31/05: Hiroshima - Hokkaido - Tokyo: we did it our way! (Japan, part 2 of 2)
Here I (Aniek) am also back again! Finally blogging again...finally..and how! It`s half past three in the afternoon, I curled up comfi on a big leather couch in our own compartment with two computers, free drinks ranging from cappuccino to slush puppy and a shower close by, for those of the customers that decide to spend the entire night here (and there seem to be many who indeed do this: gaming, watching DVD`s , reading one of the many mangas in the collection here.....) and my earphones even play 3fm, and have Giel Beelen shouting still the same lines as if it were yesterday that I listened his morning show for the last time. This all happens in the very centre of Tokyo, home to 12 million (uberhip) people including Takeshi and Kazu, our two Japanese friends that also studied in Copenhagen and that showed us yesterday again what partying in Japan is all about: KARAOKEEEEEE!!!
Anyway...lets travel back in time for two weeks: on the 15th of May we got to Hiroshima, or, actually, to Ono where Marjolijn kindly hosted us for the next days. It was a nice experience to for the first time during the trip meet someone again who actually knew before, to see a familiar face :)
We explored Hiroshima from there, being struck by the devastation that struck Hiroshima 60 years ago when the first atomic bombing was dropped there, let`s hope that will never ever happen again. The emptinees has now been replaced by modern buildings, a lively city with beautiful surroundings. These surroundings house forests, waterfalls and of course also japanese shrines, Shinto holy places that you can find anywhere throughout Japan. Regardless whether its a crowded area or a forest, whether skyscrapers look down on them or the beach is their neighbour. People go and wish and pray there as they have been doing for many many years. What they also have done for long time is fishiing shellfish when the tide is low during their lunchbreak. So..so did we!
Although Marjolijn had been living here already for two months, her thesis kept her from going out in Hiroshima and the fact that the thesis was finished and that I got awarded�@the grant for the upcoming research that day were reason enough to try Japanese cuisine and drinks!! That means eating in an Izakaya, where little Japanese dishes with a lot of (raw) fish are combined with Sapporo beer and sake. Japanese food is something entirely differnt from what we ever ate before. We are completely sure that indeed the Japanese must be emptying the sea, no dinner or breakfast without salmon/tuna/shrimps/octopus/shelfish/seaweed/squid: practically anything that lives in the sea is eaten. In the meantime we`ve tried the whole live cycle, from eggs to squid intestines and anything in between. And it`s best if you only find out afterwards what it is that you are eating.....Anyway, after the Izakaya we tried to have Japanese sake that appeared to be stronger than expected...untill we found out the next day that it wasn`t rice wine that we were drinking but Japanese whiskey....hmm....yeah! three dutch people confidently exploring Japanese cuisine! It reminded me of the time one of the first days I ordered four Misu (water) and ended up with four soup (miso)....after dinner....ahum. Apart from this the language is very difficult of course, but compared to Chinese also very rewarding. We can now say out loudly what our phrasebook says and people will more or less understand. That is nice for a change.We can get around now with `moshi moshi`, `arrigato` and `konnichiwa`... And as for modern words, you just add `o` : intanetto, hotto, ice creamo. etc...nice isn`t it?
