3 day adventure

So time is really running out here in Japan so I thought I best do as much sightseeing as I can. This week I went on two really big ones and I'll try my best to remember all that I did.

The first was on Monday and I went to Awaji island with brother and sister Wade. They are the retired missionaries and Monday is their P day so they invited me along. I met them at the church around 9 then we headed off on the highway. I had only been on the highway one other time in Japan and that was the way home from the welcome party. So I took a lot of pictures of just the scenery from there and it was pretty nice weather that day so I think they came out pretty nice. Awaji being an island and all has a big suspension bridge connecting it to honshu. I believe it is the highest suspension bridge in the world. One thing I found really interesting about the highway is that almost everywhere has a toll and it is expensive. To cross the bridge and go about 30 mins south cost 5000 yen. Brother Wade missed his exit and he had to go to a toll booth, pay, then turn around and go back in the other way which ended up costing another 1000 yen.

So we stop at the other end of Awaji where the whirlpools (naruto) are supposed to be. We were there about 11ish and there didn't seem to be much of anything going on. Luckily someone told us that the whirlpools really start going at around 1. So we went back drove around and somewhat by luck found the boat tour place. Brother Wade amazes me because he will just go right up to people and talk to them in English. He got lucky and the lady at the boat counter spoke English and she recommend which time to go. Brother Wade will also sometimes just very bluntly say what little Japanese he knows to people. Like as I will explain later, we were looking for some place and he just pulls up to a gas stand shows the person the paper and says “DOKO”. This is an interesting logic brother Wade has because if he has to talk to them in Japanese how is he going to understand their answers? But even as a foreigner it just seems really really rude to me to say that. Like I when I ask for directions I go あのう、すみません。この所に行きたいんですけど、どう行ったらいいですか。 Like “um excuse me. I would like to go to this area but what might be the best way of going?” I can't say to a stranger “あさ、この所はどこの”　for it to be Japanese it needs to be unnecessarily long.

Ok so anyways we are on the boat and it is a breathtaking view all the way up to the bridge area and then you really get to see some nice stuff. Now I was thinking that it was one giant whirlpool but in reality its tons of small ones. It looks like this one spot of water out of the big ocean is going crazy. It didn't feel like the ship was in danger or anything but it was really cool and I think I might have goten some of my best pictures of this year there.

So afterwards we wanted to find the Japanese puppet theater. We got a map and it had a picture of the puppet on it and said ningyou on it. We were trying to find it and were going all over the place, and we were in some really rural places. For a while we were really confused why something like this would be all the way out here. We stopped for directions a few times and I got thrown in there trying to make sense of what they were saying. We eventually got ones that made since because we were heading towards the factory where they make them not the theater so thats why we got lost.

The theater was on like the top of the mountain and I wonder how it manages to stay in business. Anyways the Japanese puppet theater has a long history and like anime, was not made specifically for children but rather adults. The puppets are controlled by three people wearing a black costume and a black mask. The idea is that you are supposed to forget that they are there. I heard that modern tokusatsu shows are derived from this theater and after seeing it I agree. The idea that something is fake but if you just pretend that it is real then it really comes alive. The monsters in tokusatsu always look like a guy in a suit but like this theater it doesn't get in the way. The play itself is obviously several hundred years old as the script is read by one person off to the side who doesn't change their voice at all for different characters and talks in that crazy samurai style. I can not make any sense out of it. All I hear is NANINANI DE GO ZA RU!

So on the way back we stopped at a giant Buddha. Like this thing is HUGE, at least 7 stories tall. Almost Godzilla size. In fact I think these might be Japan's real defense against Godzilla. On the way back they dropped me off at Shinkaichi, I killed some time there then went home and planned for the next day, a trip to Nagoya.

So for Nagoya I woke up early, ate breakfast then headed off to Shinkobe station. I got a window seat for most of the ride and I spent a lot of time just admiring the scenery of middle of no where Japan. Like it was the kind of area that if JET sent me there I would find some way of quiting, nothing there. Before I knew it I was at Nagoya station. I got my bearings on a map and headed off to this bike rental store I found online. Using my PSP's GPS gizmo I walked and walked a good mile and a half until I got to the spot where the store was supposed to be. But it wasn't there, in fact the whole area was nothing but houses. I was really banking on the idea of having a bike to use but instead I had to make do on foot. So I walked all the way back to the station before heading off to my first actual destination, Nagoya science museum and park.

I didn't go to the museum just enjoyed the park and then headed off to the next park that was about a mile away. On the way I checked my PSP to see how far away it was and I found out that their was a Manadarake store pretty close to where I was, I decided to go there first. The store was located in the Osu shopping area, specifically on Akamon street. This Mandarake was done way differently then the one in Umeda. This one had a lot of old super sentai stuf. Like they had the super final form robot set from the series before zyuranger (mighty morphin PR) and all sorts of ones way older that I knew nothing at all about. I was hoping to find a good price on a figma figure but nothing that warranted buying another toy for myself.

