Oh the places you'll go... again, and again, and again.

Let me make something clear from the get go here: I hate trains. It's not a passionate hatred, more a fully formed and utter distaste. Maybe me and trains just got off on the wrong foot. My first railroad experience I was trapped (no I don't think thats too strong a word) in a cramped room with a fermenting balsamic vinaigrette salad watching cars pass the train all the way from Colorado to California. Thats my main beef with the American rail system the cars keep passing you, it's enough to drive a person crazy, how hard is it to make a train that goes at least as fast as the damn highway? That and the damn people who keep trying to summon you to the dining car to buy overpriced craptastic food. I realize this segue is taking longer than anticipated but I have to say, once I woke up at four in the morning in my compartment smelling of vinegar and the train was stopped... thats right full on stopped so the crew could sleep. Call me crazy I paid for non stop service to California. Long story short there is no love or trust in my heart for Amtrack.

All that having been said I make an exception in the dark pit of my hatred for the Japanese rail system (Shinkansen if you want to go native). The trains are pretty comfortable and clean, the people are respectful and quite, and above all these suckers are fast. How fast you ask? How does 200mph suit you? Yeah, thats right cities, and landscape fly by outside the window and those smug cars are left wondering what the hell just hit them. That being said as anyone who has ever been left alone with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and a romantic comedy can tell you there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. This is what we discovered on what I will refer to only as The Day of Epic Travel.

The day Dawned bright and noisy after our shameless carousing the night before. I can't tell you much about what went on that morning since I was in a inebriation induced coma for most of it. I gather people moved around and at one point Mike's girlfriend, who is very pretty by the way, came in and I can only imagine delicately picked her way around our fume belching testosteprone forms.

Also Nate is a hero, I will hear no one say otherwise. He made several runs to the 7-11 braving the all too sunny sunlight in order to get us the necessary provisions and remedies to restore us to the vertical plane. He did not do this because he lost a round of rock paper scissors or got the shortest straw in any sense, but because he's just that good of a guy. That's true heroism, he might as well have fought a grizzly bear with his bare (pun blatantly intended) hands in my mind.

Anyway after our normal morning rituals stretched well into the afternoon and were finally completed we bundled up our stuff, said a fond and grateful farewell to Mike and were off to the train station.

I should make note here that we were traveling (mostly out of Ian's manic need to be going somewhere and doing something) on the final day of one of Japans national holidays. Every hotel everywhere you could possibly think of was full. In retrospect we might have had better luck simply breaking into someones house and sleeping there since apparently no one was actually in their own bed in the entire damn country. Regardless we set off on the train to Hiroshima with nowhere to sleep only the other end, content with in the knowledge that at the very least between the four of us we could probably forcibly evict some poor transient from their cardboard box for the night.

The train was standing room only, a new experience for us. Instead of our normal comfy reserved seats we found ourselves squatting in a line in the hallway outside the bathroom staring longingly at the person who had managed to snake the corner and fallen asleep. Eventually I got that corner. It took me an hour and a half and I only had it for fifteen minute before we got off, but it was awesome.

Getting off the train in Tokyo we decided that Hiroshima with standing room only was a bad idea and we should bail to Osaka for one night. Handily enough there was a train bound for Osaka just leaving we hastily hopped about and gratefully plunked down in the first available seats. There is an old adage patience is a virtue, I say to you now truer words were never spoken, if you ever find yourself taking a train take a moment to survey your environment and choose the best possible seats. We were in the smoking car.

The next two hours would have given a southern baptist preacher a new and detailed view of what hell is. Smoke rolled up in columns from between old wrinkly lips and filled the car with a palpable smog. Occasional coughs and splutters were enough to let you know roughly where the other passengers were and which ones were still breathing, in the very loosest sense of the term. When the train arrived we all emerged smelling vaguely like nicotine jerky and feeling sorry for ourselves but most importantly in one, well I guess technically four, pieces.

The next challenge: Lodging and food for the night.

Solution: Internet parlor and adjacent overpriced eatery.

Now I've been overcharged for a meal but this was every travelers nightmare, so I will touch on it only briefly. The service was awful, all the dishes arrived at different times, the portions were small and expensive, no waiter spoke more than ten words of English, and when the bill came they had magically tacked on 2000 yen for something we didn't order... the water maybe? Anyway glancing around the table we tried to decipher from the others faces whether or not we should pay or fight it. Then I saw Ian reaching for his pen mumbling something about how we would fight this thing in the universal language of mathematics. I quickly paid the bill and we left.