Back to Hiroshima, or actually, our next step: all the way to Hokkaido to visit Julien and Fumiko! That they were living in Hokkaido was a brilliant excuse for us to try to get a travel as long as we had before in China. That`s hard to achieve in this country with superfast trains, but we managed to design a route that even required us to stay a night in Hachinohe (where we felt our first and only earthquake! `hey? are you moving? NO it`s you who is moving! euh...no..I`m not moving...euhm...look at the cloth hangers...THEY`re moving too...ah! that`s the reason :D`) . But in the end we got to Sapporo on saturday evening.�@With no hotel booked it was the ideal moment to try one of that vast range of accomodation that is available in Japan (pre-booked:Youth hostel, guesthouse, back packers hostel, business hotel, ryokan (traditional), minshuku (bed and breakfast) last minute: capsule hotels (yes! a `box`, unfortunately seldomly available to women), the internetcafes and.....love hotels!) It was the latter one we checked out. Love hotels being another amazing Japanese phenomenon: many of them are available in every major city and they are mainly used by Japanese couples to `rest`...euh...yeah right, so then you rent a room for three hours during daytime.(with your car discretely hidden in the parking lot, with if necessary false numberplates available). You can also `stay` the whole night, and it`s extremely cheap compared to youth hostel and... EXTREMELY luxurous. In return you get a theme room (ranging from aquarium all around you to Winny the Pooh or hello kitty), with...jakuzzi, microwave, coffeemachine, DVD player, beer fridge and...KARAOKE! Well...not much to sleep for us that night with karaoke and 24 season 5 in our dvd player...hahahahaha
Our subsequent stay in the `wilds of Hokkaido` (as our LP calls them) was great. We were hosted at the farm of Fumiko`s parents, around Shakotan in the western part. We got a course in how to use onsen (hot spring baths), that are very traditional and common to use. Go in (separate sexes), undress and bring only a `washcloth` (a little towel) and sit down on a little seat next to a tap where you start to wash yourself meticulously with soap (also your hair). Then take a indoor bath (hot!) and move on to the outside bath (hotter!) and make sure your wash cloth with which you cover you private parts never touches the water, it`s considered `dirty`. To prevent this you can fold it on your head. Then stay in the bath and watch sunset in the ocean...at least in Hokkaido....mmmmmm....... We also made a hike along the coast and helped planting the unions, whoehoe!! at 6.15 on the farmlands in Hokkaido, northern and most preserved parth of Japan...:) With our sun burn still present from�@Aso village, we couldn`t believe our eyes when we got to Ashidake near a national park and found a meter of snow on which we put our tent! Winter camping....who would have though that the snow we saw in Zoige and after which we sent home our Siberia clothes wouldn`t be the last one!?!?! It got even better: we cross country skied through the empty forests (only weary of bears!), climbed the vulcanic mountain navitaging on a compass with lack of signs, because of the snow and then finishing the day in an onsen surrounded by snow in the forest. Japan has so many sides AND sights!!!
It was a sudden change to descent again to Sapporo where we met Fumiko and Julien again, who in the meantime moved to Sapporo. Now we could explore the city WITH guides (and help to clean an extremely moldy fridge in which molds enjoyed a happy life for five (!) years and were now going to be removed by the new users of the fridge...Fumiko and Julien. Yes yes...we DO work from time to time haha euhmmmm planting onions, cleaning fridge and fishing shell fish euhm....)
Anyway, they took us for an all Japanese evening: Izakaya with lovely food and all-you-can-drink schedule, really Japanese and soon we saw red faced people walking around....(Japanese cannot process alcohol that fast, so one glass of alcohol makes their faces extremely red. NOT to mention the amount of alcohol Japanese business men tend to take together with their collegues) followed by our first box-karaoke (of which we had a lovely deja-vu last night!). We went in, hired a little room for 2 hours, with couches, a stereo installation, two microphones a TV playing the lyrics and a telephone to order food and/or drinks and then...it`s singing time!!!! You can choose from many many songs, sing together alone and our throats hurted the next moring after anything from `bare necesseties` to `everybody` got us singing!
The final goodbye the next morning was wayyyyy to early but luckiily the train ride to Tokyo was decently long, 10 hours. Our first day Tokyo we were again blessed, having Takeshi and Kazu as our local guides. It was wonderful to have this Tokyo reunion with them! Tokyo is as everybody tells you, and more....skyscrapers, buzzing streets, NEON NEON NEON, red light districts, drunk business men, goths, fashion victims around you, giant stored filled with electronic gadgets, the very bar from `Lost in Translation`, relaxing parks, an enormous metro network and disneyland....:D In the five days we`ve spend here we tried to explore it all and it`s been great. You need five additional pairs of eyes to be able to see all amazing things around you, and I wouldn`t be surprised if somewhere in this city it would be possible to actually buy such a thing ;)
Well..and this once again long story brings us to the point where we are now: in a few hours we leave to Narita, where our flight tomorrow will takes us to Bangkok. We`re looking forward to that, but in this trip it feels now as a bit of a weird appendix, having been able to enjoy so much time in the other countries we visited :) and then...yes then....Groningen is awaiting us tuesday morning again....Schiphol and dear readers, here we come!!! Or as Fumiko and Julien would confirm...danger danger! Dutch couple approaching!
