and hovercraft and some other sciecey thing, but the musuem closed at 5 and we had to leave. we had planned to take a look at nagoya castle but spent too much time in the musuem.


we walked over to midland towers next to go to the observation deck and meet up with dima. Unfortuantely, it started rains adn the observation deck is open air, so we got pretty wet. The view was preety cool, with the nicest being twisty building and the jr towers. We started till dark and keegan and i found a unagi restaurat.

The restaurant specialized in eel, which is a nagoya specialty. There was an instruction guide on how to eat, which was interesting. The first step is eat eel and rice. the 2nd step is to added some spring onions and eat some. the final step is to add some broth. I prefered eating it plains but the broth was neat too.

after the eel keegan and i went looking for some other specialities, a flat noodle and miso udon. Unfortuanately, noodle restaurants closed early, as they are primarily lunch, so we found nothing. We went to th convieniance store and bought some ice cream bars and sake instead.

The sake was not back, similar to rice wine and the bars were chocolate and milk tea flavored, which was good. on tv they were showing some eating contest with was crazy. The women ate like 60 plates of tampura, 50 plates of udon, 30 plates of steak...ect.

03/29 - Kobe

Today we went to Kobe and stayed in a hotel, which was a nice change
from hostels. The first stop in Kobe was the disaster reduction and
human renovation institution museum, which were two totally different
museums. The disaster reduction museum was about the 1995 earthquake
and how Kobe recovered. It started off with a movie simulating the
earthquake from various points in Kobe and even simulated the floor
shaking. Afterwards you walked through a recreation of the streets
after an earthquake, which was really neat. As we walked through, a
guide came and was explaining everything to us with was very useful.
There was also this cool touch screen map, like google earth, that
showed danger regions for tusnamis. We were shown models on how
buildings have changed to be earthquake resistant, the coolest of
which is building the structure on a floating platform on rollers.

After we were done with the earthquake museum we went to the connected
museum, which was weird. I think the overall theme was to appreciate
life and had movies to calm you down and displays about the circle or
life. We played this weird drum game where you had to hit theme
sensors to the beat of the music.

The next stop was the maiko prominade under Akishi kaikyo bridge which
was an tunnel thing under the bridge, which is also the worlds longest
suspension bridge. It was pretty neat and a different view of the
bridge.

We then went to city hall to go to the observation deck. Kobe is
pretty big but we went during the day so it wasn't as pretty.

Afterwards we went to eat dinner at a buffet restaurant. The best
stuff they had were little cubes of Kobe beef so I ate a bunch of
that. We were only allowed to eat for 90 minutes which we used in its
entirety. That probably wasn't a good idea as I felt really full
afterwards.

Dima and I made a quick stop at meriken park to see the earth quake
memorial and take pictures of the port tower, maritime museum, and the
oriental hotel. Near the park was a huge double decker highway which
seemed pretty dangerous to have in an earthquake zone.

On our way back we got a bit lost but a local guy walked with us back
to the jr line.

03/28 Toyota-Kyoto

Today we went on a factory tour of Toyota factory in Toyota city. It
was a little bit of an adventure getting to place and we had take a
private train to get to the city. On one of the trains, we asked a passenger if it stopped at a particular stop, which they said yes. a couple minutes later, she gave us a piece of paper she wrote with all the stop names in romanji and kanji. Then this business man took the paper and wrote in the times it would stop there. They were really nice and totally unexpected. We also walked through the
restricted toyota factory area to reach the meeting point in the
exhibition hall, which we didn't realize until later.

The exhibition hall had a showroom containing the newest models, both
toyota and lexis, as well and displayed for safety, environment and
production.

We started our tour at 11 and went to the welding factory and
assembly. Our guide was very cute, which was nice. In the welding
plant we saw 8 different models being made, and learned about the
process. Toyota only makes enough cars to cover orders to reduce usage
of materials and have very little inventory storage. The spot welding
spot was very cool with 4 robotic arms welding various points of the
car body. Another neat thing about the building was it had solar
collectors to redirect sunlight of the interior lighting. Also, the
welding sparks/spladder is collected and recycled.

In the assembly factory, the parts all come together. Unlike the
welding factory, the assembly factory consisted of primarily human
worked. The doors are the last thing to be assembled, to give more
room for the interior installations, which was neat.