Internet parlors are very cool, we should get some in the states. They are essentially low lit buildings stocked with manga computers and gaming systems. One can rent out booths of various sizes for an allotted amount of time and go to town on pretty much whatever you feel like doing. Some of the larger cubicles have doors and padded floors so you can take a nap... we did not get one of these. Instead we got two of the smallest cubicle available and crammed two people into each one. I would love to say it was an amazing experience but as the night wore on me and Ian fell asleep on the floors of the cubicles (I was later awoken by a clerk and asked to stop snoring, the ass monkey) and Nate and Dane stayed up all night on the computers in what I can only assume was the most badass Internet fiesta of the recent 21^st century.

In the morning we awoke bleary eyed and rested to varying degrees, Ian having gotten the most sleep until someone clumsily dropped a set of headphones on his face in the early hours of the morning. We packed up out stuff and I stole enough mini toothbrushes and razors from the bathroom to feel we had really gotten our moneys worth, then we left.

Now as I mentioned before some of us were well under-slept so we decided to take another train to Tokyo just to sleep. We did. I wish I could tell you it was exciting but unless you get off on the image of four men gently snoring for three hours I'm afraid it really wasn't.

We grabbed lunch in Tokyo. The same place the other guys ate before. It really is as good as they said, try the dumplings. Then we hopped on a train back to Osaka, more gentle snoring, and finally to our original destination Hiroshima.

I wish I could tell you that there was a air of solemnity and thought provoking realization as we got off the train into the living monument of what may be the greatest martial blunder in human kind's history. But we were all still very tired and so perhaps the initial magnitude was somewhat lost on us, or at least me. I can tell you the air there was like nothing I've ever smelled before. As a general rule the air in Japan even the cities is pretty clean, I'm from Boulder I should know. But here there was an acidic tang with a slight undertone of gunpowder that seemed to hang about everything. Also walking in the streets felt slightly unsettling, like the feeling you get when you walk through a graveyard.

After a quick tram ride we reached our hostel and introduced ourselves to our attractive coed roommates. As I recall it was something along the lines of:

“Hello beautiful German girl.”

“Hello, how are you?”

“Oh I'm fine, haven't showered in forty eight hours and am dog tired but fine.”

“Thats great! Would you like to come out drinking and do karaoke with me and a few friends?”

“Why sure that would be just dandy! Let me just grab my … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”

Semper fi.

S.

A few days in Utsunomiya

Hello boys and girls, it's Ian again. After Shan's party the night before, we spend Saturday gently recuperating in Mike's apartment, until 5:00 when we met six of the nurses from Friday. Since dating in Japan is a group activity (at least the first few times) we decided to take them bowling. Japanese bowling lanes are far better than American ones, in my experience. They're cleaner, they're more regular, and they have screens on the back wall playing music videos. The only similarities were in the cheesy animations they played on the score monitors when you got a strike or a split or whatever.

In the first game we did not do well. The Stars and Stripes were soundly trounced by the Red Circle. Then the girls upped the stakes. In this bowling arcade there was a ridiculous suit of a bowling pin, complete with a face hole and little arm holes. Words can't describe it, just go see the photos. The girls decided that whichever guy had the lowest score would have to wear the suit. Needless to say, our games improved dramatically. I ended up losing, so I was put in the suit while everyone else laughed and took photos. In a show of masculine solidarity, though, all the other guys took turns in the suit. There are pictures of them too.

After bowling we tried some of the Japanese gambling machines because one of the girls had won some free gamling tokens. They're fairly incomprehensible; you put a token in a slot so it lands on a tray that moves in and out, but you try to place it so that it will push a pile of other coins over the edge and into your tray. I didn't really get it. We left pretty quickly and took the girls to get sushi (thank god it's not as expensive as it is in the States). We made pleasant if limited conversation, and then parted ways at about 11:00. All in all it was a great evening.

The next day Dane and I went with Mike, Joey, and Luke to the beach while Shan and Nate stayed with the apartment. The sun was high, the water was a little chilly for my taste, but the wind was awful. Everything below the kne was constantly sand-blasted. Joey dug a trench with the shovel he brought, which offered some protection, but after a couple hours we left. We stopped in a shopping mall for ice cream, and Dane and I got some swimsuits.