Anyway...lets travel back in time for two weeks: on the 15th of May we got to Hiroshima, or, actually, to Ono where Marjolijn kindly hosted us for the next days. It was a nice experience to for the first time during the trip meet someone again who actually knew before, to see a familiar face :)
We explored Hiroshima from there, being struck by the devastation that struck Hiroshima 60 years ago when the first atomic bombing was dropped there, let`s hope that will never ever happen again. The emptinees has now been replaced by modern buildings, a lively city with beautiful surroundings. These surroundings house forests, waterfalls and of course also japanese shrines, Shinto holy places that you can find anywhere throughout Japan. Regardless whether its a crowded area or a forest, whether skyscrapers look down on them or the beach is their neighbour. People go and wish and pray there as they have been doing for many many years. What they also have done for long time is fishiing shellfish when the tide is low during their lunchbreak. So..so did we!
Although Marjolijn had been living here already for two months, her thesis kept her from going out in Hiroshima and the fact that the thesis was finished and that I got awarded�@the grant for the upcoming research that day were reason enough to try Japanese cuisine and drinks!! That means eating in an Izakaya, where little Japanese dishes with a lot of (raw) fish are combined with Sapporo beer and sake. Japanese food is something entirely differnt from what we ever ate before. We are completely sure that indeed the Japanese must be emptying the sea, no dinner or breakfast without salmon/tuna/shrimps/octopus/shelfish/seaweed/squid: practically anything that lives in the sea is eaten. In the meantime we`ve tried the whole live cycle, from eggs to squid intestines and anything in between. And it`s best if you only find out afterwards what it is that you are eating.....Anyway, after the Izakaya we tried to have Japanese sake that appeared to be stronger than expected...untill we found out the next day that it wasn`t rice wine that we were drinking but Japanese whiskey....hmm....yeah! three dutch people confidently exploring Japanese cuisine! It reminded me of the time one of the first days I ordered four Misu (water) and ended up with four soup (miso)....after dinner....ahum. Apart from this the language is very difficult of course, but compared to Chinese also very rewarding. We can now say out loudly what our phrasebook says and people will more or less understand. That is nice for a change.We can get around now with `moshi moshi`, `arrigato` and `konnichiwa`... And as for modern words, you just add `o` : intanetto, hotto, ice creamo. etc...nice isn`t it?
Back to Hiroshima, or actually, our next step: all the way to Hokkaido to visit Julien and Fumiko! That they were living in Hokkaido was a brilliant excuse for us to try to get a travel as long as we had before in China. That`s hard to achieve in this country with superfast trains, but we managed to design a route that even required us to stay a night in Hachinohe (where we felt our first and only earthquake! `hey? are you moving? NO it`s you who is moving! euh...no..I`m not moving...euhm...look at the cloth hangers...THEY`re moving too...ah! that`s the reason :D`) . But in the end we got to Sapporo on saturday evening.�@With no hotel booked it was the ideal moment to try one of that vast range of accomodation that is available in Japan (pre-booked:Youth hostel, guesthouse, back packers hostel, business hotel, ryokan (traditional), minshuku (bed and breakfast) last minute: capsule hotels (yes! a `box`, unfortunately seldomly available to women), the internetcafes and.....love hotels!) It was the latter one we checked out. Love hotels being another amazing Japanese phenomenon: many of them are available in every major city and they are mainly used by Japanese couples to `rest`...euh...yeah right, so then you rent a room for three hours during daytime.(with your car discretely hidden in the parking lot, with if necessary false numberplates available). You can also `stay` the whole night, and it`s extremely cheap compared to youth hostel and... EXTREMELY luxurous. In return you get a theme room (ranging from aquarium all around you to Winny the Pooh or hello kitty), with...jakuzzi, microwave, coffeemachine, DVD player, beer fridge and...KARAOKE! Well...not much to sleep for us that night with karaoke and 24 season 5 in our dvd player...hahahahaha