Back at the exhibition hall they demonstrated the Partner Robot and i-
unit. The partner robot was a robot with artificial lungs and lips and
could play the trumpet, which was cool. The i-unit was a personal
vehicle which color transform, was ultra mobile and electric powered.
They did a demonstration driving around and looked neat.

At the hall a English teacher and her students used us to practice
English and asked us ours names, home country and favorite Japanese
food. I used my iPod sketch function to write my name. It was pretty
cute.

Some other interesting things i learned during the tour, the company founder is toyoda but he named the company toyota because to write toyoda takes 10 stokes, and only 8 for toyota, 8 being a lucky number in asian countries. also, the town was originally called korowmo town, renamed to toyota in 1959 because of the factories in the region.

When we were walking back to the train station, we took the same route back but were stopped by security asking for ID this time, which we explained to them we were tourists. It was kind of funny.

when we got back into Kyoto, Dima did some shoppig and then went back to the hostel while Keegan and I went to find food. We walked down some alleys and found a small noodle house. The inside was a little sketchy looking but the food was really good. We had nabeyaki, a udon soup with a bunch of narutos, shrimp and chicken, it was really good and all prepared fresh.

Back at the hostel we talked and drank with some of the other tourists and then called it a night.

03/27 Kyoto

Today we biked around Kyoto, a trip that lasted about 12 hours and
covered about 40 km.

After a quick trip to Nijo castle we rode to daitokuji temple, which
was a large complex with many shrines. From here we went to kinkakuji
temple or the golden pavillion. This was a 3 story building covered in
gold leaf. The first floor was like a palace, the second in a samurai
style, and the top like a zen temple. On the roof was a phoenix.
Unfortuately we couldn't go inside but it was very beautiful. Also,
the ticket for entry looks like anti-spirit paper in animes.

The next stop was Ryoanji temple, famous for the rock garden. The
garden consisted of 15 rocks and white gravel and is said to invoke
meditation. It was pretty simple and I guess your suppose to ponder
lives misteries. The temple also had a unique tsukubai, water basin of
stone. It has the inscription "I learn only to be content" meaning It
is more important to be spiritually rich then materially rich.

After a bunch more biking we stopped by ninnaji temple and tenryu-ji
temple. I had some cold soba for lunch which was pretty good. biked
back to the city and stopped by by the imperial palace park just
before sunset. In the park was a large fully bloomed sakura, which was
pretty.

As it got dark, we headed to the train station to get information on
tomorrow's trip and to check out the observation deck. The train
station was pretty cool and have to go up to the 11 floor to get to
the top, but Kyoto doesn't have many tall buildings so there was not
much to see. The tallest building, Kyoto tower could not be seen as it
was on the other side. The train station also had a sky walk over the
station which was neat. For dinner dima had a big $12 burger
consisting of 2 patties, bacon, ham, and an egg. I wanted 1 also but
they ran out of patties. I had an ELT, egg lettuce tomato, which was
pretty good. They had to cut off the crusts of the bread to toast it,
but gave them to you still since you paid for it, kinds neat.

Biking was pretty fun, considering I haven't rode a bike in about 5
years. I thought I was going to wipe out bad considering the last 2
times I rode a bike I wiped out and broke the bikes but everything
worked out. I guess its true you never forget how to ride a bike. It
was also fun weaving in and out of traffic, both people and cars.
Also, you can ride of roads and sidewalks, which made the trip faster.
The only downside is it feels like my butt is bruised from all the
riding.

03/26 Kyoto

The first thing I noticed about Kyoto is the train station is really
neat. There is an observation deck and sky walk at the top but we
didn't explore yet. The other general thing about Kyoto is there are a
million shrines and temples and seeing the sites require a log of
walking.

After dropping off our bags we went to grab some food. I grabbed some
rice and curry which was really good.

It took about an hour to reach our first destination, kiyomizudera, a
large temple in the mountains famous for its pure spring water, said
to have healing powers, and love stones. If you could walk from one
stone to the other without looking you would find love sooner then
later. In the markets they had a special creampuff called kiyomizuzaka
yatuhashi syu with sakura cream. We also had some tamba beef buns.

We next tried to get to the silver pavillion, a shrine at the north
end of the city and ran into some other sites along the way.

The first was korai-ji temple and higashi otani mausoleum. After a
little more walking we reached maruyama park, which was nice with
sakuras and water. At the park there was a street performer so was
doing juggling and magic who was pretty good and got a large crowd to
watch.