That evening we all decided to go to the onsen (Japanese public baths). One of my top ten reasons to live in Japan, if you're okay with nudity. This place had an outdoor hot spring, a steam room, a sauna, a cold plunge, little one-person baths with massage jets, and a bath with an electric current in one corner, so you could sit and be constantly shocked. I'm not sure what therapeutic value it has, but it felt cool. The whole place was incredibly relaxing.

The next day, Monday, was probably our most relaxed day so far. We stayed around the apartment, did some shopping, and took it easy until that night, when Mike mentioned he had some alcohol he wanted to get rid of. I think we all remember how that went.

We'll catch you up on the rest of our adventures tomorrow. Peace!

ian

Utsunomiya again

Yes ladies and gentlemen it's me. Some of you probably thought I was dead or illiterate or something. I assure while one or more of these may have occured it was dealt with and I'm back. Although whether I'm back by popular demand or because I have three very angry men staring accusingly at me right now is a matter on which I'll decline comment.

There is a strange feeling one gets after being a train, I find it's even worse when you fall asleep. The only thing I can equate it to is when you take one of those really heavy naps and wake up not knowing where you are or what you're doing, only when you do this in Japan there's the added bonus of everyone speaking a different language too.

Anyway we emerged in Utsunomiya still wandering in post train limbo and were promptly greeted by the friendly face of Mike, the awesome uncle every young man wishes he had. He whisked us off to his apartment, a very pretty little place just off the major river in Utsunomiya. Where we collapsed gratefully all over the floor and all slipped off into dreams wondering what teaching two classes of cute nurses would be like.

The next day dawned brisk by Japanese standards, which is to say 75 degrees with humidity, never have sweatshirts been so useless. On the way over Mike gave us the briefing on how the classes were going to work, he had made lists of questions and answers. Basically what we were going to do was demonstrate the questions and then separate off into the class and work with whichever girls we felt like. Questions included: How old are you, how long have you been in Japan, whats your email, whats your phone number, would you like to meet me for coffee... Ok so maybe they weren't very subtle but Mike is still wicked cool.

The first class went really well. The girls were happy and giggly in all the right places Mike standing like some kind of tall Irish romantic ringmaster in the middle of the room directing their attention at us. The second class was a bit more reserved. Although granted they had a bit more to take in off the bat what with Mike parading the entire first class into the room and making everyone sing me happy birthday. Oh yes, did I metion it was my birthday that day? Well it was I'm twenty now, bon voyage to the teenage years, you were fun, can't say I'll miss you that much. Anyway the embarassment did not end there before the other class could leave the room Mike made sure that every girl wearing blue gave me a kiss on the cheek. He later confided in us that at a quick glance around the room he saw the prettiest girls were mostly wearing blue. I'm pretty sure Nate also took a video in which he swears I'm blushing so deeply I glow, if enough requests come down the pipe I'm sure he'll post it somewhere and embarass me further. The whole thing concluded with a kind of Japans most eligible bachelor contest where the girls voted on which of us they would most like spend additional time with. The score stands thus:

Ian: 9
Nate:14
Dane:15
Shan:23
Mike:10

Personally I think they were generous with me because it was my birthday but hey, it was still a good feeling.


After class there was much email exchanging, Ian got one number, and enough pictures to make King Kong run for cover. Nate put it best, "Well now we know what national monuments feel like." Then we took a taxi into town and got lunch, we also got a lesson from Mike in how to chat up the bints in the local lingerie shops. Nate also picked up a nifty leather jacket. We then did our normal thing and took in the town grabbed some drinks to start off my birthday night and headed home to dress up.

Later that night we went to a couple bars, one painfully American the other painfully expensive and wound up in a nightclub dancing like maniacs until the wee hours of the morn. Dane went home early, Nate played it cool, I karate chopped a metal chair while dancing, and Ian got his groove on.

The night ended with me and Ian sitting watching the river near Mikes apartment passing a bottle of water back and forth. We talked like old friends talk, about nothing in particular but in a very meaningful way. We were there and that was enough, then low and behold another Tanuki walked by, they really are very interesting creatures...

So that was my birthday, I assure you we are trying to catch up on the events as fast as possible, but life just keeps rushing by faster than our fingers can type it.

As always Semper fi,
S.

Nara

Ahem.