Our subsequent stay in the `wilds of Hokkaido` (as our LP calls them) was great. We were hosted at the farm of Fumiko`s parents, around Shakotan in the western part. We got a course in how to use onsen (hot spring baths), that are very traditional and common to use. Go in (separate sexes), undress and bring only a `washcloth` (a little towel) and sit down on a little seat next to a tap where you start to wash yourself meticulously with soap (also your hair). Then take a indoor bath (hot!) and move on to the outside bath (hotter!) and make sure your wash cloth with which you cover you private parts never touches the water, it`s considered `dirty`. To prevent this you can fold it on your head. Then stay in the bath and watch sunset in the ocean...at least in Hokkaido....mmmmmm....... We also made a hike along the coast and helped planting the unions, whoehoe!! at 6.15 on the farmlands in Hokkaido, northern and most preserved parth of Japan...:) With our sun burn still present from�@Aso village, we couldn`t believe our eyes when we got to Ashidake near a national park and found a meter of snow on which we put our tent! Winter camping....who would have though that the snow we saw in Zoige and after which we sent home our Siberia clothes wouldn`t be the last one!?!?! It got even better: we cross country skied through the empty forests (only weary of bears!), climbed the vulcanic mountain navitaging on a compass with lack of signs, because of the snow and then finishing the day in an onsen surrounded by snow in the forest. Japan has so many sides AND sights!!!
It was a sudden change to descent again to Sapporo where we met Fumiko and Julien again, who in the meantime moved to Sapporo. Now we could explore the city WITH guides (and help to clean an extremely moldy fridge in which molds enjoyed a happy life for five (!) years and were now going to be removed by the new users of the fridge...Fumiko and Julien. Yes yes...we DO work from time to time haha euhmmmm planting onions, cleaning fridge and fishing shell fish euhm....)
Anyway, they took us for an all Japanese evening: Izakaya with lovely food and all-you-can-drink schedule, really Japanese and soon we saw red faced people walking around....(Japanese cannot process alcohol that fast, so one glass of alcohol makes their faces extremely red. NOT to mention the amount of alcohol Japanese business men tend to take together with their collegues) followed by our first box-karaoke (of which we had a lovely deja-vu last night!). We went in, hired a little room for 2 hours, with couches, a stereo installation, two microphones a TV playing the lyrics and a telephone to order food and/or drinks and then...it`s singing time!!!! You can choose from many many songs, sing together alone and our throats hurted the next moring after anything from `bare necesseties` to `everybody` got us singing!
The final goodbye the next morning was wayyyyy to early but luckiily the train ride to Tokyo was decently long, 10 hours. Our first day Tokyo we were again blessed, having Takeshi and Kazu as our local guides. It was wonderful to have this Tokyo reunion with them! Tokyo is as everybody tells you, and more....skyscrapers, buzzing streets, NEON NEON NEON, red light districts, drunk business men, goths, fashion victims around you, giant stored filled with electronic gadgets, the very bar from `Lost in Translation`, relaxing parks, an enormous metro network and disneyland....:D In the five days we`ve spend here we tried to explore it all and it`s been great. You need five additional pairs of eyes to be able to see all amazing things around you, and I wouldn`t be surprised if somewhere in this city it would be possible to actually buy such a thing ;)
Well..and this once again long story brings us to the point where we are now: in a few hours we leave to Narita, where our flight tomorrow will takes us to Bangkok. We`re looking forward to that, but in this trip it feels now as a bit of a weird appendix, having been able to enjoy so much time in the other countries we visited :) and then...yes then....Groningen is awaiting us tuesday morning again....Schiphol and dear readers, here we come!!! Or as Fumiko and Julien would confirm...danger danger! Dutch couple approaching!
Synco wrote:
Broer konijn