Google Map Update

Updated the Google Maps of some of the places we've been.
Click here.

June 27 - Singaporean Mega-Mall Nightmare

I’m pretty sure I’m going to have nightmares about Singapore. I’m going to be stuck in an underground mega-mall that I can never get out of. There will be lots of escalators involved. Miles of escalators.

This is what we faced as we took off on our day today. We just wanted a simple walking tour of the city, but I guess because it is so hot half the place is underground… and a mall.

After we got a little help from a nice Singaporean fellow, we escaped the shackles of mall-hell and emerged to the outside. Here we found the city Mer-Lion. Unfortunately, the water for the great statue was shut off though.

We saw the huge theatre near here that resembles the Sydney Opera House in Australia.

We also checked out the National Museum of Singapore which had some nice exhibits explaining why Singaporeans do what they do.

After that we met up with Borna, Zhang (yet another Purdue alum), and his friend Lloyd after dinner. They took us to Clarke Quay where there was tons of fun nightlife.

One place that stood out was a place called “The Clinic” where you sat in wheelchairs and hospital beds as nurses delivered the drinks in IV bags. Pretty unique indeed!

Zhang treated us to a few cocktails at a fun Cuban joint and we called it an evening. Thanks Zhang!

June 26 – Zoo-tastic

Today, we slept in and headed to the Singapore Zoo. This place is AWESOME. This might be the best zoo I have seen as that the animals were very up close and personal. We followed zookeepers around on a set feeding schedule and saw many animals devouring their vittles. Highlights were the White Tigers, Rhinos, elephant show, and all the various forms of monkey-life.

Once it gets to be night-time you go to the neighboring wildlife park called the “Night Safari”. This opens around dusk and what you do is you go through the various zoo exhibits in near darkness. They have some blue-ish lights that allow you to see the animals as you pass. You can take the tram or just walk through the trails and we chose the latter. Here's Jen, Borna, and Borna's boyfriend Alex.

Particularly scary were the laughing hyenas who just stared us down as we passed. They were probably only 30 feet away and they just glared at us like we were lunch.

We also saw a couple cool shows. One these tribal guys danced around and blew fire. Also there was a Creatures of the Night show where little critters ran around the stage doing tricks.

I highly recommend these zoos – this was an awesome day!

For more zoo pics click here.

June 25 – Trains, Planes, and Singapore

The rest of Japan. There's a quite bit more we could say about Japan but there just isn't time for it all. We have a few more pics posted on our galleries. Check out these sections:

Food
Signs
Everything Else


Today was a bit tough. We got up really early to catch a train to Narita to fly to Singapore. We had to travel through Tokyo rush hour on the train. Those people are nuts. I would never commute 1-2 hours on the Tokyo trains every day. I’m pretty sure I would kill myself.

Imagine the DC Metro on its worst day. Now add about 100 people to that train car and you get Tokyo rush hour. I really wanted to see one of those guys that are paid to shoe-horn more people into the train, but I didn’t. Perhaps it was because I was too busy getting crushed.

Anyways we made it to the airport in one piece. We had a very nice flight to Singapore on ANA airlines.

There our friend Borna met us at the Singapore airport. She promptly took us to a mall where we had our first taste of Singapore food. I had Laksa which was quite nice and Jen had chicken rice. More on malls in further posts.

Borna is another one of my friends from Purdue. Her family was quite nice letting us stay at her brand new house. Thanks B!

June 24 – Disney SHHHeea

Today we spent our last day at the Tokyo Disney resort. They have two theme parks and several hotels. Tokyo Disneyland is much like Disney World or Disney Land containing such rides as the Pirates of the Carribean, etc. We didn’t go there. Instead we went to the totally unique Disney Sea, or as they pronounced it Disney Shhheea.

I believe it’s called Disney Sea because all the areas sort of had to do with water. There was the Mediterranean Harbor, Mystery Island, etc. and everything was connected by a waterway around the park.

We had a great time here. The park was very clean and it was our first sunny day while in Japan. We also were there at a great time as there were very little lines or crowds.

The best part of the park had to be all the shows. They were all quite elaborate and had tons of great dancing and costuming.

The afternoon water parade was probably over 30 minutes.

Anyone know if this is Chip or Dale? I can tell you that the girl next to him is Jen.

Thanks Mickey – good times.

