04/06 - back home

today we had to go back home, unfortunately. before our flight we planned to go do some karaoke and check out akihabara some more but the karaoke place was closed. we went around akiba shopping where keegan got ripped off on some of his purchases (not much, but costly when u have no money left). after shopping, we wanted to go back to the udon place from 2 days ago but they also weren't opened.

going through customs and immigration wa pain free but the flight sucked. we had no personal entertainment system this time, and the seats were very uncomfortible. the good thing was the flight seemed fast, the food was decent, salmon, and our luggage made it to vancouver.

our stop over in vancouver was 6 hours 30 min, which sucked and we couldn't get on an earlier flight.

04/05 - Tokyo

Today was the last full day in Japan, which meant frantically running around and buying stuff. We started by heading back to the temple district and hitting up the souvineer shops there for people. I bought a yukata there for my self as well. originally i wanted 1 that was black with red and white clouds, very similar to the atansuki ones (naruto) but got a normal one instead. I also loaded up on food and snacks to bring home. Japan has a bunch of differnet kitkat flavours.

the next stop was to go to akiharbara, the tech and anime district. there was tons to see here, lots of anime stuff, computers, airsoft...ect. here we did some more shopping, getting mini food for steph and some other stuff. i went back to yodobashi camera, where i bought my laptop to get stephs stuff and found out how my membership card worked. 13% of my laptop purchase was designated as points and each point was 1 yen to spend, so i had 15000 yen to spend for free. finding this out, i picked up a zoom attachment for my camera, so sweet!!!


after shopping we went around the trainstation to listen to the various street preformers. Dima found 1 preformer he likes from his trip last year and talked 2 her for a bit, pretty cool. after a while, a cop came by and everyone stop and all the preformers hid, it was really weird, stupid cops. after meeting up with keegan, who went off on his own to shop, we checked out the preformances some more. keegan fell in love with 1 of them, so dima and i got her cd for keegan and she wrote a nice message to him.

we went to a cheap place for dinner, which had udon, rice, and fried oysters for 600 yen, not bad. afterwards we went to ueno park to check it out at night. it was so busy there with many people having picnics and getting hammered there, was interesting.

04/04 - Tokyo

Today was a heavily sea themed day, with some sky thrown in. we started the day bright and early by going to to tsukiji fish market, the worlds largest fish market. we woke up at 5 and got there about 6am. the activity around the market was frantic and was very interesting to see. when we got there, the tuna autions were over, but we saw many people preparing the blue fin tuna they just bought.

The various fish on display in the market was impressive, with many things i had never seen before. one of the cooler things were whale steaks. keegan and i wanted to buy some to try, but it was 1.3 kg and would have cost about $30. we settled for some sashimi instead.

upon leaving the market area, we went to line up at sushi dai, a sushi restaurant highly recommended to us. the restaurant only sat 13 people, so the line up moved slow and we waited for about 1 hour 30 minutes before our turn, but it was worth it. we got the chef special, 10 pieces, plus a roll and egg roll and miso soup. you could pick anything at the end to top it off. the first piece was blue fin tuna toro which was amazing. it literally melted on your tongue and the fat content was very high. the second piece was something called hobo, but i don't know what it was. the third peice was golen eye snapper with was also very good. we then got some miso soup and tehn surf clam, which was fresh, different from the frozen stuff back home. it had much more flavor. the next peice was sea urchin which was amazingly smooth, very good and probably my 2nd favorite overall. we then got bonito, which was pretty good and nice to see in sashimi form instead of flake form. the next piece was spanish mackerel which was amazingly tender and my 3rd favorite. we then got shrimp, tuna rolls and clam rolls, and an egg roll, which was slightly sweet, very good. the last of the 10 was sea eel with was awesome fresh. for my bonus i went for another peice of toro since it was so good. as we left the restaurant, we walk to another market to eat some fresh unagi and snacks.

we met back up with dima, who didnt want to eat, and eached to tokyo odaiba, a man made bay. the main reason to go here for us was to go to muscle park and do the ninja warrior/sasuke course. before doing that we checked out the man made beach which was nice.

the ninja warrior course consisted of 4 stations. the first was the hand bike, the 2nd was a finger ledge, the 3rd was a pull up later, and the last was a bar slide. the first station was pretty each and did it no problem. the 2nd start required you to travel horizontally and vertically along a 3cm finger ledge with our falling, i couldn't do it. the 3rd stage, ytou had to do a pull up then remove the bar from the peg and place it onto the higher ledge, i got it higher, but lost my grip and fell. the final stage required you to hold on a bar and which suspended. push your way also parallel bars to the end then swing to the safe area. i got to the end no problem but lost my momentum and couldn't swing far enough to the save area. keegan and i both passed and failed the same stages and had very similar times, both under a minute. it was fun, but expesnsive or i would have kept trying.

