Last Night in Tokyo

I made lots of notes about all the wonderful things I have seen and done since being in Japan. Thank goodness, because all I can think of right now is how much I want to be home.

We are spending our last night at the Sakura Hostel in Tokyo. It is everything that I thought a hostel would be. Noisy, crowded filled with young, happy, chatty travellers.

We are heading off to the public bath for one more soak before I come back to Canada. Not sure how I will ever get used to 3 minute showers alone again.

One more sleep and I will be home. Yippee!

Sleepy Uji City

We got a new roommate in our room at the hostel last night. She arrived shortly before 9:00pm. We already had our lights out, pooped from a busy couple of days. This morning around 9:30am when we were still lounging in bed our roommate asked if we were tired. We chatted lots about sore feet, aching muscles and exhaustion. She felt the same way -- it was a bonding experience.

After a lazy morning, I took the train out to Uji today. Uji city is much more my speed -- S L O W! The town was pretty sleepy, I think because it was rainy and windy today, or maybe it's always sleepy. I finally got a tea ceremony in Japan. I had to pay Y500 to be served one little rice gel square and a bowl of tea by a nice lady in a kimono a far cry from the personal attention we received in Korea, but very nice none-the-less. The lady who performed the tea ceremony and her friend were talking in Japanese after she served me tea. There was lots of smiling and looking at me. I'm pretty sure they were saying something like, "It doesn't seem like she knows it's over. How can we get her to go away?"

I wandered through another beautiful temple and fell in love with these sculptures of deities on clouds. I have some postcards of them. They are said to meet you on your way to the pure land. Some are dancing or playing musical instruments, others are worshipping Buddha.

I found a local grocery store on the way home and bought fixin's for salad. Ahhh, green food at last. Tonight Mina and I have a date to meet for the Public Bath. Hopefully that will revive us. I don't recall ever being this tired before.

Day of Solitude

Brett left this morning and Mina was going out to see the monkeys today, so I was on my own, maps in hand. After my success with Brett yesterday, I was feeling confident. I walked down to the station, purchased my ticket (the right one this time) and got on my bus with no problems. 8:30am is a lousy time to be on the bus. It was absolutely jammed with people. I got off at my stop and headed in the direction of the first temple of the day.

This was a far cry from the path of philosophy yesterday. The streets and temple were wall to wall people. Lots of school groups on tour. Pretty overwhelming. I went down all the tiny little quiet streets I could find and eventually found some peace away from all the people.

This place is lousy with temples! I visited probably 5 or 6 temples and shrines today and walked up thousands of stairs. Again I was awe struck by the mountains. They have trees with leaves of every shade of green and yellow. Being on my own, I took lots of rest breaks and spent lots of quiet time in the temples.

At the end of the day I met a Japanese guy (my age I'm guessing) and we sat by the river talking for awhile. He wanted to know what I liked about Japan. One of the first things that came to mind was all the bicycles. He said that when he was visiting his friend in Chicago, they needed to run out and get a wine opener. They DROVE! "What is this? I do not understand." He said that he's not particularly in to environmental issues, but just can not comprehend how someone could be so wasteful of the resources to drive for ten minutes to get a bottle opener. Good point.

I've done it again -- I'm pooped after so much walking and looking. Sensory overload. I really bonded with the frogs today as I rested in front of a little Japanese pond. The iris' are in full bloom. It is beautiful. I enjoyed my alone time, but I think new things are better when shared. Wish you were here. Three more sleeps and this will all be a dream. Crazy...

Feeling Quite Travel Saavy

The end of the day yesterday found me sunburned, with sore feet, quads & shoulders, totally exhausted and completely happy. It was a perfect day. Brett and I headed out shortly after 8:00am to attempt to make our way out to Arashiyama, which came recommended by Amanda and appealed to Brett from a travel book. After purchasing the wrong all day bus pass, and pointing and smiling a lot to helpful information desk people, we were on the right train. :)

Arashiyama boasts a beautiful river, temples and a monkey park. The highlight for us, I do believe, was the Post Office with a bank machine that actually gave me money!!! Sigh of relief.

As we headed up the mountain to the monkey park, we were met by many warning signs: Don't stare at the monkeys in the eye, Don't feed them outside, Don't show them food, Don't Look Like You Have Food, and whatever you do, Don't Look Them In The Eye! So, needless to say, we were both a little tentative as we climbed up the path and then we saw our first two Japanese red-faced monkeys. And then we turned the corner and saw a few more. When we got to the top of the resting area, there were dozens (maybe close to hundred) monkeys. We were lead inside a little resting area where we were able to feed the monkeys through a fence. This way, they only associate people with food as being on the inside. It was soooo cool. We wandered outside with them for another hour or so becoming more brave the longer we were with them. The only time they seemed to get excited is when new people went in to the resting area to feed them.