So I headed back to the long park and went up it. This park is a mile plus long but only maybe 100 feet wide. It had traffic lanes on both sides of it. Towards the north was the TV tower that looks exactly like Tokyo tower except it was all gray. Once I got to the top I aimed for Nagoya castle, but first ate some curry for lunch. Nagoya castle is a reconstruction but it still was really nice. The area is huge, well maintained, lots of Japanese style garden stuff. I went inside one of the corner towers which may or may not have been an original but looked real. The castle itself is a museum but a cool one at that. One thing that really impressed me was an old style rifle that was like 6 feet long. I read the Japanese and it said that it was used for defending a castle. I'm surprised I haven't seen an anime character in a samurai era series walking around with a giant gun like that. The view from the top was pretty nice too. Oh also apparently it was a big deal for this town when they put the gold fish things on the very top of the castle so they are the cities mascot.

My next location was the Tokugawa park. At this point I came to a brilliant realization, Nagoya has subways! Rather then killing myself walking all of this way I should freaking use a subway! So I figured out how the lines work there and was off. The station was a little bit away from the park but there were signs as you exit the station so it was ok. The park was really nice, Japanese gardens have a certain something about them that I just cant explain.

After that I wanted to hit a few temples that according to my map looked not that far away and kind of in a row. After going a bit in the wrong direction I decided it was time to call it quits for the day because it was already 6 and I was dead tired. So I played around with my PSP found the nearest station and got to kanayama where my capsule hotel was. I made reservations to check in at 9 so I didn't want to go too early. I walked around the area for a bit but there isn't too much there, I ate dinner at McDonalds and around 8 went to the hotel.

The hotel is actually only two floors of this building which kind of surprised me. I got to the counter and checked in no problem but I don't think they even checked to see if I had a reservation I just filled the paper out. They gave me a wrist band with the key attached to it, I took my shoes off then went to the lockers. Since the hotel was all men I just changed into my Pjs there and checked out the capsule. They are all in rows and stacked two high. Inside is actually not bad. I had enough room to toss and turn just fine as I do in my sleep and it had a TV which I was able to watch some random anime where I think the people are in some sort of computer and a rerun of tsubasa. The only problem with the hotel was the pillow they gave me. Japanese pillows suck, a lot. They are all filled with something that feels like a very thick straw (drinking) cut into tiny bits. It feels like sleeping on a gravel.

So in the morning woke up, ate McDonalds for breakfast, finally found a map of the city at a tourist guide place in the station, and headed off to atsuya jingu. I took the subway so it didn't take too much time. It was a nice park but the main buildings were under construction. There was a national treasures museum there that I got lured into going by a giant katana. On the hiroshima trip I saw a giant sword but I think this is bigger. Like its longer then my body, its massive. Apparently it was used for horse mounted combat and by the looks of it, it would take out the rider and the horse in one swing. The rest of the stuff was cool, there were various swords and old clothes but I wasn't going to bother to try and read the Japanese on all of that stuff.

Afterwards I went back to the station and went to the station closest to nittaji temple. The walk from the station to this one was far and the heat was really getting to me, I drank like 5 bottles of Japan's gatorade like stuff that day. Nittaji was cool, very big, very wide open. I headed towards the next temple but according to the map there were all sorts of smaller temples along the way. So I headed down a path that kind of went through a neighborhood and I stumbled across some interesting temples here and there. There was a little bit of a nice nature trail in there too which was nice. My next goal was a bit off but I walked it. I walked through a much more business kind of area that reminded me a lot of Kobe. When I got to this temple what really stood out was the giant Buddha they had. This one was smaller then the one in Awaji but it was sitting down and still freaking big. I would say it was a bit more bigger then king kong. It had a hand seperate so you could see the size and it could grab you like a toy. Anyways it was cool.

So after that I headed towards a big park on the map. When I got there I found out it was all part of the zoo and I didn't feel like paying the admission and seeing a zoo by myself. I saw there was supposed to be another park up and to the left a bit so I went towards that but after getting a dead end, being tired, and the heat beating down on me I decided enough was enough and I should start heading back. I grabbed the nearest station and took it to a station a bit below where I the shinkansen station was. I figured I would walk up this last bit, hitting the temples along the way and that should put me right on time. I called my host mom but she didn't pick up her phone so I left a message. I checked my phone about an hour later and saw my host mom tried to call me 30 mins ago. So in my brain I automatically assumed my host mom got the message and was just saying “don't worry you can eat at home”, so I didn't call back.

I hit up the temples along the way and they were pretty cool, even though they are all pretty much the same I still like seeing them. At the last one there was an entrance to that Osu shopping center so I thought I would check that out. It wasn't too bad, the area as a whole is pretty big. Its like take shinsaibashi, mix in den den town, shrink it down to a little bit more then kobe's biggest shopping areas and you have Osu.

The way back to the station felt like it was taking forever. I don't know why but it seemed so far. I finally worked my way through the maze and the crowds to the shinkansen station, got on the train and was heading home. When I was at shinkaichi I called my host mom to tell her I would be a little after 7 for dinner and apparently she hadn't checked her voice mail, I don't think she knows how, so I felt really bad that I just out of the blue asked for dinner after saying originally I didn't need it. I don't know if was because of me or what but she was just starting dinner when I got there and host dad wasn't home until I was done eating.

It cost me about $120 for the round trip ticket and $2800 for the capsule hotel. It was really interesting to see that part of Japan and I am glad that there is now another part of Japan that I know of as a real place. But because I went by myself it wasn't that much fun, even though if I went with someone else I wouldn't have been able to do half the things I did. Nagoya is a decent city. It has all that you need without being so overbearing like Osaka and Tokyo can be. I think if I do JET I'll say that I wouldn't mind going to Nagoya, not my first choice but I'd be happy with it.