June 23 – A Lesson in Directions!

Today was quite fun as we went to Jeremy’s school in Oisa just a train stop down. Here he teaches a wide range of kids from elementary school age through Junior High, and then also at the high school across town.

We arrived at the elementary school and it was nothing like we have ever seen before. We arrived at recess or something and when we walked in there were children running all over the building. We could hardly see any adults. The kids just ran wild up and down the floors, stairways, outside, all over the place. It looked like a great day to be a kid.

Then some little bell chimed and amazingly all the kids ran straight to their appropriate places. I don’t know how they get them to do that.

We observed Jeremy teaching two classes about “Directions”. He sang a little song and did a little dance on LEFT, RIGHT, FORWARD, BACK, etc. We also joined in the fun. We were part of a demonstration where we were given blow up swords and blindfolded. Put across the room from each other, Jen and I were given directions by the kids on which way to go and when to STRIKE. It was a little hard to make out the directions of dozens of screaming kids. Also Japanese do not end their words with consonants, only vowels. So by mistake they have a tendency to say RIGHT-O and LEFT-O.

Jeremy also warned us to guard our butts. One of the thing the little boys like to do is run up behind and stick their fingers in your butt. I forget the name for that, but I think we avoided it successfully. Jeremy got a couple though and had kids hanging on him most of the time.

After class we joined the kids for lunch. We brought our own lunch, but the kids actually serve each other. A group of them put on aprons, gloves, and chefs hats. They pushed little carts around that had the food and everyone got served and cleaned up after. We also sat down with the kids to interact with them. This was a little challenging as they only knew a few things in English. A typical conversation went like this:

ME: Hello.

KID: Harro!

ME: My name is Josh. What is your name?

KID: @#$@#$@#???

ME: Thank you very much.

Jen managed to strike up a conversation about baseball with her table. It is a very popular sport there.

And speaking of cleaning, that was next. There was a time called Soji where they CLEAN. Everyone there, 6-year olds up had some sort of cleaning task. They sweeped the floors, wiped down the stairs, and whatever else you can think of. Again it was quite amazing and I’m convinced that students in our schools are lazy and worthless.

We also stopped by the high school where we nearly put a standstill to the classes. As we walked by the classrooms that were in session you could see heads popping up in surprise by the unexpected white people in the building. When they had a break Jeremy tried to get them to practice their English with us. They were mostly very shy, but we had a little more involved conversations. When we mentioned that we were married they would all scream and freak out. It was pretty funny.

We regret not having many pictures from all this, but we would have felt a little weird taking pictures of the kids at school. For this one folks, you are going to have to use your imagination.

For Lunch 2, I stopped by McDonalds. Yes I know, why go to McDonalds, but they had a unique item I had to have. It was some sort of Mega Mac that had at least four burgers on it, bacon, and a fried egg on the top. It was pretty darn good.

For dinner that night we went back to Jeremy’s Ramen place for some more great noodles.

June 22 – Tokyo, e.g. LOTS of people

Today we took the train into Tokyo and it’s time I had a little bit of commentary on that. Despite it being fairly difficult to figure out the map, the train runs extremely efficiently here. The trains are almost always on time and inside the trains there are usually digital displays showing what’s next in Japanese and in English. They are always pretty full of people. Most of the time you have to stand, so to get to Tokyo we had to stand for nearly an hour and a half. It can get a little tiresome.

We stopped in an area called Harajuku where we saw another shrine (Meiji Shrine). It was a little bit bigger than the others. I guess on the weekends there is just a non-stop train of weddings, although it can be quite expensive to get married there. The wedding parties cross each other in the main walking areas as they go from place to place. They walk in a train of people really slowly led by the bride and groom and a guy holding an umbrella type thing above them. The bride in particular had a very elaborate gown.

We also went to Yoyogi Park where most of the time you can find some the Japanese youth who dress up like Goths and other strange things mainly for the benefit of the tourists I guess. We didn’t see too many of these people though, perhaps we were too late in the day, or maybe their makeup doesn’t work with rainy days so much.

Next we took the subway to Asakusa. Here we saw the Senso-ji Temple where you can see Jen below rubbing on the Nade-Buddha’s bald head for luck.

For lunch we had Soba noodles. You can get these cold or hot. They served the cold ones on this interesting tray which we suspect they use to actually drain the noodles of their water. Getting better with the chopsticks still.

