Time to Evacuate

We were up fairly early again, and fast-moving clouds were covering the city. I brought my rain jacket when we went for a walk. We had first walked toward the Kyoto Railway museum as I liked the idea that their gift shop might have a Shinkansen t-shirt that was also a character. Eyes, and nose, and a big smile, but ALSO a train. The Japanese sure do love characters . . . and so do I. Because we were up ungodly early again, the museum and store were still closed, so we walked to nearby Toji Temple instead.

As we walked around the complex, the clouds parted just enough to show a little bit of blue sky. And just a little bit. Within 30 minutes of these pictures being taken, it started to rain steadily.

And speaking of that rain . . . remember the typhoon I mentioned in the last post? Greg and I had a bit of a chat about our airport options, flight loads, and all the things that normal people don't have to worry about. Due to pending tropical storms and such, there was a good chance that flights were going to start getting canceled. That prospect was a bit concerning since the backlog on standby passengers would surely overwhelm the system and we could be stranded.

Our best bet, we decided was to take the train to Osaka-Kansai Airport, which was the closest. It was, unfortunately, also in direct line of Typhoon Cimaron.

After doing a bit of last minute shopping near the train station, we bought train tickets to Kansai airport. The lady selling the tickets warned us that we had to leave by 3:00pm because all remaining trains for the day were canceled due to the typhoon. That statement made it all seem a little bit more ominous and real. I'd been watching the weather radar pretty closely, and it was a slow-mover, so I had estimated it wouldn't reach land until about 10pm, five hours after our planned departure. The fact that there would be no trains after 3pm was a bit disconcerting to say the least.

After our hour and a half train ride to Kansai Airport, we breezed through security and emigration control with the efficiency that only the Japanese could deliver. Even the airport felt a bit muggy. We ate our last meal in Japan with a bit of sake on the side. It wasn't very good, but it is also possible that I just don't like sake.

Then we made our way to the gate where we were relying entirely on United's numbers being wrong. It technically showed oversold seats, but I convinced myself that this was a lie.

Maybe this was wishful thinking, but I felt it a better option than going all the way back to Tokyo, whose loads were marginal at best. That being said, if we didn't get on this United flight out of Kansai, we would be stuck...

Fortunately, we got cleared into business class seats and after we reached our cruising altitude, the Captain reported that they were close to canceling the flight. Evidently, winds had already accelerated to 75mph within 30 mins of our departure. Some nine hours later, we landed in San Francisco and then back home.

Shinkansen to Kyoto

Greg decided to get up and take pictures early in the morning. He banged around all his camera gear and tripped a few times to make sure I was also awake. While I attempted to get some rest, my body refused to fall back asleep. When he returned, we grabbed some breakfast from the 7-11 down below and decided to head to the train station. We hopped on a Shinkansen to Kyoto and were in a new city hundreds of miles away by 10am. We left our bags at the lobby of our hotel, and went to Fushimi Inari Shrine. You may recognize this better as the place with the rows and rows of red torii gates. Many other people knew this as well. In spite of the selection of pictures I am choosing to display on this blog, it was nearly impossible to get a picture without someone's appendage sneaking into the the frame. We had to be quick.

Note the arm creeping into frame. People really do ruin everything. And yes, I understand I am part of the problem.










We hiked quite a ways up the mountain before electing to turn around. The heat was quite oppressive with humidity to match. The weather patterns in Japan have been very unusual this summer, with a record-breaking heat wave claiming human lives. There are a pair of typhoons moving in on the Japanese mainland bringing unstable tropical air, which has not aided the mugginess. If there is any bright spot, Japan has plenty of vending machines, even at the shrine, so we could try and stay hydrated.

We returned to our hotel to complete check-in. We are staying right at the train station, which is like its very own city. Not only is it the massive above-ground facility you see here, but it extends well under ground with an entire subterranean complex of food stores, restaurants, and shops which ultimately branch under the surrounding streets and connect to other massive department stores and shopping complexes. It's really quite an impressive engineering feat.

We ate at the top of the train station, where we had a sort of katsu chicken and rice dish. The gentleman sitting next to us explained, in detail, how we were eating the dish completely wrong. We were to crush the sesame seeds in a bowl with a special wooden muddler of sorts. Then we were to pour the tonkatsu sauce over the crushed sesame. The rice was to go in its own bowl. Basically, everything was supposed to be separated and organized. I had made the egregious error of wanting to mix everything together like a Hawaiian plate lunch, which brought a bit of a laugh from the gentleman sitting next to us. I wish I had pictures or video of this exchange, but I was too embarrassed -- hiding in shame like a Japanese schoolboy.

After lunch, we took a long walk to Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. You see, while the Kyoto train station is really impressive as a structure, it is a bit lacking in its actual rail network around the city, so I brought Greg, a fragile, and fair-skinned individual on a sort of trail of tears under the afternoon sun.

