warning: this post may get loooong!!

we're back! and i already miss japan!! japan is unbelieveable! we had such a blast...the people are so great, the country is beautiful and hectic at the same time, the culture is so different but sooo neat, and the food, oh the food... i'll try to keep this as short as possible, but i won't mind if you don't read it all. :)

Dec 29-30: left SFO for Tokyo/Narita. uneventful flight, arrived Dec 30. insanity at tokyo station. nice old japanese man that spoke fluent english helped point us in the right direction to the shinkansen (bullet train) to nagoya. i think it took us over 4 hours to get from the airport to nagoya station. we were so tired and hungry by the time we arrived. L & D took us to a great restaurant down the street from their place for chinese/korean/japanese food (a great mix!). went back to their place and tried to sleep. it took me about 4 days to finally get adjusted and sleep thru the night.

Dec 31: new year's is the biggest holiday in japan. on new year's eve, everyone and their mothers go to the temples to ring the bells. and everything is closed for the entire week. including the kirin beer factory, just a few blocks from L & D's apt. if you take their FREE factory tour, at the end you get 2 FREE beers!! but of course it was closed for the new year holiday. so went to lunch at this really great ramen place. and saw my first honda integra type r! :) loving japan already... got dessert at a french bakery (slice of cake for only 100 yen!), and hung out til evening. for NYE, we went to a bar/pub (isikaya) in nagoya called shooters, targeted towards foreigners, but ended up being a lot of japanese! they had a deal for 5000 yen (roughly $50) for all you can eat and drink from 7:30pm - 1:00am. sounded like a good deal, but the drinks were watered down and they ran out of beers, and the food was so-so, definitely not worth the money. but still fun to be around everyone. yelled happy new year, then took the subway home.

Jan 1: L's supervisor, Mrs. Makino, invited us to have new year's festivities at their house. their family has sort of adopted L & D, so i was looking forward to spending time with a japanese family celebrating a major holiday. went over to their house around noon, played a PS2 taiko drumming game (soooo much fun, with little taiko drums to beat!). then it was time to eat, and Mrs. Makino had prepared a very nice feast. started out with lots of tempura and sashimi, and some cold cuts and other things. sukiyaki for the main course. you're supposed to eat it by scooping out the sukiyaki into a bowl of raw egg...kinda iffy, i half did it, by just dipping it in the egg and then placing it in a separate bowl. W did it the proper way, very impressive!! and drank chu-hi and Mrs. Makino's home-made plum sake (soooo good!!). we ate soooo much, i thought i was going to pass out. we stayed pretty late there, then went back to L & D's and crashed.

Jan 2: day trip to kyoto! got up early to take the shinkansen to kyoto, then bought an all day bus pass for only 500 yen to tour the temples. first stop was kinkakuji temple (which means gold temple, and it was VERY gold). ate lunch, then off to the next temple, which turned out to be a bit of a trek from the bus stop, but definitely worth it. daikakuji was like a maze of walkways from one building to another to another. very cool. the grounds around it were nice too. then off to nijo-jo (a castle). another hike to get to nijo-jo, only to find it was closed! damn holiday! L & D's friends were also in kyoto for the new year, so we met up with them in the central downtown area for dinner. went to a nice "english pub" for drinks and some food, then to another bar, then to another bar (there were some taiko drumers outside!!), where we somehow picked up an australian traveller named baz. the area in central kyoto is sooooo amazing, like nothing i've ever experienced. there are tons of little alleyways, no wider than the width of my arms, just lined with bars, restaurants, stores, you name it. went to a restaurant for more beer, then it was time to make our way back to the shinkasen station to go back to nagoya. got to the station about 11pm, and the last shinkansen had left at 10:30!! after some debate, we realized we had two choices, either karaoke all night til 5am when the first train leaves, or check into a hotel. we attempted the karaoke first, but it was too expensive, so we found a japanese style hotel (i think it was a ryokan) and stayed the night.