I realize that in composing my last post, I may have imbibed more than is seemly for a gentleman in social circumstances. This--ah--incident shall not repeat itself. Hopefully.

For our second day (Thursday) in Kyoto we split up. Nate and Shan decided to take it easy in the city, and Dane and I would go to Nara, one of the former capitals of Japan and a city famous for its shrines. After one of our trademark train dashes, we managed arrived in Nara just before noon.

The first thing I noticed was how many gaijin there were. Every few hundred meters there was a foreigner, and the locals took advantage of them. Every 500 meters there was a billboard map pointing the way to the next shrine, and on every block at least three overpriced restaurants were doing business. My hopes of finding a decent meal for cheap fell sharply.

Still, Nara is a nice enough city. The streets are clean, there are tiny loudspeakers that play soothing music (which freaked me out) and there are tame deer. Small, delicate, friendly deer. They let you pet them, and you can buy biscuit to feed them (we didn't). According to legend, a god rode into the spot that became Nara on a white deer, so the deer are sacred animals.

Dane and I walked maybe 10 kilometers that day, and saw most of the sights. The pagoda and temples were beautiful, but I didn't see anything that impressed me the way Kyoto had. The most noticeable feature of Nara for me was the lanterns. Everywhere, these stone lanterns. One of the guide plaques said there were 3,000 of the damn things. I'm curious who paid for it all.

Eventually we got hungry and tired and found lunch in a convenience store before returning to Kyoto, where we met up with Shan and Nate to go back to Utsunomiya. Shan will continue the story there.

Peace,
ian

'Sup mother fuckers?
I'm drunk off my ass right now, so I'm posting out of sequence, but just giving a heads up. We've been in Utsunomiya for the past few days, staying with Mike (total baller by the way), and we just helped him finish off some alcohol he had lying around. I just want to say we started with eight bottles five hours ago, and now four are empty and none of the others are more than half full. We've had Captain Morgan's, Shouchou, a few fruity liqueurs, and a bottle of champagne, but the most disgusting drink of the evening may have been some 160 proof chinese shit, which is apparently fermented soy sauce. Anyway, we're fine so far, although that may change in the morning, and soon I'm going to post about Dane's and my trip to Nara while we were in Kyoto. Just wanted to say I love you all, and that's one thing that won't change when I sober up. Peace!