After some more walking we passed konkai-komyoji temple and a mountain
with the character "big" printed on it before arriving at the silver
pavillion. Unfortunately, the temple was closed as it had taken around
5-6 hours to walk there. Near the temple was a small shrine with many
lit up lanterns whiched looked very nice at night.

For our walk back we wanted to take a look a the district Gion, the
geisha district. It rained for most of our walk back which wasn't
nice. After about an hour to two we reach Gion but all the geishas
were already inside the restaurants working.

We found a ramen and gioza shop for dinner before heading back. It was
a long day of walking, around 18 km, but probably the best way to see
kyoto as shrines are everywhere.

03/25 Osaka

We started the day off by going to Osaka Castle and the surrounding
park. Like in Nara, the sakura tree were beginning to blossom and the
skies were blue. The castle only resembled a castle on the outside and
contained a museum and observation floor inside. The history of the
castle was quite interest since I don't know much Japanese histoy and
focused on the man we unified japan and his family's fall from power
one generation later.


After the castle we headed over to Osaka Bay to take a look around
there. The first island in the bay was sort of a ghost town but we found a
free ferry to get to another island. This area was Tempozan and had
some large ferris wheel, which we got on. The view was pretty cool and
seeing all the overpasses in Osaka was neat. We walked around the
market there for a bit and found some awesome engrish shirts but they
were expensive.

We headed back to Dotonbori street for dinner and went to a place to try fugu (puffer fish). It was a tad pricy, so no one else had it but me. The first course was thinly cut sashimi. The fish was fairly chewy and had the texture of a mushroom. The taste was not very store either, also similar to a mushroom. After a while, your tongue gets a slight tingly sensation, but other then that, nothing much happens. The meal also came with fugu deep fried, which made it lose the tingly property, and in raw chunks for nabe (hot pot). When cooked in the hot pot, it became over cooked very fast, resulting in a tough fish. Overall, the sashimi was the best and was something interesting to try, but not worth it to try often.

After dinner, we found a manga store that had a bunch of Full Metal Panic manga, which i picked up. Hopefully i can find the whole series.

Tomorrow we head over to Kyoto for a couple days and get a tour of a toyota factory soon, so should be interesting.

03/24 Nara/Osaka

The day started with a trip to Nara, a city and hour from Osaka famousfor shrines and temples. I had to pick up some pocky to feed the deerand I was set to go. Once in Nara, we made our way to Nara Park, wherethe famous shrines are. Along the way we found a MOS burger, a Japanese burger joint, similiar to the one they show in Prince ofTennis all the time. I tried the spicy MOS burger which was prettygood and assembled nicely, unlike the squished stuff from Canadian fastfood places.

The first thing we say was the 5 story pagoda, a large tower. Aftersome pictures we emcountered the first of many deer "shika". Nara Shikamaru, of naruto fame makes a lot of sense now. I feed the deerpocky and leaves which was pretty cool, the deer are so friendly.After a while of playing with the deer we eventually made our way tokasuga shrine, a large Shinto shrine. We decided to not enter and justwalked around, taking pictures as we went.

After bumping into random shrines all over we got to the big one,todaiji temple. The temple is huge and is the largest wooden structurein the world. The original temple was 66% larger but it was destroyedby fire twice. Inside the temple is a varicana Buddha. The length ofthe head alone is 5 meters. It was very interesting and huge!!!

The other cool thing about Nara Park was the Sakuras were beginning to bloom, making the park very pretty. They ranged from white to various shades of pink. Hopefully by the time we get to Kyoto the sakuras around the temples will be in full bloom.

After leaving the shrines we had some takoyaki, and pasteries beforereturning back to Osaka.

In Osaka we first went to the area around the second downtown ( yesOsaka has 2 downtowns) and spent some time in yodobashi camera, alarge electronics store. I really want to buy an ultra mobile pc,maybe in Tokyo. I also saw the macbook air for the first time but Ilike the lenovo x300 more. Also, the cellphones they have here arecrazy unfortunately they don't work in Canada (especially on Rogers).

The next location was the Shin-Umeda City building's floating gardenobservatory. It was a platform suspended between 2 towers, 40 storiesin the air and had a 360 degree view of the city. Osaka looks amazingfrom there at night. After taking a bunch of pictures we headed outfor some food. We found some kushikatsu style food near our hotel,which is breaded and deep fried stuff. We randomly picked chicken,pork, sausage, meatballs, peppers, fish, scallop, mushroom, andcheese. It was good and cheap. We also picked some random street foodwhich was kelp, octopus, egg, and fish cakes stewing in soup.

