Milestone: 2¾ Years

 You can compare with my other Milestones!

2¾ Years : Summary

Status:


Job: Children's Fitness Teacher, Pro-Bono Cultural Ambassador
Financial status:  Good

City: Tokyo
Ward: Itabashi-ku
Train station: Senkawa
Residing in: Alien Castle, my apartment.




Cast of Characters:

Major Characters:

Ken Tanaka
Millo, Julian of France
Dario Lupoli of Italy

Minor Characters:

Aala Kansali of Tunisia
Jean-Paul "Papa Lo"  the French Laotian
Nana Takeuchi, the Bawss
Eri Karasawa, who works a different location
Erika Mochizuki (and Maxine!)
Kuniaki "Forest" Mori
Kazue Inoue 

Retired Characters:

Sofie Monrad of Denmark
Julian "Shank" Einschenk of Germany
Anton "Foxboy" Jermaine of England
Rodrigue Zapha of France
Clement Sanchez of France



Top Five Highlights:
(since last milestone)

- The Abandoned Western Village
- Kusatsu Onsen
- Upgrading the Headquarters
- Inspiring Nokogiriyama
- The Sumidagawa Fireworks


Still to Come:
- Talking to a Robot
- An Adventure with my Brother
- A Cafe with Goats
- Bungee Jumping
- The Giant Monster Bar

The Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival

You don't know fireworks until you've spent a Summer in Tokyo. Festival upon festival mesh into a single ongoing event, and the moment the rainy season is over, every weekend day sees the skies become the canvas of a thousand colorful explosions, from every end of the city and sometimes in two, even three places simultaneously, for anywhere between 60 to 90 minutes at a time.
 When the Japanese do fireworks, they mean business.

 And never more so than when it comes to the Sumidagawa fireworks.
 Streets close and drove upon drove of onlookers fill every inch of ground they can find until there is literally nowhere to sit anywhere remotely close to the side of the Sumida river. Police patrol the streets so that no one can trespass onto people's apartment roofs (which I sure as hell tried.) So I settled beside an old couple on the hard concrete ground and waited, and then they lit the sky on fire.

Pikachu!

 The Sumidagawa Firework Festival is a tradition 300 years old, pitting rival pyrotechnic groups against one another to see who can create the most impressive series of explosions. The results can be breath-taking - as often times, firework shows have a beginning, a rising point, and a climax, the Sumidagawa fireworks cycle through those stages within the span of three minutes, over 30 different times in over 30 different styles and themes, with some included shapes as complicated as famous cartoon characters' heads. You can imagine my surprise when Pikachu exploded into the sky.

 The sensation of sitting elbow to elbow with millions of people and feeling the rhythmic drum of the fireworks vibrate in your chest is an experience you can only really get in Japan, and the feeling is unforgettable.

Throwback - Hotel New Koyo

I turned on the television the other day to find a feature about "where foreigners gather in Tokyo." Mostly, it showed places I had already known about, but then, at the very last, it took a turn for the unexpected.
 The camera brought me through the familiar streets of Minami-Senju...and to the doorstep of Hotel New Koyo. Where my adventure began!

I used to be there, doing that!

  Man, I loved that place. Although the increase in tax rates in Japan has also upped the pricing, I was glad to see that New Koyo still seemed to be doing well, and was rather unchanged. Don't get me wrong, New Koyo provides you none of the big hotel luxuries you might find elsewhere. They won't bring dinner to you room and the like - but you do get everything you need to get you started on your own adventure: a bed that won't break your budget, an interesting area in the vicinity of Asakusa/Ueno, open wi-fi internet access, and a lobby full of fellow travelers in search of companionship. I made good friends in New Koyo, some of which I'm still in touch with!
 The owner, Mr Bobby, was incredibly friendly, open-handed and easy to talk to, and frequently invited my friends and I out to drink or to watch movies.
 The current price for a single room is 2900¥, and you can look at other details here.
 This post may be almost three years overdue (God, has it been that long already?) but let it be know that Hotel New Koyo is the best place to start from that I know of.