ian

Kyoto

Wells boys and girls, its time for a little culture. After saying our good buys to Joey and Ton, we all hopped on then first Bullet train bound for Kyoto. Four hours later, *POW* there we were, smack in the middle of one of the only cities that the USA did not bomb into the ground during WWII, leaving Kyoto one of the last places in Japan where you could see temples and castles that actually housed Emperors, Shoguns and Samurai. Departing the train station, we went in search of the hostel that we would be staying in for our two day blitz of Kyoto.
The tomato house: a little, cramped, back alley shit hole of a prison that gave us a small room we could all stay in. Who ever the architect was who managed to fit two bunk beds in that windowless, box should be given a medal, and the person who decided not to put at least one small hole-in-the-wall to let the smell of man stank and socks out... that dumb-ass should be shot. Oh well, this was home for the next two days, and we would just to live with it...that was out attitude until one of went to the bathroom and was graced with the unpleasant discovery that, despite being clean as a whistle and having a window to ventilate, the smell of sour piss and vomit had soaked into every wall, crack, every surface smelled a special breed of nasty....lovely.
Anywho, we all managed to survive the night, no one choked to death on man-nasty, and we awoke to a very excited Ian who informed us that he had found a route that would take us straight to several large temples and ended in a massive castle complex. Well, that was what we were in Kyoto for, so we set off in search of ancient culture and profound experiences.
Interesting fact: I cannot stay in temples in Kyoto for more then five or ten minutes. I am still unsure as to why, but I can look around, see the lovely architecture, the paintings and shrines and then my body up's and walks out the doors " that was nice, all for now folks, we are out of here." And my poor mind is there wanting to stay "but, but, but we want to explore, to take in the sights, smells the culture the...of fine" This ended up being true for every temple we went to in Kyoto. It really felt like you would imagine it feeling if someone danced on your grave, a full body fuck-that-shit.
What can you do? We continued on, and after much questioning of Ian's directional abilities
(which are about on par with a drunken snails....or at least that's what he said) we arrived at Kyoto castle. Or rather, we had found the outer defences of Kyoto castle: A 30ft wide mote followed by a 10 meter wall sloping up to a heavily wooded forest on the fringe of the castle grounds...impressive I believe was the word we were all looking for at the time...and then we got inside the main gate. Fighting our way through throngs of school children and tourists, we took a brief, rather disappointing, tour of the main castle. The two high points were that we got to see some original paintings of the castle, very cool, and the nightingale floor. Wooden floors built to squeak so that no one could sneak up on you in the castle, very Japanese. Apart from those, the gardens were very beautiful, the grounds very pleasing, and the buildings stimulating....but everything was so dead it almost brought tears to my eyes. Here I was in a country I have always felt an affinity with, experiencing some of the last reminisces of a way of life I have always loved and respected only to find its spirit prostituted to the point that I could not even feel a glimmer of its former magic.
At least I will always have my Japan
The next day Ian and Dane jumped on a train to Nara, another one of the previous capitals of Japan. Disappointed by the previous day's exploits, Shan and I felt a bit cultured out and decided to have a quiet day. After checking out of the Tomato house (YAY!! good bye room-o-man stank) Shan and I decided to explore Kyoto and see what adventures this city had to offer.
All I have to say is that I hope Nara was hell-a-fun because...well, you will see :)
After treking around little back allies for about fifteen minuets, Shan and I experienced an overpowering wave of curiosity as to where the massive stair case in front of us led. Giving in to temptation we started climbing and finally got to a long corridor full of high school band members, lounging around, playing, chatting in close kit groups, all in all an intriguing sight. Continuing on, we heard the distant excited cries of many voices, determined to find the source of the commotion, we rounded a corner and...what do you know, out of anywhere we could have gone in the entire city, we end up in Mecca : the middle of a multi high school cheer leading competition...go team. After giving each other very satisfied and approving nods we found ourselves seats on a colossal stair case. After a few moments, we looked up and noticed where we were : A building the exact proportion of large, there were gardens, a hotel, theatre playing Beauty and the Beast, shopping mall and many food courts and a train station, I shit you not. And then we looked up...a web of metal piping and glass wove itself above us covering everything except for the far ends of this complex which were open air. The next three and a half hours were occupied with us watching several hundred flexible, smiling beautiful women fly through the air and dance while accompanied by bands that were tremendously talented, in one off the most amazing buildings either one of us had ever been in.
Time went by, and all too soon we needed to meet Ian and Dane, but not before we ate a delicious lunch of noodles in miso. We all met up in time for our train and enjoyed a very peaceful journey home.
That's all for now folks, thanks for tuning in
Nate out

Camping and Hiking

Greetings readers!

By now you are probably frustrated with our laziness. We were never meant to be bloggers, except maybe Nate.

Anyway, all your frustrations will be alleviated today.

Definition of a term:

Gaijin: (n)
Japanese for foreigner

Last you heard, we were about to go camping with some of the local gaijin. We headed up to the campsite in Nikko, with Mike and Joey. We pitched our tents next to a creek in the shadow of a massive flood control dam, which was made of 3ft (diameter) steel pipe. A ten minute hike up the creek revealed two smallish dams, which comprised the rest of that flood control system.

We returned back to the camp just as the sun was setting. We ran around and grabbed as much wood as we could before it got too dark. Starting the fire was hellish, as it had rained just the day before. With the help of a flimsy cutting board and much flapping by Joey, we managed to fan the fire to life, only to have it die down the moment Joey stopped.

It was well after dark, and all the potato chips were gone by the time the others showed up. Three more gaijin joined us: Mark, Dayne (woot!) and Rory. Mark is the master firebuilder, and within 15 minutes he had a roaring fire going. We tossed potatoes wrapped in foil into the coals and broke out the wine. What ensued was a night of cheap wine, baked potatoes, sausages, and much revelry. At one point we all ended up jumping in the creek (freakin' cold water). Anyway, after much drunken singing and bag o' wine, we all crashed.

The next day dawned cool. We stumbled out of the tents and made oatmeal and toast, and then cleaned up and hiked back to the cars. Mike, Mark, Dayne and Rory all went back to Utsunomiya, and then Joey took us all up to a trailhead.

The area we hiked in was under some very interesting construction. We hiked a ways, past several huge dams, and eventually made it to the site of the construction.