03/23 Osaka

Today we finally checked into a hostel with internet so i can finally start writting. I was told Osaka was a good food city and it hasn't disappointed yet. We have 3 days here, so we decided to just wander around for the first day. The first thing we did was stop by a noodle store and picked up some Tsukimi Soba, buckwheat noodles with a raw egg, for lunch. It was pretty good and only 290. Afterwards we spotted a takoyaki stand, the first of many. These were much better then anything back home, and extremely hot. I popped one in my mouth and pretty much burned my entire mouth, but it was so good. After various other snacks, we found ourselves at Shitennoji Temple. The neat thing was there was a festival going on as well, which made the place very lively. After some overservation, we figured out it was the day for locals to be blessed by the monks. The other good thing, was all the food. Here we had okonomiyaki (cabbage pancake), an egg/batter crepe, and taiyaki (fish shaped cake seen often in anime). Everything was very good, and we felt lucky to find the taiyaki as they only seem to be found during festivals. Also, the okonomiyaki was much better then from hiroshima.

After exploring all the temples and shrines in the area we kept walking and found many more shrines, the biggest of which was Isshinji Temple. They were doing the blessing ceremonies here a well. I was a little disappointed in the lack of kimmonos but i'm sure i'll see more in kyoto.

After more walking we stumbled into Den Den Town, which is Osaka's Akiba. It was pretty neat being surrounded in Otaku culture with the abundance of models and figurines. I was able to find some mini food for steph here.

After more stumbling, we walking into Bic Camera, a huge electronics store. I am really tempted to by a small travel laptop here, but i will wait till tokyo to see what my funds are like. One neat thing they had was a 3d tv, which while interesting , seemed inpractical. The vast amount of selection is crazy with 500 different mice, and hundreds of different laptops, cameras, and tv.

After more walking, we hit Dotonbori street, a huge street focused on food. We visited some landmarks here, such as the giant robotic crab (kani doraku crab) infront of the crab restaurant Kani Doraku. It was too expensive to eat there. There is also a large 8 floor building, Kuidaore, with each floor being a restaurant featuring a different type of food. we also didn't eat here. Instead, we ate more takoyaki, okonomiyaki negimayo and ramen from Kinryu Ramen, a popular place. You ordered from a vending machine, which spit out a ticket and then you exchanged it for your meal. it was pretty good. after some more wandering, we found the Glico man sign, a famous neon sign for the Glico candy company.

Tired from a long day of walking, and planning to go to Nara tomorrow, we headed back. Of note, we found a lot of Fugu restaurants and will try some before we leave. hope it's not deadly.

Blog is back

Hi Everyone,

I have been writting on my ipod as i have travelled but the lack of wifi has prevented me from uploading it, but i finally have something up. I will try to get pictures up later. Enjoy

03/22 Hiroshima

The day started early by catching a train to Hiroshima. The firsttrain was soldout but we were able to find seating on the walkontrain. We transfered trains at Hakata ANC bought some buns from thebakery at the station. After checking into our hostel we walked overto the peacepark and atomic bomb mesuem. The centerpiece of the parkwas the remains of the government building and the cenotaph. Afterwalking through the park and through the victim memorial we enteredthe photography exhibit in the atomic bomb exhibit. The exhibitdisplayed photographs 2 months and 2 years after the bombing atHiroshima. The A-bomb museum had information on the events leading upto the pacific war, the bombing, the aftermath, and the recovery. Itwas a thought-provoking exhibit similar to my travels to Auchiwitz.One of the sadder stories was Sadako Sasaki. She was a little girlthat got lukemeia and started making paper cranes in the belief thatif she made 1000 cranes she would be granted a wish and live. Afterthe peace park we went to take a look at Hiroshima castle. After a fewpictures we headed to hondori street, an outdoor market. I found amanga store there and bought an issue of shonen jump for ¥240. Iwanted to buy all of full metal panic but they didn't have it all. Wewent to a random place for dinner and ordered okonomiyaki, pizza,tofu, and a chicken and egg stirfry. The okonomiyaki wasn't very goodas it was all batter, hopefully they are better in Osaka. The tofu wasin evaporated milk but did not have much taste. Surprisingly the pizzawas pretty good and different. It had chicken, spinich, cheese,mustard, and tobasco sauce. The beer was also pretty good. Afterdinner we went back to the peace park for some night shots beforechecking out our hostel. It was pretty cool and ryokan like withtatami mats and futons to sleep on.