An Invasion of Doraemon

Today I passed through the Roppongi Hills complex and found a small army of Doraemon crowding the square. I guess it must've been in promotion for an upcoming movie? Apparently, there were 66 of them, and no two were exactly alike. It was neat, and, as you could probably imagine, there were lots of people posing for pictures. I managed to snag a few myself. I do wonder what the hell they'll do with all these Doraemon once they move them out of the square though.

Doraemon

 Doraemon's probably up there with Anpanman amongst the most recognizable children's characters
in Japan. The series has been around for around 40 years now, both in manga and in animated form, and I've recently read that there are plans under motion to take the series to America. As of now, the series is diffused throughout most of Asia already.
 But I wonder if American television is ready for it! Episode by episode, Doraemon is pretty light in nature, but the root of the series' plot is the story of a man whose life was ruined by bullying, who decides to buy a robot and send it back in time so that it may improve his grandfather's way of life. The best robot he can afford, though, is a rejected ear-less cat toy - the titular Doraemon. The robot is sent back to the grandfather's childhood, and advises him with his day to day problems, usually providing the kid gadgets.
 So you can see how some of the elements are a little tragic, actually. I wonder what the American audience will think! 

Humbling, Majestic Nokogiriyama

 Chiba and Saitama, two of Tokyo's three neighboring prefectures, are often the butt of (my) jokes. They don't often show up in tourism and travel books, and that's because they're quite, well, bland. I found myself running a Google search on what someone could possibly do in the prefecture of Chiba, and, lo and behold, I stumbled upon something new and unexpected. I grabbed Dario and dragged him into it while he was in the blind, not knowing where we were going or what we were doing. Truth be told, I can't completely say I was ready for what awaited us either.

 As it turns out, Some two and a half-hours away from the heart of Tokyo by train, is Nokogiriyama, the Sawtooth Mountain. It's not as imposing as it sounds, and makes for quite a brief, friendly hike. So too is there the option of using a rope-way and getting to the top in less than four minutes. But it's not the mountain that makes Nokogiriyama such an amazing find, as lovely as the view is from the top. It's every little thing along the way.
 Starting from Hamanakaya train station, one can easily reach the top of the mountain in an hour and a half. The hiking trail is at least as friendly as Mount Takao's, and leads you through gaps between cliff faces while often putting the backdrop of the neighboring towns directly behind you, allowing you to see the altitude you're gaining.

Pictures can't describe how amazing this looks, truly.

 The first stop of notice, near the summit, is the towering likeness of Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, the Hyakushaku Kannon. Carved into the face of a cliff, the Hyakushaku Kannon is like something out of fantasy. Overlooking a square shrouded in the shadows of trees looming far overhead, the carving stares straight into another cliff face, effectively creating a gigantic stone hallway. Finding such a thing in Chiba was like finding a pot of gold in my backyard.
 The Kannon itself would've been enough to make the trip worth it, but on top of that, just a little further on, one reaches the summit of the mountain, which offers a perfect 360 panorama of the surrounding area, unhidden by tall trees and other such obstructions. With hawks circling the forests and the beach and sea within plain sight, the summit of Nokogiriyama is one of the most satisfying rewards for a hike, despite the modest height of the mountain itself. Even the view below is unobstructed, and one can easily look down and see the very same square where the Hyakushaku Kannon stands guard.

Yet there's still more. Descending the mountain from the other side puts you in sight of the 1500 faces of the Guden Koga's Arhats. The 1500 statues are of varying sizes and practically line the whole face of the mountain. They have different facial expressions and are said to be carved out of stone from the Izu peninsula. Having taken almost 20 years to complete, they now serve in making the mountain one of the holiest sites in Japan. Unfortunately, many of the statues were defaced by Anti-Buddhist movement decades ago, but most still stand in all their integrity.

 And last but not least, sitting in a clearing, is the big man himself. The Great Buddha of Nihon-ji is the largest sitting Buddha in Japan, at 31 meters tall - a whole 17 meters taller than the one in Kamakura and 13 meters taller than the one in Nara. Carved by the same artisan as the 1500 Arhats from earlier (and his 27 apprentices) it's been restored to its former glory after countless years of wear and tear and erosion. Its appearance is meant to symbolize the existence of the whole universe as a "pure field confined within a lotus world" - whatever that may mean. I'm just quoting here.
 All in all, Nokogiriyama has been amazement upon amazement, and I went home quite happy with my discovery.
You're next, Saitama.

