At the start of this trip almost month prior, it felt like there was so much time ahead. I couldn’t believe only a few days had passed and we had done so much. It was so refreshing to be traveling again, and getting to know Patton on a’ whole ‘nother level was great. Returning to Japan briefly on our way back from Vietnam was a somewhat hectic but actually very rewarding conclusion to our trip. The juxtaposition of the two countries made me better appreciate Japan’s development but also Vietnam’s freewheeling excitement.
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On a similar note as last time, we’re again leaving with the sense of having seen so much but barely scratching the surface. We spent our last day in Osaka taking a day trip over to Kobe to try the famous beef. We also tried to check out another festival at a nearby shrine, but it ended up being misinformation! But that concludes this segment of our trip in Japan. Now Vietnam awaits!
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There is so much more to do in Kyoto, but yesterday was our last day there, and we spent Monday checking out a few areas of Osaka. We started with Osaka Castle right across from our hotel. Then we went to two temples, Shitenno-ji and Isshin-ji, before going down to Shinsekai and back up to the Kita district, where we ended at some gay bars.
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Yesterday was an adventure of several cities including Nara and Uji. Today we planned to check out Nanzenji and area temples, but it turned into a different kind of adventure, as we trekked from Kyoto to the neighboring Shiga Prefecture and Lake Biwa mostly by foot.
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After our day at Arashiyama, we spent July 27 exploring several cities along the Nara line: Nara itself, where we played with deer and visited a large temple; Uji, famous for matcha; and another famous place called Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto. We could have easily spent a full day or more at each place!
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Back in Kyoto after the Osaka Tenjin Matsuri, we planned to spend the day checking out Arashiyama, a mountain area famous for its bamboo forest.
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The day after the Kyoto Gion Matsuri, Patton and I traveled to Osaka for another festival, the Tenjin Matsuri, and to meet up with my friend Chakib, who is from France but who lived in Japan when I did in 2014. Getting to Osaka from Kyoto takes about 30 minutes by train. Man do I love that about Japan.
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Patton and I left Tokyo July 24 and went to Kyoto, where we stayed about five days aside from a side trip to Osaka. We happened to be in Kyoto for Gion Matsuri, one of many festivals around Japan during these months. Then I did my first training run in Kyoto the next morning before we departed for Osaka for the evening.
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I just came back from a refreshingly packed trip abroad with my friend Patton. We visited several cities each in Japan and Vietnam. I took way too many photos, and given Burning Man is less than a week away now, I’ll post these entries as quickly as I can but likely won’t finish until September. This first one covers Tokyo, the city in which I lived for a year back in 2014, and didn’t realize how much I missed.
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I’ve always been perplexed by the small amount of media coverage about the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake. I guess after years of consistent incidents and higher radiation recordings than ever before, it ceases to qualify as “news”, but the repercussions seem far reaching and …
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I began studying Japanese vocab and characters through WaniKani in May 2014, a few months after I moved to Japan. After five months, I wrote about my struggles to get caught up with the program due to intentionally advancing through the levels as quickly as possible to maximize my benefit …
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Given that a typical visit to Facebook with its auto updating news feed complete with preloaded videos could easily blow my daily data cap in just a few minutes, I have no qualms about saying the notion of Japanese technical prowess is dead, and I would not be surprised if the state of the Internet here is indicative of where this country and its economy are headed. People come here and try very hard to throw away money to get some work done, and still fail. They say Japan is in a crisis; perhaps this is why!
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I began to study Japanese around 3 p.m. Somehow it is now 3 a.m., and I have barely made any progress on that front. But my mind has been busy nonetheless. The NeoPixels with which I’ve lined my walls along with amazing experimental music (today, newly discovered Ludique) transport my mind and emotions to another world. I highly recommend it.
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This got me researching later about the party scene in Tokyo. I found many forums with accounts of people doing drugs – specifically, ecstasy or (the better) pure MDMA, which is called "Molly" in the states and "Mandy" in the UK. The general situation in Japan seems to be:
* Japan is one of the strictest countries regarding drug laws, and quantity or intent matter not
* Drugs that do exist here are therefore much more expensive than elsewhere (“The street price of a gram of cannabis weed was $58.30 in 2005, over twice as much as in the next most expensive nation, Australia.”)
* People don't talk about drugs even if they do them. Similar to elsewhere, but more severe. Apparently many of the population are extremely sensitive about this, due to what I can only imagine is an ingrained sense that breaking rules is wrong (“unconscionable”) and you cannot question the rule's basis. If you even mention drugs, people will stop talking to you and you'll have no friends.
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It has been a long road thus far to get decent Internet here in Tokyo. I thought Japan was technologically advanced, but no more.
I spent my first month at a temporary place I found on Airbnb, and prior to booking, I asked the host if he could do a speed measurement on his Internet connection. Instead of doing that, he responded, "The internet connection of here is optical fiber broad band one." Well, it turned out to be fast enough, but not as fast as that "optical fiber" made it sound. My connection there was around 10 megabits down and 2-5 up. Not horrible, for sure. The main problem there is the Internet would cut out periodically, and at least once a day I would have to power down the modem and router to troubleshoot. I really looked forward to getting an actual apartment and my own Internet service!
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Wednesday, we got up a bit earlier, skipping breakfast at the hotel and heading to the Tsukiji fish market instead. Nob said he likes to eat breakfast near the market because the fish is fresh and cheap, so we were going to try that out. And we also wanted to see the market, even if we didn’t get there early enough to see some fish auction action.
Well, getting there was easy enough. We only got a little bit lost, but we eventually found it, before 9 a.m. And things were eerily quiet. It didn’t take long to realize the market was closed, and we eventually found a sign that read, “Today is a fixed holiday.” Apparently some Wednesdays are off days.
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We began the day by setting out to find a shoe store that sells Keen for Dan, but the destination store didn’t have anything in Dan’s size. We later found out this was the case everywhere in Japan. The walk was nice, though! After a while, Aaron and I headed back to do some work while Dan continued to wander.
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Today was a big day; the first of three or four days in the Six Apart KK office, the reason for our trip to Tokyo. And I had no idea what to expect. After breakfast, we began the short walk to the office. We left at 9:40, needing to be there by 10. Google said 5 minutes. We got there only 10 minutes late.
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This morning for breakfast I tried Nattō, which is fermented soy beans. It was pretty disgusting, and adding the soy sauce and spicy mustard it came with made it worse. Justin told me not to feel bad about not finishing it (I ate three beans), so I didn’t!
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Saturday I woke up pretty early, so I decided to go for a run around one of the parks nearby. On the map it appeared to be a few miles around, so I hoped it would serve as a nice route. And it did.
I got slightly disoriented when I crossed a river I mistook for the water surrounding the park I aimed to run around, but I got to see some city streets and eventually got back on track. I ran about six miles total, though my fricken iPhone 4S GPS reported I ran almost 10 miles. I can’t wait to get rid of the iPhone.
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I got back from my trip to Denver Tuesday night, leaving only Wednesday to squeeze in a four hour clinic appointment, a haircut, two hours of weight lifting, and a full day of work. Oh, and I had to pack for a week in Japan, but of course I didn’t do that till Thursday morning in the 30 minutes before I had to head to the airport.
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