The workers were concreting the side of the mountain. They were piping huge amounts of concrete into enourmous grids on the side of the mountain. A good portion of the mountainside was already covered with concrete. Supposedly this project is to prevent erosion, but Joey has a theory that some politican has a stake in a concrete company.

Once we passed that slightly disturbing, yet very impressive feat of engineering, things became much more natural. We passed several Shinto shrines, and then we came upon a rather eerie sight.

There were probably 100 or so small statues of children kneeling in the forest, clustered around a mother statue. They were carved out of white stone, and all faced the same direction. Joey said that they were for all the children who are stillborn or miscarried. Out of respect, we didn't take any pictures.

The next shrine we came to was the size of a small house, perched on the side of  the mountain. It was of simple construction, but still looked very japanese.

We rounded the corner and came upon a steel bridge that crossed a gorge. We went across and made our way down into the gorge. We had to hop the river several times as the canyon walls got closer together. We made it about 100m up the gorge before the river banks turned into sheer rock walls. Joey pointed out a rope hanging from the side of the very steep bank. We hauled ourselves up the side of the mountain, and eventually made it to the road that the trucks use. After a very balmy walk and a tanuki (similar to a raccoon) sighting, we made it back to the car, starving and exhausted.

We drove down into Nikko, and stopped by Joey's Mother-in-law's noodle shop and had a massive and delicious lunch.

Back at Joey's place, we showered and then all passed out.


 

Nikko shrines

Well, a brief update: it's Wednesday night and we're all safe and sound in Kyoto. You'll hear about that soon enough, but for now let's catch up on the events of our first weekend.

On Sunday Joey, Mike, Ton, and Luke took us to Nikko to see the temples there. Nikko is one of the spiritual centers of Japan, similar to Kyoto but smaller and closer to nature. The whole town is nestled in beautiful forested mountains. On the first trail we hiked there was a row of buddhas by the side of the path. Japanese buddhas don't smile like Indian or Tibetan buddhas, but they all share an expression of complete, unflappable serenity. Some of them were missing heads or were gone entirely, which Joey said was because of a flood that tore through the valley years ago.

After that hike Joey and co. took us to a trail that was full of temples. Unfortunately I couldn't understand the ubiquitous Japanese tour guides, and I was still too jetlagged to remember what Joey was telling me, but I do remember seeing a gate said to be so beautiful you could stare at it forever and not be bored. This gate was gilded, lacquered, ornately carved with depictions of animals, the works. I ended up giving it about five minutes.

We also saw the sacred stables, which house the (descendants of the) sacred white horse given to the Shogun by the Maori, on which are carved the famous "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." Shan ended up buying a small golden katana for 3000 yen at the gift shop, which convinced me to get a small golden kyudo arrow for the more reasonable price of 1000 yen (about $10).

We saw many more temples, but without the names of each one I can only give an overall impression. The temples were all dimly lit, with huge altars for the buddhas or Japanese gods. The level of detail I saw in the art and architecture was breathtaking; huge statues, snarling demons' heads, and immense golden lanterns were all painstakingly crafted and astonishingly beautiful. The respect these places were given was almost tangible. Everyone took their shoes off before entering, and everyone spoke quietly. I found myself doing it not to avoid offending the locals, but to avoid offending whatever lived in the shrine.

The last thing we saw was a small shrine at the end of a road lined with stone lanterns. The shrine boasted a haunted lantern with a dozen or more sword nicks at the base, apparently because guards standing watch late at night would often mistake it for a ghost or an intruder. We also saw a katana more than two meters long. After that we took a short hike through the forests of Nikko and went to our campsite. You'll hear more about that soon.

