Akihabara

Akihabara is the electronics captial of Japan. You can find anything here that deals with electronics. ANYTHING. I'm not exaggerating. It's an entire town devoted to it. It's also the geek capital of the world. Alot of these people literally lose themselves here. They use this place to escape from the real world into a world of computers and Anime. At first I thought I would fit in here. I like electronics and I like Anime. Um...er...no. Disturbing is what is was. Don't get me wrong all things are good if you're balanced but the extent to which these people go is quite alarming. It's great to visit if you want to buy a computer or some anime, but these people live there, spend all their time and money here. I don't have pictures because alot of places won't let you take them. However I do have 2 videos. The first is of a rapping Santa outside of a store in Akihabara. Need I say more? The second is of a store that sells Gundam Models. For those of you who aren't familar Gundam is an Anime that is extremely popular in the US and Japan. I like it myself. This is ONE of the walls in this store. Insane.

Last Book Study

How weird is it that we no longer have a bookstudy? It's gonna take some getting use to, that's for sure but it seems that everyone is welcoming to the decision and are putting the free night to good use. Here are some pics from the last bookstudy here in Tokyo. We had alot of good food and alot of fun.

Samurai Museum

What's a trip to Japan without looking for samurai? A bad one, that's what. Here are some more illegal video and photos that I took at the Samurai Museum in Ueno. I wasn't suppose to take these but too bad! What's the point of showing this stuff off if you're not gonna allow people to take pictures of it. Typical Japanese. Enjoy.

Ueno Park - Performers

Part of the sightseeing on Tuesday included a visit to Ueno Park. The park is like Central Park in NYC. It's where a lot people come to visit museums and enjoy the nature in the park. We also saw several people performing songs and stunts. The first is a guy playing several instruments at once. The second is a young girl doing tricks on a uni-cycle. It's pretty cool, check it out.

Sightseeing

This past Tuesday I went to do some sightseeing around Tokyo. The first place I visited was The Tokyo-Edo Museum. This museum shows how Edo became the capital of Japan. It has a lot of interesting information that you don't commonly come across about Japan. One thing that surprised me that I learned there was that, the majority of the Samurai were actually poor and struggled to make ends meet. We usually hear about the Way of the warrior and all that but it was interesting to see that these men were like any other, simply trying to raise a family in a very hostile world. The world really hasn't changed much. I don't have a lot pictures because you weren't allowed to take pictures at certain exhibits...they usually were the ones that I wanted to take a picture. Go figure. Before I got yelled at for taking a video, I got a women singing a song while playing the shamisen. Enjoy the illegal footage. Hehe.

The Natto Man

Natto...not Naruto (which besides being an Anime is also a food) is a traditional Japanese food and is commonly eaten for breakfast in Japan. Since natto is made from soybeans fermented by natto bacillus, it is sticky and has strong smell and taste. Because of the smell, some people dislike eating natto. But, natto is known as a nutritious food in Japan, and the popularity has been increasing in recent years. (Official Definition of Natto) It's so popular that there's a Natto Delivery guy. What truly makes this delivery guy so special is that his truck plays this horrendously annoying song...that is looped to go on forever. On top of that it's REALLY LOUD! How this guy doesn't snap kill someone is beyond me. I thought I'd share this lovely song with you. I apologize for the camera shaking but I was trying not to laugh.

Visiting Shinjuku

I went with Rich on his tour of duty of teaching private English lessons last Wednesday. Two of his classes are in Shinjuku, which is about a 20 minute train ride from home. They have a huge train station there that is about twice the size of the Port Authority in NYC. Its pretty much the transportation hub of Tokyo. Super crowded and super easy to get lost. It's a cool place with lots of shops...super expensive ones. We all know that people in America can be very materialistic but it seems that Japan is desperately trying to catch up. It's all about the benjamins and brand names baby. One of the coolest things I saw was a guy dressed up in traditional Japanese clothing. Why? Dunno. But I was able to use my crappy Japanese to get him to allow me to take a picture. Christmas time is almost here and being in Japan it's rather confusing, simply because it's not a national holiday. Some people celebrate it, some people could care less. People don't usually get a day off for it either. And by celebrating I don't mean they actually go to church. Celebrating Christmans means simply buying a gift and saying "Merry Christmas" with a bad accent. Jesus doesn't even come to anyones mind. Which, when you think about it is a good thing, sense it's all wrong anyway. The lights by the Station were pretty cool, and it was nice to walk around at night. It was a pretty cool experience. In a few days we're heading to Akihabara and Harajuku for some electronic gadgets and some crazy costumes. (That's right Wes, I said costumes!) I brought extra batteries for the camera. Hopefully I'll be able to find Dad's models there as well.