we then walked to the toyota city showcase and history collection. it was an exibit about toyota stuff with all their models, a auto drive car course and some attractions. we saw a movie ride with moving seats showing a couple laps around toyotas speedways, it was neat. the classic car collection had cars from various makers and times.

keegan and i then went to tokyo tower to take pictures of tokyo at sunset and night. tokyo is huge and the tower was a great place to take pictures. while on the tower we felt a slight swaying sort of like a small earth quake. dima, who was at the hostel, said we felt the same thing as well, so it might have been a small one.

we went to a local noodle place for udon dinner. the cook/owner was really nice and we taked about his store and travel. he gave us a bunch of free food, which was very nice of him. i had to the fried tofu and egg udon. the cool part is the noodles were hand made and really good.

after dinner we went to the roppongi district to take some more night pictures before heading back home.

04/03 - tokyo

Today was our first day in Tokyo. This is also my 3rd time trying to type this so i will resort to point form reporting out of frustration. the first time, my ipod decided to delete my note and the second time, as i went to post, there was an internet error and it erased it.

- last night in capsule hotel was interesting, but hot and stuff. neat novelty but not something i'd do often.
- went to new hostel to drop off stuff and pick up keegan's friend.
- went to asakusa district to see temple, sonsoji.
- many interesting stores for souvineers and food. ate yakitori and fresh rice crackers.
- went to ueno park to see sakuras, very pretty.
- many japanese passed out by trees with empty bottles of sake around them.
- keegan's friend left, we went to shinjuku. dima got origami book for yukari, i got last volume for my FMP manga. keegan got clothes and pens.
- keegan and i went to imperial park to see gardens and sakuras. very pretty.
- went to dinner near ueno station for sushi, conveyer belt style, similar to sushi boat.
- 136 yen per plate, 2 peices.
- good and fresh, tuna, eel, ikura, maguro, other fish i didn't know.
- had 14 plates.
- went to hostel early as we planned to wake up very early next day to go to fish market.

- if this post doesn't work again, i will just skip it.

040/02 - tokyo

Today we went to Nikko and Tokyo. Coming into Tokyo station was pretty neat as the amount of people, trains and activity were much more then anything we've seem so far. From Tokyo we took a train to Nikko, famous for their temples, tombs and mauseleums. We first dropped off our bags at the trainstation day locker. It took a lot of work fitting all 3 bags in 1 locker but we somehow managed.

On the walk to the temples we came across a guy selling charcoal grilled fish on a stick so we ate one, not bad. We first came up to shinkyo bridge and eventually to the shrine area. One temple was closed for a traditional rice eating ceremony but we didn't see it.

The places we saw were rinnoji temple, toshogu shrine, taiyuin temple, and futarasan shrine. The temples and shrines here were covered in gold leaf and intricate carvings and also had a strong Chinese influence. It was really cool to see. One of the more famous carvings here is of 3 monkeys covering their ears, eyes and mouth. We ate some cheap soba at the temple.

Back in Tokyo we checked into our capsule hotel. The "room" is pretty much a torpedo tube with bed, tv, and some other stuff.

We walked around akiba first and Dima found the same street singer as last year, which was neat. Next we went to Yodobashi Camera so I could buy a laptop, it was one of the harder experiences in my life. No one spoke English so asking about duty-free and return policy was tough. Eventually we spoke via altavista translator. The laptop is Japanese only so Dima is going to make it English for me.

We went to shibuya next to walk around and see the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world. Its crazy how many people are in Tokyo. We found a little ramen store there for dinner. It was probably the best ramen I've had and the broth was a milky white color, good stuff. After wandering around a little more we headed to our capsules as we had to meet keegans friend the next morning.

04/01 - kamakura and yokohama

Today was a travel heavy day so we didn't get to see much.

I slept really well the night before as the futons and heated floor were a good combination. We started the day with breakfast at the ryokan which was pretty good, like the dinner before. We got a hotpot type thing with we first used to fry a lightly oiled and salted fish and then heated up a broth of tofu, mushrooms and seaweed. we had some pickled veggies, fish paste rings, miso soup, rice, chowamushi (steamed water egg) and some red olive like thing in sugar. The fish and chowamushi were really good. We did a quick hike around the area, taking pictures before checking out.

The next couple hours consisted of a gondola ride up the mountain, train down the mountain and multiple train transfer before we ended up in Yokohama. After checking into your hostel, we go on to another train to go to Kamakura, a town about 30 minutes away.

Kamakura is famous for the 2nd largest buddha in japan (first being the one we saw in Nara) and a couple other temples. We first went to see the buddha and got to go inside of it, which was interesting. Afterwards we went to hase temple, which had japan's largest wood carving, and a nice view of all of kamakura. after wandering around the town a bit longer and buying souvineers, we headed back to yokohama.