Night Time Stroll

Impressive for a hotel garden!

As Summer comes about, so too do all the bugs - most of them a nuisance. Cicadas and cockroaches, mosquitoes and centipedes, Japan's got all of that. But also fireflies!
 I decided to take a night time stroll to the Chizanso Hotel, which opened its garden to the general public for firefly viewing. Unfortunately, my camera does poorly when it comes to darkness, so pictures are a little sparse. The hotel, a massive, luxurious place in a little-known district of the city, sports quite a handsome garden, complete with a 3-story pagoda that was brought from the mountains of Hiroshima, which is quite a while away.

 When it came to the fireflies, I was actually quite surprised to find out that they're quite different from the ones I grew up with in the forested suburbs of Montreal. Quite a bit smaller, and a lot more timid. And boy, do Japanese love their fireflies. People crowded around the outskirts of the park's ponds, trying hard to spot them. They'd have quite a field day if they ever saw the big bastards in Canada.
 As the old local myth goes, fireflies are the embodiment of the souls of the recently departed. Whatever the case, it was a nice stroll, but you can't go in expecting to see the forest lit up by a thousand tiny lights, as they would have you believe with the posters.

Welcome to Alien Castle

I officially moved on May 10th, just about two months ago now, and just had my "housewarming." So I figure I might as well show you guys my new lair, too. Here's a brief tour. Please, come on over, I'll show you around.

Welcome to my humble abode!
 In front of the place is a "moat" of sorts. There's a small zen-garden fountain right at the doorstep. The moat fills will tadpoles and frogs the size of your thumbnail. They're content swimming around and I've never really seen one come out of the moat.
Eventually, they all disappear though. I suspect it's because birds eat them. They're kinda really vulnerable, black against white and with nowhere to hide like that. But I suspect they'll be back next year! The cycle of life, we call it. But don't just stop at the doorstep, come inside, by all means.







It's a two floor kind of deal! You can kind of see both in this picture. I've brought over my beloved 50 inch television, and bought a few new pieces of furniture, such as the couch and the desk the computer sits on. This picture kind of makes the room look messier than it is.
 I do tidy up after myself!

 The bedroom's in the basement! It's a little cooler, so I can survive the terrible heat of summer. The queen-sized bed gives me lots of rolling around space. I guess that's not that humble.
The bathroom has no wall to separate it from the bedroom, just glass. That kind of takes some getting used to, but I dunno, it makes the whole thing feel like a penthouse pad or something, so I'm not against it at all.
 Notice my wood-carved dolls in the foreground! They survived!

Other cool shit:
 All the lights are dimmer-lights!
 The place was recently built!
 You can see the bottom floor from a grid on the top floor!
 There's a walk-in wardrobe!
 A pleasant upgrade, all in all.

Interesting Tidbits: Fun With Toilets

Most of my friends who've come to Japan has expressed surprise at the different kinds of toilets there are here. "What?", you say. "There's more than one kind of toilet?" Yes. Yes there is. Here's a quick guide. Emptying your bladder may never be a chore again!
 Nope, actually you still have to empty your bladder. But here!



 - THE CLASSIC

 Features:
  - Well, you can poop in it.


Alright, no one actually calls it "the classic." But if you're a westerner, your choice is pretty much this or a bush. It's a regular toilet, I've nothing to explain here.






- THE SQUAT TOILET

 Features:
- The squatting position allows you to empty your bowels easier.
- Don't fall backwards.

You can actually find these in many other countries than just Japan. They're basically a hole in the ground. I know lots of people who abhor these and avoid them at all costs. They're kind of archaic?




- THE WASHLET

Features:
- The temperature of the seat can be adjusted.
- Can be made to play a sound when you flush.
- Water jet with controlled intensity and direction.

The washlet is Japan's ultimate bathroom robot thing. It's basically toilet 2.0, and it's been drawing gasps from foreigners for years now. It's incredibly satisfying to sit down and not have to worry about freezing your cheeks.


And there you have it, Japan's three types of toilets! Go collect them all or something!