From here we went down a very busy strip for shopping where all the hip Japanese teenagers go for clothes. It was loud, busy, and crazy.

Next we went to the Electric City, or Akihabara. Here they sell every type of electronic gizmo you can think of, some old and some new. There was a ton of cool old-school video game stuff and one store in particular was really fun. It was raining quite a bit so I’m surprised we didn’t all get electrocuted.

Next we buzzed over to Shibuya, which is sort of like the Times-Square of Tokyo with huge signs and flashing lights.

This is also where you can find one of Japan’s busiest intersections.

It was even crazier when you add in the fact it was pouring and nearly everyone had an umbrella. We have never seen so many umbrellas in our lives and it was tough not to get jabbed in the eye or have someone dump the water off the top of their umbrella on you by accident. I managed to climb up above the fray and get a couple pics, as well as a shot from an overhead Starbucks.

We got some really good Indian food which satisfied us all. It was an all you can eat buffet, but you were warned if you didn’t clear your plate you would get charged more.

June 21 - Kamakura, Fujisawa

As the weekend began we got a late start to the morning and headed to Kamakura. Kamakura was Japan’s capital between 1185-1333. Here we got our first experience in Japanese Buddhist temples.

We went to the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu Shrine, Hase-Dera, and saw the “Great Buddha”, Diabutsu.

After we went to a few of these, they are very similar. You purify yourselves by washing off by ladling water onto your hands and such.

Then you breath in some of the incense for good luck, etc.

It is the year of the rat, so there were places where people wrote their wishes on little cards and attached them to this board. Later they are all burned and your wishes are supposed to come true.

You could also get your fortune told by these people who don’t like their pictures to be taken. You take the little slip of paper and tie it to a board where this will help the fortune to come true.

There are also many shrines here that people pray towards. I’m not sure of all what’s supposed to be going on there, but what I observed was people would come up, throw money into this thing that looks like my grill at home. Then they would clap their hands to “wake up” the God/s. Then they would pray for whatever. Each shrine usually had some sort of specific purpose either for long life, wealth, love, lost children, etc. It was interesting to watch, however it made us a little uncomfortable with all the idol “worship”.

We also walked around Fujisawa but didn’t do too much there other than eat. We went a little astray from the Japanese norm and had Fish/Chips at a pub.

June 20 -Yokohama, Yaki-niku, and Karaoke

Today we got out of the house and took a train to Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city.

It was a bit gloomy, but we wandered around town checking things out. There is a large mall, a huge ferris wheel, and Japan’s tallest building, the Landmark Tower. See how it reaches into the clouds:

We checked out the Museum of Art as well as the Mitsubishi Industrial Museum. The latter was really nicely done, having all kind of interesting interactive displays.

We also got to try a pretty life-like helicopter simulation. I was the pilot and I realized I might want to rethink my life-long dream of becoming a helicopter pilot. After a detailed instructional video, we forgot how to fly forward. We also managed to fly into a couple buildings and really muck up the landing.

We went back to Hiratsuka to meet up with Jeremy and his Japanese girlfriend.

Here we did a really fun thing called Yaki-niku. Here they place a burning charcoal grill right in the middle of the table and they bring you raw meat to cook on it. We got a 2-hour all you can eat and drink special. We ate many different kinds of meat but I managed to try something uncooked. It was raw beef covered in raw egg.

Supposedly they don’t have as many problems with Salmonella there. I had a bite and wasn’t completely repulsed, although I will never eat such a thing again.

After this we stopped by a bar to meet up with more locals and we ended up at a karaoke place. It was pretty fun, but we didn’t stay long because the place was very smoky and making us ill. Which reminds me; the Japanese smoke like chimneys. We encountered tons of cigarette smoke virtually everywhere (hack, cough, wheez…)

Anyhow, it was a great evening.

June 19 – Ok Already – Let the Japan Begin: Getting Oriented in Hiratsuka

Well after getting into Hiratsuka the night before we had our first experience with Japanese food. We had yakitori, which is basically grilled meat on a skewer. Pretty tasty. I also had some nice cold Saki which they serve in an overflowing shot glass into a little wooden box. You can also drink directly from the box which gives the saki a nice woody taste.