In yokohama we went to the downtown area to see if there was anything to see. None of hte buildings looked particularly interesting at night. They had japans tallest obervation deck, but we decided to pass on it. We found a pokemon center in the mall which sells everything pokemon related, which was also pretty interesting. Dinner in that area seemed pricy, so we went back to our hostel area to find a place to eat. We found a fast food place that was very cheap and i got a salad, miso soup, a big bowl of rice , and hotpot sytle beef for \490. not back.

we were all pretty tired from all the train travel, so we went back to the hostel afterwards. The room was pretty interesting. It is pretty small but is tatami mat covered. It has a thin futon to sleep on, a tv, fridge, and balcony. Also, the toilet is really cool. Like all japanese toilets, it had the butt washing spray, but this one also had a fan/drier and a sink on top. neat.

Tomorrow we are going to take a day trip to Nikko to see teh mauseleums and temples and stay in a tokyo capsule hotel.

03/31 - hakone

Today was our ryokan day in Hakone, but before that Keegan and I had a little more exploring to do in Nagoya. We didn't have to catch our train until 11 so we got up earlier and went on a walked.

The first place we went to visit was Osu Kannon temple, a Chinese style temple in Nagoya. It was pretty quiet there and we watched the priest catch up on blessing the various charms he had accumulated the day before. The other thing we wanted to find was some of Nagoya's speciality foods. Kishimen, a flat udon soup was on the top of our list as we couldn't find a place open the night before. We popped in a few places but they were all closed. We gave up and went back to the hotel to pick up Dima and go to the trainstation.

At the station we hunted down a few of the other foods, tempura rice rolls and uiro steamed rice cakes. The tempura were like onigiri but with tempura shrimp in the middle. Uiro is as it sounds and is sweet. Satisifed with our selection we made our way to the train platform. I walked around the platform and found a noodle stand which had kichimen. I grabbed keegan and went back to the store. We had 3 minutes to order, have them prepare, and eat before our train arrived so we gave it a shot. We ordered at the vending machine, found a place to stand an about a minute later it was in front of me. I wolfed it down as fast as possible, burning my mouth along the way and only had the raw egg left when the train arrived. I quickly slurped it down and ran for the train just in time. Keegan took had last bit with him on the train in a cup. It was pretty good, much better then regilar udon and sorts of like how fettucchini compares to linguine.

The train to the ryokan was pretty interesting as it had to go up a mountain. It did this by going up a bit and back tracking up the next line, zig zagging up the mountain. Its like leafing down the mountain when snow boarding. When we got to our stop we got into a private gondola which brought us to our ryokan. Our room was pretty nice with an entry room, food prep room, washroom, main room and sitting and storage room. All the wall dividers were slidding paper doors and the floor was tatami mats. The floor was also heated.

The ryokan has 4 public baths, 2 indoor and 2 outdoor. They rotate between men and women so we went to the big outdoor one first. We had it to our selves but took turns jumping in and covering up with buckets. The water was 40-50 degrees and was very refreshing. After about 30 minutes we went to the large indoor bath and repeated our entry procedure. Afterwards, dima and I taught keegan how to shave. Dima and I explored outside for a bit which keegan soaked in the outdoor bath longer.

We got back at 6 and got ready for dinner which was an impressive feast. We were first brought a personal hotpot with beef, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage, udon, vermincelli, and bamboo. While that was cooking we were given a sashimi platter, salad, appitizers, and egg dish, and plum wine. The sashimi had tuna, shrimp, yellowtail, and 1 other fish and was extremely fresh. The tuna melted like butter. The appitizers consisted of a tofu cube, shrimp, fish roe wrapped in imitation crab deep fried, and clam. The salad was a scallop and veggies in a honey mustard sauce. The egg dish was thin scrambled eggs in a broth with a pink sauce which I don't know what it is. Next came some stewed veggies, including bamboo, gailan, glutton and carots, and a tempura dish. The tempura was eggplant wrapped in tofu skins and deep fried, a veggies bulb, which looked like a Brussels sprout, and shrimp with a multi-colored seaweed thing. Lastly we were brought sticky rice with an underwater plant in a broth, and strawberries and grapes as well as a large container of rice. The meal was very good and the plum wine at the end, which was very sweet like a desert wine, was a great way to end the meal.

After dinner the main room was arranged into a bedroom with futons. Keegan thinks they are the greatest thing on the world and the heated floor really adds to the comfort.

In the evenning keegan and I went to check out the last couple baths, a smaller inner and smaller outer bath. The small outer bath was very interesting and was carved out of rock and overlooked the river. The cold rocks sa night was a good contrast to the hot water. We then went to check out the large outer bath but it was gated. We hopped the gate and relaxed in the bath for a while before returning to our warm futons.

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.