03/21 Nagasaki

We arrive at kagoshima at 9:35 and quickly looked for a taxi, as ourtrain was leaving fairly soon and we needed to activate our trainpass. We didn't have time to do much at Kagoshima but did get to seeSakurajima, one of Japan's most active volcanos. A quick"Kagoshimachuo eki onegai shimasu" later and we were off. Aftergetting our railpasses we headed to our first train. To get toNagasaki, we needed to take 3 trains. Keegan fell in love with thefirst train attendant but it was not meant to be as we switched trainsquickly. The train attendant on the next train didn't do it forkeegan. Between the 2nd and last trains we found a noodle shop on theplatform so we gave it a try. We ordered udon with minced chicken for¥290. The last train brought us from Tosu to Nagasaki, which wearrived at 2:50. Our hostel was very close to the trainstation soafter a quick stop we were off to the Nagasaki Peace Park.

In the park was the "Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for theAtomic Bomb Victims". The central theme was water as after the bombingsurvivors flocked to the area in search of water at the springs. Manypeople dies at the springs from the radiation. The central hall has 12pilar of light to stmbolize peace and a giant registry has the recordof all casualities.

Afterwards we headed to the centrl peace park where many statues were.Dima did his usual girl watching there. While leaving the peace parkwe found a bakery that had castellas, a portugese pastery.

The next place we went to was dejima, which was a man made island forthe Dutch settlers. Near there was a market were we had some streetfood called inohoyaki which was like a pancake sandwich with Japanesemayo and veggies and meat. The specticle bridges, cemetery/shine, andkofukuji temple were also checked out. For dinner we went to a randomplace and pointed at random items. Dima doesn't like that kind ofeating but it was 2 against 1. We had tempura, seaweed, fried fishpaste, lotus root and dima had fried chicken. Our hostel closed earlyso we had to go back soon. At the hostel we just chilled on the commonroom talking to the other travellers.

03/20 Ferry to Kagoshima

Today we boarded the ferry to go to Kagoshima. We woke up at 5 am tocatch our ferry. We left the hostel at 5:45 and got to the terminaljust before the 6:30 boarding time. Upon leaving Naha we made a briefstop at (blank) and (blank). Our "room" consisted of a large room withmats , blankets and pillows for about 70 people. There is a restuarent(which is open sparsely) a store and of course vending machines. Theride was very rocky, good thing i don't get seasick. Dima on theotherhand does and felt like death. Keegan also felt the affects ofthe sea but was able to cope with it by listening to music/Japaneselessons and sleeping.
After getting some medicine and sleeping it off Dima was ok. For lunchI prepared some ramen and spam with some okinawan beer. Dinner wasvery improvised and consisted of instant curry mixed and rice fromrice balls mixed in my ramen bowl. Most of the trip was fairlyuneventful as there is not much to do on the boat. Keegan and Dimaslept lots while I blogged the last couple days on my iPod touch. I'mgetting pretty good at typing on it now. The long break also gave me achance to backup photos and reencode videos to divx to save space. Ontv we were able to watch some sumo action as well as go. Dima and I upearly to check out the sunrise, which was pretty nice, but the roughseas made it difficult to take a good video. In the morning a littlekid called me a Baka for eating my seaweed like a brontosaurus.

03/19 Naha Okinawa

Today we decided to explore the north park of Okinawa. After slowlydriving up north via local roads we found the toll expressway and offwe went. The toll was ¥800 but probably saved us 2 hours. The firststop was the Okinawa churaumi aquarium. The highlight here was agigantic tank which had 3 whale sharks. We went on a tour were wecould see above the aquarium which was pretty neat. We proceeded todrive up north to the northern most tip of Okinawa called hedo misaki.Along the way, the scenery was amazing with beaches, blue water and the sky starting to clear up. Medo misaki had large cliffs and crashingwaves, it was very nice but also very windy. We decided to drive backdown to Naha along the scenic/free road. This allowed up to enter arandom hotel and use their beach. The water wasn't too cold so it wasswimmable. I only wadded in but keegan went all out. We had to returnthe car by 630 which came down to the wire due to traffic. We returnedthe car just in the nick of time. We decided to head back to the mainstreet for dinner. We found a place that had taco rice and also hadsome okinawa soba. Taco rice is rice, lettuce, salsa and cheese in aKorean iron bowl, sorts like a Mexican bim-be-bop. After walking themain street for a little longer we retreated to the hostel to get somerest.