ian

HOWDY FOLKS

Nate here, sorry it has been so long since you all have heard anything from our neck of the woods, lots has happened in the last few days, so settle back for a nice long reading. I believe that the last time we chatted we had yet to visit Toyko, so here it is: Leaving our honourable fallen (shan), Ian Dane and I grabbed ourselves tickets on the bullet train bound for Tokyo. It will never cease to amaze me how easy it is to get from place to place in this country, especially if you have in your possession, a JR pass, unlimited travel on any public transport associated with the East Japan rail company...which is a SHIT TON! anywho, we got tickets, boarded the train and settled in for the hours ride from Utsonomyia to down town Tokyo. Now, I am aware that this may come as a bit of an obveous statement, but DAMN SON, them bullet trains are fast like no man's business. Once we started moving, we were all impressed with how fast the train was gliding the miles away...and then we got to a straight stretch and out of first gear...over the next 30 seconds the increasing highte of my eyebrows were directly proportional to the acceleration of the train. Thankfully we leveled out to a steady speed just before my eyebrows vanished into the desert of my scalp. Other then that, there was no real excitement this train ride, several stops to vaguely pronounceable places later and, Hell's yeah, we were in Tokyo. Departing the train, our little minds reeled with the infinite possibilities now before us when it suddenly hit us: we had absolutely no idea how to get out of the train station. Fifteen minutes and three different sets of directions later and we emerged from the east entrance of the Tokyo station. I have no idea about the others, but at that point the complete vastness of this creature that was Tokyo started to make itself clear to me, North, South, East or West, movement, activity, silver matalic, gleaming life beating, flowing, pulsing, pumping gliding, this way, that was, every way, no way, there was no escape. I admit that in this moment culture shock hit with the force of a freight train, rarely have i felt to small, and i was just that, in every since of the word, i was small. I allowed this experience to wash over me until the growling in my stomach brought me back to ground zero and the truth that no matter how small i found myself suddenly feeling, i still had an immensely large hunger that was not going to wait on my existential crisis and so, exercising our group ability of low level telepathy, we all went in search of food. As we circled from one restaurant window to another, the question quickly became not "where do we want to eat?" But rather "which little shack are we going to give the privilege of assaulting our wallets in exchange for a smell of food?". Our die was cast, we had chosen, and as we walked to our culinary fate on the second floor of this establishment I wondered just how bad we could get over charged for the meal that we were about to have. Images of clubs we could have gone to, adventures we could have had, temples we would now never visit flashed briefly through my mind as we found our seats and set about deciding our private financial suicide. A young woman with an electronic pad took our orders then returned to her tasks, which included serving food delivered to the second floor via elevator, cleaning the finished dishes and returning them on a different elevator to the kitchen below.This amused me for a time, watching her mechanical precision taking orders, cleaning, serving, all without missing a step. And then our food came, oh sweet mirciful God, a bowl of noodles in broth the approximate size of BIG with a side of rice and eight dumplings with dipping sauce for the modest damage of about eight dollars...we could not decide which to be shocked about first, the size of our meal, or the unbelievable price. As we did not have enough jaw to drop over both of them, and seeing as our mouths were already open...we decided to fill them first, ogle later. For those of you who know me also know that i can put it away for a smaller person, i have even been known to almost eat myself into a coma, and i have no shame in saying that half an hour later, not myself, nor anyone at the table could eat everything in front of them. Both very fat and very happy, the three of us staggered out into the rainy world in search of a place to sit and settle into pleasant unconsciousness. One quarter hour of listing from street to street we found an out of the way park with semi dry, semi covered seating on the banks of some dirty little river and parked ourselves. As most of the blood in my body migrated to the mammoth task of digesting the mountain of food in my belly, my mind wandered back to two encounters that greatly moved me that day, the first was of a man methodical sweeping leaves off of the side walk with a wicker broom. Our host father Joey told us that everything to these people was an art form, this was no exception. The man took time with each and every leaf, carefully sweeping it exactly where he wanted it before moving on to the next leaf. Time wise, this was not at all efficient, but to witness the single minded intensity with which this man made such simple task the entire purpose of his existence in that moment, it was beautiful to watch. The second glimpse into the heart and soul of these people had come as we were search for food in a little back alley. A man in uniform, most likely a police officer, was dutifully praying at a shrine, repeatedly bowing his head in supplicated respect. " Even here" i thought "even in the most modern city in the world, in a place where someone can go their entire lives with out seeing the stars or a real sunrise, even in a world where mechanical perfection is the expected norm, even here, maybe especial here, there is room for a power greater than man, there is room for spirits, miracles and magic, and maybe ever room for God to squeeze in at the back.
Nate

not poetry, but no less true

Five little pinpricks of light so faint you could easily miss them, five little star weakly burning through the light pollution and a gap in the clouds. Five little stars so powerful that they brought tears to my eyes, five stars so small to guard a sky so large, five brave hero's holding back the darkness, five more reasons to look up into a sky that no one sees. Five giant smiles in my heart.
And then the clouds moved back
-Nate