Hikarigaoka Park

The weather has been pretty weird these past few weeks. One day it's super cold, the next day it's super warm. I took advantage of one of the warmer days and went the park located close to Rich and Kana's house. Alot of the trees still have their leaves and colors. The park reminds of Brookdale park back home. Enjoy the pics.

More pics of Making Udon

Make your own Udon?

The other night we went over a sisters to have a make your own udon party. For those who don't know Udon is a type of noodles that they eat here. It's like a really thick form of Ramen noodles. I don't cook so I thought I would be sitting down waiting for the udon to be done. Well that wasn't the case. The first picture I took was of all the sisters in the kitchen working. We joked that thats where the sisters belonged ...apparently they heard us because they put us to work. We thought we made good Udon until the sister's mom came home and showed us how it's don't. It was really cool to see the old japanese way to make udon. Everyone had a great time.

Bicycles in Japan

As I said in the previous post, bicycles in Japan are very common. Due to the high cost of gas, insurance and parking fees many people in Tokyo don't own a car. Instead they have bicycles that they use for shopping and taking their kids to school. You'd think with such a large amount of bikes on the rode people would know how to ride their bikes. But that is sooo not the case. In America when there are multiple bikes on the rode and they come upon a narrow pass or they have to let someone pass by the riders go single file so that no one crashes. It's an unwritten rule, one that doesn't need to be explained because, well because it's COMMON SENSE. This does not exist here. If you need to pass a group of bikes here, well strap on a helmet and LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!! cause someone is probably going to either run into someone else or have an extremely near miss. Rich warned me about it...I didn't believe him until I went riding on my own. In the end you end up getting use to it and can avoid possible pitfalls.

Mysterious Bunny Girl

A few days ago, I went with Rich to Nakano since he was going to have a lesson with one of his students there. At Nakano, they have an arcade, but it's not the American version of an Arcade. In Japan an Arcade is simply an outside mall. The place had a lot of cool shops selling crazy things. But some shops sold vintage stuff like muscle man, the original star wars figures and old WWF wrestling action figures. I also got suckered into playing this game that all you had to do was stop a flashing light on the right spot and you could win a PSP, Nintendo DS or Playstation 3. It was only a dollar to play...That's what I kept telling myself. It was my mantra. I'm not gonna tell you how much money I spent on it. Let's just say it was so bad that an older Japanese woman came by and told me to stop playing because it was a scam. Japanese people are very nice like that. At one of these shops they apparently had a girl with a bunny hat on that worked there. Why did she have a bunny hat on? Dunno, and my Japanese is horrible so I didn't ask. It's kind of hard to believe...so I took a video of her doing her thing which apparently is nothing. I'm terrible at taking videos (Wes where are you when I need you!?) but you get to see her.

In Japan for 5 days...

Hello Everyone,

This my first attempt at blogging so please don't expect to much. This was recommended to me as a good way to keep in touch while I'm away. Right now I can honestly say that it's everything I expected to be, granted it's only been 5 days but I haven't experienced that let down that I thought was coming. It's a very cool place to visit, but much cooler when you have friends here. Rich and Kana have been great at making me feel at home in Japan. Without them I'm sure I wouldn't be having nearly as much fun as I am now. Here's a picture of their house in Tokyo, very nice and spacious. Around the area many of the neighbors grow different vegetables year round. Its pretty cool. And to help with the harvesting they ask the students from nearby schools to help with the work. You can identify all of the kids because they wear different color hats, depending on their grade. The students in the picture have the blue ones on, today Rich and I nearly ran over three kids wearing yellow hats on our bikes. Reckless driving? I wish. Japan has an interesting phenomenon. Most everyone rides bikes, however very few people know how to navigate through crowds without almost crashing into people. I'll post more on that later and show you my totally cool and awesome bike. That's all I have to say for now, I have a lot of pics and videos to put up...just gotta do it...I'm lazy, but you already knew that.