We never actually went in to the physical temple itself because it was under massive scaffolding and renovation, so we hung out on the outside and awaited sunset from our elevated position on the hillside. Misters spritzed a bit of water from a nearby shelter, but it all seemed to evaporate before reaching my body. As the sun disappeared behind the horizon, Greg and I started walking down the narrow pedestrian streets and encountered another pagoda shortly thereafter.

The pagoda was part of Hokanji Temple, and as we raised our cameras to try and capture it, 20 people in our vicinity decided to stop and do the same thing. Such is life...

We enjoyed our walk through the old areas of the city. Sorry. I enjoyed the walk. Greg was suffering from blisters, and all sorts of ailments. He was limping along behind me like a whale struck by a harpoon. To ensure he didn't end up as sashimi in Tsukiji, I hailed a taxi to take us back to the station.

Romping around Tokyo

As is pretty standard with large changes in time zones and traveling, Greg and I were up at 5am. Most things didn't open until 10. We first walked through the periphery of the Tsukiji Fish Market. Each time I come, the restrictions become more and more strict on this famous market. I guess tourists such as ourselves are ruining the whole experience by standing in the way in the narrow aisles and slowing down the sale of fish with our cameras and instagram selfies with giant fish.

By now, things were starting to open, so we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It covers a lot of history and has a lot of life-size structures to liven up the aforementioned history. Things got interesting in the 20th century. There was a temporary exhibit of photographs from the last 150 years. Naturally, this covered World War Two, and what was fascinating was not just the complete destruction of the city of Tokyo, but the fast pace at which it was rebuilt.

One thing I have learned about Japan in the 30s and 40s, is that they have a selective acknowledgement of world events. Unlike Germany, which has grappled with its dark past head on, Japan acts more embarrassed while at the same time denying through omission. The museum, for its part, did acknowledge the war and made light of poor tactical decisions on the Japanese side that led to so many deaths during the firebombing of Tokyo, but it fell short of really explaining the root causes of all these horrific events.

After the museum, we walked to the Akihabara, or electronics district. One of Greg's "must-sees" was Yodobashi Camera, which is not just a camera store, but a massive complex of anything electronic covering over 8 floors with anything from refrigerators to rice cookers, video games, cell phone cases, and Star Wars toys. Greg was having great debate over whether to buy a particular camera lens or not. He would save over $100 by buying it in Japan, but we had to weigh the pros and cons over a couple of beers and okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake with various stuffings). We ate at the top of Yodobashi after narrowing our choice down from the 20+ options of different restaurants. This setup is pretty common in Japan with self-contained shopping centers. And if the anticipation isn't killing you, Greg did decide to buy the lens. He was very happy.





We returned to the hotel and then proceeded to take some pictures at night from a nearby pedestrian overpass. Below is the outcome of that venture.

For our final act of the evening, I took Greg to Shibuya crossing, the busiest crosswalk in the world. I tried to get us an elevated view of the intersection, so I went into a multi-level shopping center in hopes of finding a cafe or restaurant overlooking the street. We had overpriced beers and parfait on the 8th floor of the building while watching the streets below. Then, after our unfortunately high bill, we discovered that there was an actual viewing platform on the roof that usually charges, but for whatever reason was now free. Oh well...I shall keep this in mind for next time.

Japan Again

Those in the know may be aware to the fact that I am fixing to be wed in a few months. As is customary with such events, I embarked on a so-called "Bachelor Party" to Japan. Super cliche, I know. I was originally thinking Scotland, but they seem to have a problem with midges and throngs of tourists this time of year. Thusly, I embarked from LAX to Narita with the gentleman in the blue shirt sitting behind me. He weaseled his way into United business class and insisted on following me through customs and would not leave me for the rest of the trip.

The gentleman in blue, whom we shall henceforth refer to as "Greg," remarked that he was very happy with the ubiquity of bathrooms in Japan as well as their overall cleanliness. These are things that are very important to him. While searching for an ATM, we were interviewed by a Japanese TV station and asked why we came to Japan. I did a bit of research on this, and apparently it's an ongoing segment every Monday.

They were intrigued with me because this was my fourth visit. When asked why I keep coming back, I said because people are very respectful, friendly, and I like all the buttons on their toilets. I'm not sure if something got lost in translation because it didn't elicit the chuckles I had hoped for.


We arrived at our hotel in Tokyo sometime  around 4:00pm. While "Greg" claimed he slept a lot on the plane, I did not. That being said, we set out to do a bit of exploring. We took the subway to Shinjuku to look at all the lights and take in the chaos.

From Shinjuku, we walked all the way to the Tokyo Tower, which is not particularly close, but we didn't also want to deal with rush hour in Tokyo and getting pushed with white gloves into a subway. We eventually got there, and it was a fairly calm walk once we got out of Shinjuku at least. We ate crepes underneath it. It was a complete pseudo French experience with Japanese crepes being eaten under an Eiffel Tower imposter.

We eventually made our way to a subway stop and headed back to Ginza, where our hotel is located. I had been awake for about . . . I don't know. I've been awake too long to do math. Until tomorrow...