Signing off from day 1

Well it's been a helluva day. I can't really say I have anything to add to what the others have said. Past a certain point four people posting about the same events would just be redundant. I mean Rashomon is a great book, but that doesn't mean you want to read it every day. Anyway I guess I'll knock off here as my personal health is not so amazing after a stressful few weeks.
As always we remain yours, semper fi.
-Shan

Well, some one has to talk about it

Hello all you awesome people, Nate here and I am Blogging about our toilet today. Thats right, our port-o-John, our porcelain temple. The first in a decent list of amazing features of this modern comfort actually has nothing to do with the toilet itself. Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that the home of this little wonder has hard wood floors, and, get ready for it, slippers, yes thats right, slippers. So now for the late night bathroom adventurer, he or she can now go about their business in total comfort.
Once you have assumed the business position, there is a rather sizable library of books for one to enjoy.
Now, on to the thing itself... Given this build up, you the reader may be mislead to think that precious stones are involved, or perhaps flashing lights and little singing voices but you would be sorely mistaken. The grand finale, the big sha-bang, the moment you have all been waiting for .......when you flush, some of the water from the pipes, not the toilet bowl, goes to a sink that is part of the toilet, so when you flush, you get a 2 for 1 deal of getting to wash your hands and...well, you know the other one.
Well, thats about all I can go on about a toilet for now.
PEACE!
this information comes at the request of Ian

First day in Japan

Hello all,

Well, since we didn't get deported yesterday, here we are in Japan. We got out of the house by 9:00 and walked around the city we're staying in (Utsunomiya, population 400,000). The first place we found was a gaming parlor, and those things are AMAZING. You pay for the time you spend in there, and you get a fully-stocked library of manga, a cubicle with a computer and internet (and a very cushy floor, and slippers), pool tables, darts, and karaoke. We spent half an hour in there for 300 yen a person.

After that we found the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store. Their English translations were hysterical; if I could find any advertising in the U.S. that thorough and polite I'd be more inclined to spend money. We also bought the most random Japanese candy we could find, which turned out to be really tasty (they're hard candies with sour centers).

Then we found lunch. The highlight of the day thus far: a sushi place that serves a plate for 100 yen. There's a conveyor belt going around a bar in the middle of the restaurant with plates of sushi, two on a plate, and you just pick them off, eat the sushi, and keep the plate. At the end they tally up the plates and charge you. We had four bowls of miso soup and about 40 pieces of sushi for 2100 yen. Did I mention there was green tea that you could make at your table for free?

One thing I really love bout this place is how respectful everyone is. I don't just mean everyone is polite (they are), but that people truly respect where they are and what they do. The neighborhood we're in is meticulously clean, and everyone we've met thus far has been amazingly helpful. Yesterday when we got our rail passes, the woman at the desk reserved us seats on the trains we needed to take and explained how the ticket system worked, the woman at the station who scanned our rail passes ran after us when she saw us going the wrong way and redirected us, and the security guard at the platform showed us where we should stand to get into the right car and then signalled us when our train pulled in. I defy you to find that level of service in America

So all in all, I love it here. I can't wait to see how the next two months turn out. I'll keep you updated.

So long,

ian

Greetings, readers

Dane speaking.

Two days ago, we set out from Boulder, CO. We are now in Utsunomiya, about 40 minutes by train north of Tokyo. Travelling is CRAZY.

Begin: 8:00 AM Boulder CO, Ian's house. Thanks to Zack for driving us to the airport. Anyway, we probably should have alloted more time to get to the plane, but in summary, we ended sprinting the last stretch, only to find out that the toilet on the plane was being repaired, so the plane was delayed.

Two hours later we landed in San Francisco, and realized that rather than having a 4 hour layover, we had a 90 minute layover. More rushing. Also, valuable wisdom: When travelling to another country, have plans already made to exit that country. They don't like having travellers with open-ended plans. But, in the end, we didn't have too much trouble.

The flight from San Francisco was about 10 hours total. The food was decent, and it was a fairly comfortable flight. We landed at the Narita International Airport at about 4:00pm local time. That's 1:00am in Boulder. We didn't get to our hosts' house until about 9:00pm local time. That's 6:00am in Boulder. It took us 20 hours to get to our hosts' house.

By the way, thanks a TON to our hosts, Ton, Joey, and Luke (their son) for picking us up from the train station, giving us food, a shower and a place to stay.

It's now 7:00am local time, and all of us are awake. I think I'll pass the torch to the next person.

G'bye
-Dane