Arashiyama offered a beautiful river, an incredible bamboo forest (new bamboo shoots over 6' high with a very soft brown fur on them amongst hugely tall bamboo with sunlight filtering through -- breathtaking), temples and a lovely pond. We stopped to dip our feet into the pond -- yesterday was hot and sunny -- and were a little spooked when carp the size of my thigh curiously started poking around our direction. We were to chicken to dangle our feet after that!

Being Brett's last day in Japan, we had a lot of ground to cover, so got back on the train around 3:00pm and stopped in a new part of town on our way back. We walked the Path of Philosophy with follows a little canal under a canopy of trees with flowers and beautiful homes along the way... and of course, more amazing temples. Our favourite was Eiken-do temple which houses the "Buddha Looking Back". The story of this Buddha is that Eiken was walking alone through the cold and it became too much for him. All of a sudden the Buddha appeared to walk ahead of him. He was too tired and cold to go on. Then the Buddha looked back as if to say come with me you can do it.

The place of worship in this temple was like nothing I had ever seen before. Gold everywhere. We sat for a nice long time as a monk chanted and gonged. It was way more beautiful than my words.

We had a great meal (pizza and salad) at a lovely little cafe beside the canal overlooking a beautiful flower garden. We hoped to end our day with a stop in the public bath, but after wandering for blocks and blocks, we found that it was closed! Big disappointment. So we settled for ice cream and melted in to bed.

Another perfect day.

Tokyo to Kyoto

We had a nice day wandering about Tokyo and through Ueno Park, a beautiful oasis in the middle of the big city, not too disimilar from Central Park in New York.

The temples/shrines in Japan are different than Korea. Rather than being guarded by scary looking giant angels as in Korea, they are guarded by small scary looking dogs. Some of the ones we saw have statues of Buddha, but they are much smaller than the ones we visited in Korea and have a different face (still lovely). There is so much more I could and should say about our day in the park, but I'm pooped so these stories will have to wait until I get home.

We took the super express train to Kyoto at around 4:30pm. The ride was just shy of 2 1/2 hours across the country side. Beautiful views of green mountains and flooded rice fields. We arrived in Kyoto at the brand new train station (just opened April 1st) and walked to our hostel in about 15 minutes. It seems fine, very nice staff, but not quite as charming as K's House in Tokyo.

My first impression of Kyoto is that it doesn't seem as clean (other than the train station) as Tokyo. But, it has come so highly recommended, that I just know we will find many gems tomorrow.

Did you know that they ride on the opposite side of the street here? I did not. And there are bicycles everywhere, ridden by everyone -- the young, the old, business people, women dressed to the nines in high heels. They have bicycle parking lots and most of the bikes have baskets. I am inspired. The sidewalks have bumps on them at each intersection, I guess for the blind. This does not make for the easy lugging of baggage around. I am so grateful that we have a place to park for a few days and don't have to haul our stuff around.

I feel like I might be whining a bit. I think I'm a little pooped -- oh, I must be, I already said that. So, good night for now!

O.K., one more thing. Brett met a chatty older man at the Hiroshima flame today who told us that the Japanese are 100% safe. No worry of crime here. Not like the Americans. He heard that 50% of Americans carry guns and will shoot you or pick pocket you if they get the chance. Hopefully our pleasantness helped soften his view of the west. As we were walking away from chatting with him, a Japanese-American woman warned us that he was "feeding us a line of bull"... hmmm, made me pause and think that his opinion of Americans being suspicious is true.

Morning Run

The　飼りれのれい　(my keyboard switches from time to time to Japanese) ... Start again. The hostel staff pointed me in the direction of a good running spot beside the Sumida River very close to here. The morning crowd is very different from Korea and from the evening Tokyo crowd. In Korea I was always joined by walkers and joggers in their colourful track suits, visors and masks, getting their daily exercise. Not here. I got lots of quizzical looks from men in business suits as I jogged down the street and across the bridge to find the river walk. It took me a few tries of running down dead end shipping paths and crossing back and forth over various bridges before I found the correct path.

It was a very nice trail, although noisy as the traffic ran overhead. The street people here have set up shop by the river -- each one having a very tidy area made of either cardboard boxes or covered by blue tarps. Oddly, I felt no fear at all as I jogged passed. Some were sitting cross-legged in their make shift homes, dressed and reading the morning paper. I was surprised at how clean it all is. Perhaps that is their agreement with the authorities?

Not sure what the day will bring -- a little more exploring in Tokyo and then we will take the train to Kyoto late this afternoon. It is warm (19C) and cloudy today.