03/18 Naha Okinawa

The first thing we needed to do today was get a car. After gettingsomeone to call we were able to get a car which was a small Mitsubishicolt. It took Dima some time to get used to driving on the left sideof the road, and especially the switching of the blinker/wiper. Wequickly made a stop at the ferry terminal to get tickets and were onour way.
Our first stop was the former japanese navy headquarters shelter. Itwas a series of underground tunnels and chambers. After a quick stopfor lunch (rice balls, fried potato and ninja popcorn) we drove to ournext stop, Okinawa world cave park. At this point it was raining veryhard but we headed underground so it was ok. The cave system was veryinteresting with the highlight being this massive stalagmite. Also inOkinawa world was a glass blowing demonstration, rock sugar making,rattlesnake awamori and druming. We also got fakes drivers licencesfor kids. The next stop was the peace memorial park and cornerstone ofpeace. The was memorial to the war dead with soldier's names inscribedin walls. Talking to the japanese travellers later we asked if theyhad negative feelings towards americans due to the war and the a-bombsand thought their response was very interesting. They admitted thattheir government at that time was bad and admitted fault. I thoughtthis was interesting and much different then in Germany where you gotmore of a sense that the people were not open to talking about it andin a way tried to hide it.

On our way back we saw on our gps a beach so we went to check it out.What we found was an abandoned restuarent and beach. It was prettyspooky. We found a supermarket which we went to buy food for the ferrytrip and picked up stuff to eat for dinner. I got a sashimi platterfor ¥680. The grocery store had 1song on loop which got prettyannoying. Along the drive we came across the himeyuri monument whichseemed to be deticated to someone and was very popular as many peoplebought flowers. We wanted to go to Mihama American village for thesunset but it was too late so we went back to the hostel to put awayour food. At night we went for a drive and ended up in the americanvillage which contained some American stores and brands. We went tothe sega arcade there which was neat.

03/17 Naha Okinawa

Today was our first full day in japan. We arrived in Naha at around9pm and to our hostel at about 10. The flight over was pretty good.Air Canada has a new in flight entertainment system so I watched beemovie, no country for old men, dan's life and some tv. The food wasalso pretty good with chicken risotto and beef stirfry noodles . Uponentry into Osaka we had to go through customs which involved afingerprint scan and photo ID. It was pretty painless but took quite along time. After picking up our luggage we checked in to the flight tonaha and were off. We were pretty lucky to not encounter any delays orlost luggage. After getting to the hostel we talked to the staff for acouple hours and hit the sack.

The first thing we did the following day was visit the main street,kokusai street. This street had many shops and restuarants. Wewandered into a cookie/candy shop first. The neat thing about japan isthere are lots of free samples so we bought some snacks which I thinkare made from ume/ube. Also on the main street was the local marketwhere we could try the various local produce. Some of the interestingstuff was this seaweed which looked and tasted like caviar. We boughtlunch here from a vender who made bento boxes. Mine was rice, ameatball, saba, veggies and a soup. I also got thing thing theresembled a rice hamburger with seaweed, egg,rice and SPAM. Aftereating we took the bus to Shurijo Castle which was a large complex inNaha. I don't know much about it since the info was in Japanese, everything I learned about it was done after by reading a guidebookthe tourist info center gave us. After this, we walked to ShikineanImperial Garden. Along the way we came across a cemetery park whichwas quite interesting. The gardens were nice but the sky was overcastso the photos were not as nice. There are vending machines andconvienient stores everywhere so grabbing snacks are easy. We got thiscustard fruitcup for a buck which was very nice. We walked into arandom restuarent for dinner and had Goya chanpuru , rafute and nabe.The first is a bitter melon, loved by the people of Okinawa, friedwith egg and tofu. Rafute is stewed pork belly and nabe is a hotpotconsisting of veggies, noodles, and fatty pork. We returned to thehostel early since we needed to arrange a car rental, which proveddifficult as they would not insure gaijins. After visitng severalplaces and calling some more we were told to try again in the morning.Our room consists of a bunk bed, floor matress, tv, fridge and privatewashroom. It was small but ok for us.