Jan 3: L & D decided to take the local train home (much cheaper than shinkansen), so we decided to spend another day in kyoto!! bought another day bus pass and went to kiyomizu-dera, a very cool temple with great views of kyoto. walked back to central kyoto area for lunch, and looked for somewhere cheap with an english or picture menu, and ended up eating at the best mcd's ever! the fries were sooo good! on our way back to kyoto station, found another temple, higashi honganji, and stopped to check it out. another great temple, and it was HUGE!. finally got on our way back to nagoya and kiyosu (that's the actual city L & D live).

Jan 4: decided to hang out in nagoya for the day. took our time getting up and ready, then went into nagoya for lunch. there is a laborynth of department stores underneath the streets of nagoya, so we stopped at a food court and had lunch (noodles and tonkatsu). went to the 100 yen store (like our 99 cent store, but much much cooler stuff!). went to Central Park where a japanese rock band was playing!! then to the "oasis," a sort of open air convention center with a cool observatory deck area with interesting water deck that you can see from the ground floor. hard to explain. did more shopping, then headed to the nagoya hilton bar on the 28th floor, where they have namihodai, happy hour, from 6-8pm all you can drink for only 1400 yen!! what a deal, and great views of the city too. then went over to joy joy karaoke to sing our hearts away! made it to the train station before midnight (that's when all local trains/subways stop running), and home safe and sound.

Jan 5: L & D both had to work, so W and I decided to take a day trip to osaka. we took the shinkansen to osaka, but realized that we also wanted to see kobe, and just 10 minutes from kobe was himeji castle, supposedly japan's most beautiful castle! so we went to himeji first, and the castle was amazing!! there were a million cherry blossom trees all over the castle grounds, so i bet it's gorgeous in the spring when they're blooming! ate lunch, then made our way to kobe and visited the ikuta shrine, a very public shrine that is still heavily used today (there was definitely something going on that day, like a festival). walked over to the port of kobe where we visited the kobe earthquake memorial park, where there were parts of the pier that remained from the 1995 earthquake damage as a reminder of the destruction. we then headed out to osaka, and it was already dinner time. went to a place my coworker suggested, but couldn't find it, so ended up at a really really good korean place that only served korean bbq and bibimbop!! all kinds of dolsot bibimbop!!! and it was deeeelicious! we tried to walk to the umeda sky building to get the views of osaka, but ended up walking the wrong way and decided to just call it a day (we were extremely tired by then) and head back to kiyosu.

Jan 6: last full day in nagoya/kiyosu. the makinos offered to take us to the toyota automobile museum, just 30 minutes away by car. it was interesting, with a full history of cars in general, then the history of cars in japan. it was interesting, and educational. got back to L & D's place and attempted to go to the kirin beer factory again, but it was closed again! sheesh. had dessert instead. :) while we were just hanging out at the apartment, there was a small earthquake, but it freaked us out, cuz buildings in japan are built way different than in california! that night, L made us dinner, our last supper.

Jan 7: checked out of "hotel L&D" and made our way on the shinkasen back to tokyo, our final destination in japan. got a great view of fuji-san (mt. fuji) on the shinkansen. checked into the ginza renaissance hotel (tho it took a while to get there cuz our cab driver didn't speak any english and had no clue where our hotel was, go figure). ginza is the high maintenance shopping district of tokyo. everyone, young and old, male and female, is fancy here. i mean VERY fancy. and the worst part, everything is SUPER expensive. :( we were able find an inexpensive thai restaurant that was good. then found a nice bakery for dessert!! went back to the hotel to plan out our days in tokyo.

Jan 8: today was ghibli studios museum day!! the thing i most wanted to see in japan!! the museum is soooo cool, but unfortunately completely in japanese. :( and no pictures were allowed!! sucks. but it was sooo cool, and difficult to explain all that was there. but it was very cool, and i spent a LOT of money at the giftshop. :) on our way back to tokyo, we decided to stop by spoon (aftermarket honda goodies), just a few stops away. well, we were supposed to get off at ogikubo, but got off accidentally at nishi-ogikubo, and ended up walking around for an hour and half in the WRONG CITY! we finally realized we were at the wrong train stop, so got back on the train and found spoon within 15 minutes after getting off the RIGHT stop! :P unfortunately, it was just a warehouse (which is odd cuz there are some great walking directions on their website, so we assumed they had a showroom). the guys did point us to type one, a showroom with their race cars, so we walked over there and the guys there let us look around and take pics, and even gave us a goody bag. W was very excited. :) our last stop of the day was shinjuku. we walked over to the tokyo municipal government building to the 46th floor (i think) observatory deck (finally something FREE!). amazing views of tokyo, and a gorgeous view of the sun setting behind fuji-san!! what luck! on our way back to the train station, went to takashimaya dept store and the kinokuniya bookstore where W bought several expensive car magazines.