In joy, Tanya

We're not in Kansas anymore!

Well we said good-bye to our Korea this morning and left for Tokyo at 7:00am. After an uneventful flight we arrived at the Norita airport, but something just wasn't quite right. It was raining first of all and where was the banner and entourage of greeters with flowers awaiting our arrival. We found our luggage and arranged to have most of it stored at the airport for the next week while we travel light in Japan. One point for Tokyo, which was quickly erased when we realized that this is pretty much a cash only country (Mina had done her homework and was prepared, Brett and I not so much). I tried 6 different bank machines and got 6 different messages telling me that my card was no good here. Mina took out some extra cash for me and now I'll just cross my fingers that I've got enough to get by.

We found our train, purchased tickets and after an hour and a half ride we arrived in Tokyo. O.K.,　here we are, so now what? Again, we were missing Rotary. We knew we wanted to see something, but weren't quite sure where to begin, so we wandered in the rain, the only people on the crowded streets with no umbrella. It was quite a cool site to see hundreds of umbrellas, mostly clear (very effective so you can still see where you are going on the crowded street), all moving in unison in an endless stream down the street.

Japan feels different than Korea. It is greener and seems cleaner. Tokyo is very modern, far more multicultural than Seoul. We explored the Shibuya district which is popular with teens -- the teens here seem much more worldly, high fashion, smoking, etc. They love very high sparkly strappy heels. There are bicycles everywhere. And green, orange or blue boxy taxis everywhere too.

Our hostel, K's House Tokyo, is adorable and in a great part of town. I felt much better about being in Japan once we finally got here. A day of being lost in the rain, humping my black carry-on and heavy shoulder bag through subways and crowded streets, being left totally to our own devices (thank God for Mina!), eating at possibly the worst place we could have found (we had Hawaiian Rice Bowls, which looked like BiBimBop our favourite Korean dish and really was white rice with macaroni salad and deep fried shrimp all smothered in a thousand island type yucky dressing) just about did me in. But we have a very clean room to ourselves and are two blocks away from a river with a running train and a cool temple, park and shopping area. So I will give Japan a chance.

We walked through this one touristy looking street that turned out to be a slot machine type game that they play. Huge, smokey rooms. Loud, sounds just like slots. They have buckets of silver balls that they feed into machines and with no skill involved, they either win more balls or don't. It was full of adults. Gambling is illegal here, so they exchange the balls for prizes. It was too smokey in there, so we didn't try it and I didn't get to see what the prizes were. I don't get it.

Last Night in Korea

Have spent the last two days wandering around Seoul. What a completely different experience than the last 4 weeks.

There are 11 million people in Seoul. The sidewalks are crowded with people, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, food stands, newspaper stands, the wares from all the shops (it seems like everyday is a sidewalk sale). Definite hustle bustle. Great people watching from high fashion ladies and teens in their sparkly shirts, beautiful old people resting on benches, cute couples wearing matching outfits and kids everywhere -- today is Children's Day.

Seoul seems to be divided into districts -- the fluorescent lighting district, the hardware district, fashion, food, arts and crafts -- with row upon row of stores selling the same items. Suzie, our 21 year-old translator and professional snowboarder, told us that they set it up that way so that shopkeepers can share the shipping costs.

There is what I thought was a 4km and turned out to be 7km man-made waterway that runs through the centre of the city. Thank goodness they planned this, otherwise where would the children play and where would I run? I had a longer than expected run this morning along the waterway and enjoyed watching the city wake up. We are less noticeable here as there is probably one foreigner for every thousand people here. School kids do stop us though as part of their English studies they have a set of interview questions for us -- How long have you been in Korea, what is your favourite Korean food, where are you from, etc. After the interview we usually receive a gift of some kind (candy or chips). I have enjoyed giving out Canada pins, pens, pencils and stickers to the kids. Today even the adults were coming up to us once they saw that we had treats to give out. One lady after I gave her kids some goodies came back with a rose for me.

I love Korea. There is so much more, but right now I need to rest my feet after 7 hours of wandering.

Two of our team have gone and tomorrow Mina, Brett and I leave for Japan for a week.

Leaving Gyeongsangbuk-do

This is our last morning in the province. We head to Seoul after breakfast this morning by way of the bullet train out of Deigu. We spent three blissful and interesting days in Gumi, where we enjoyed things hi-tech and natural and everything in betweeen. As always it was hard to say good-bye. I have been away from the computer for several days, but have all the stories recorded in my journal.

I am a bit broken hearted that my time in Korea is almost up. We will have two nights in Seoul and then off to Japan for 6 nights before I come home.

Off for our farewell breakfast. Love to all. xox