So today we thought we’d need a little jet lag recovery time and we’d sleep in. We woke up at 5 and noticed the bright sun outside. We panicked as we thought we had slept until 5p! However, that wasn’t the case. The sun rises somewhere around 4:45a. So we went back to sleep.

Good thing we were tired, because that town is noisy. I wasn’t even quite sure of everything we were hearing. The most consistent sound was a continuous beeping coming from the crosswalk down below us. Additionally we kept seeing these vans driving by and random Japanese gibberish being blasted from its speakers. Turns out they do campaigning by yelling at everyone in town as the vans drive around. Finally, right across the street dozens of old Japanese geezers would hang outside this shop. After a while they would let them in and, well, we really have no idea what went on in there.

So taking it easy, we started the morning by taking care of breakfast. We made our first mistake of our trip by going to the “gourmet” grocery store. Prices were a little high, but nothing unlike what we’re used to in the US. We got cereal and bananas. However, later we found out about this wonderful thing called the 99 (Yen) store. Here you could get darn near anything for 99 Yen, which is about a dollar. You could get a loaf of bread, a half dozen eggs, a pint of milk, some double A batteries, soda, frozen dinners, a fish, etc. etc. Seriously, that store rocked as far as prices go.



We took a leisurely stroll to the beach just a mile or so down the road. Here we dipped our toes in the Pacific thousands of miles from the California beaches.


After that we came back and had a long nap. Still recovering…

That night we met up with Jeremy and he took us to his favorite Ramen Noodle shop. Ramen here is a little more substantial than the 3 for a dollar junk you get in the US at Walmart. You would have thick spaghetti like noodles in a delicious broth, sprouts, veggies, and if you like some slices of pork. Here we had our first lesson in chopsticks and we caught on pretty quickly. We also realized without Jeremy we would have no idea how to order food since the menu was completely in Japanese.

I probably did not introduce Jeremy properly. He is one of my friends from Purdue that I met through the dance team. He has been in Japan in this area for about 4 years now teaching English. His Japanese was pretty good and he was quite useful.

After dinner we walked around town more and we checked out an arcade. The video game setups here were pretty elaborate. There were many virtual reality type games, DDR type games where you beat on drums, and a 4 seater Super Mario Cart game where you could actually drive the games. There were also miniature video game systems that stood about 3 feet high for the little kids. Do you know those games where you use the claw to try to pick out a prize with it? Well, here they have that concept, but you get to go for much larger and interesting prizes: a large box of Ritz Crackers, huge toys, bathroom floor mats, and other weird stuff.

Singapore

Made it to Singapore. Doing great. Japan update coming soon :)

Still in Japan

Just a quick post to let you know we are still alive. We have been quite busy and haven't had a lot of time to post. Soon we will share a big gallery and perhaps tell a few stories about all the crazy Japanese things we have seen.

Made It! Now in Hiratsuka.

We made it to Japan! We even managed to figure out that train map. It's not too bad once you figure out where you are actually going to, and then you just work your way back.


The flight was nice - it went by rather quickly and was pretty smooth. They fed us a lot. I think we had like 4 meals on the plane. I think if airlines want to cut back on expenses, they should cut one of these maybe instead of taking our drinks from our domestic flights. Bah!

We got there and I had a few problems with my ATM card. After some tinkering we managed to acquire some Yen. 1 dollar =~ 108 Yen.

Then we took the trains to get to Jeremy's in Hiratsuka. It is a decent ways from Tokyo actually. It's probably about as far as Springfield, VA was from DC, though, so not too bad. We haven't checked the town out too much, but here is a view from our balcony:


By the way, we are staying at the place of some guy Jeremy knows, named Eric. Eric's not even here! Thanks for the room though. Here's the bedroom. Note the Japanese style tatami flooring. No shoes allowed!


Jeremy took us to a fun little local joint where we had cold saki and yakatori, which is grilled chicken on a stick. Jen also got her first lesson in proper chop-stick usage. Apparently, if she's going to feed herself over in Asia, she's going to have to catch on quickly.

I also have to comment on the toilet here. It's a toilet/sink. When you flush the water that fills the tank comes through the top like a sink for hand washing. Pretty wild. For more info click HERE.

Here's a new feature for you to check out. Go to THIS google map link to see where we are at.

That's it for now. We are going to the beach this morning which is just down the road.