Jan 9: tokyo auto salon day, the event we had planned our trip around and for! we were veeeeery excited. friday was opening ceremonies, and the morning was for VIP and media/press only. doors opened to the public after 1pm, and we were there at 11:45. :) eager beavers. ate a quick lunch and stood in line. saw a bit of the opening ceremony (which was completely in japanese) and then made our way over to the main event. but first W played the new gran turismo 4 in a very cool driving simulator!! then, the main event. one word: overwhelming! we entered on the 2nd floor which gave us great overall view of the hall, and ohmigawd, there was just sooo much to see, and it was only 1/3 of it!!! we didn't even know where to start! we made our way around the east wing, then over the the central wing, and lastly the west wing. by the end of the event at 6pm, we had taken almost 300 pictures!!! and spent a LOOOOT of money. by the end of the day, my feet and legs were in so much pain, i wasn't sure if i'd make it back to the hotel!

Jan 10: since we didn't quite make it to the honda factory, we decided to just to the honda welcome plaza, which just turned out to be a few cars and bikes, but we got to sit in a new NSX Type S (sooooo nice!!!), which felt a lot like our own NSX, except that it was right hand drive, and the type s has ricaro seats. :) we went back to shinjuku to do some more shopping, and walked around for over an hour in the red light district looking for a store that didn't exhist! two guide books said it was there, but it definitely wasn't. weird, and frustrating. so went back to takashimaya, to tokyo hands, and bought some gifts and souvenirs. that night, met up with L & D, who were in tokyo for D's soccer finals. the JET program has a soccer league for JETs and their friends/boyfriends/husbands/whomever wants to play. and it was their finals. the top 4 teams got to play at saitama stadium, the 2002 world cup soccer stadium!! we were all very excited. so that night, we all went to dinner and drinks at an isikaya near the place they were staying.

Jan 11: the big day for D and his soccer team! we made our way out to urawamisoni where saitama stadium is. it's a very cool stadium, and it was awesome that they were able to get it for their final game! D's team lost the final, and came in 2nd, but it was a great game. afterwards, we went back to our hotel, where they had namihodai for 2000 yen, all you can eat appetizers and all you can drink from 5-8pm. we got there a bit after 6, and got started on the food and drinks right away. afterwards, got dessert, and then went for one last night of karaoke!!

Jan 12: our last day, very very sad to leave. got up, packed up and checked out. met up with L & D for lunch, went to akihabara. everyone kept saying to go to akihabara, where you can find everything and anything electronic for cheap. well, we found that they didn't have anything exceptionally different than any other store we'd seen, and it was cheap at all. in most cases, it was more expensive. so that was disappointing. we bought some more souvenirs at Laox, and then headed back to ginza to get our bags and head out to the airport. we couldn't take the limited express train to narita, which only takes 40 minutes, and ended up on the rapid train which stops like 20 times. we were cutting it really close, and checked in just over an hour before our flight was scheduled to leave! luckily we made our flight and we were on our way home. and here i am. :(

interesting facts and observations about japan and the japanese
1. the japanese people are the nicest, most respectful and courteous people ever. really. i'm amazed at how an entire nation can be this way.
2. taxi cabs are sooo cool, they have GPS systems and automatic doors that open and close. and they're SUPER clean.
3. they burn their trash. very weird. you have to separate your trash by burnable goods, non burnable (combustible?) and recyclable. yet, you'd think they'd try really hard not to create waste. nope, they are the kings/queens of excessive wrapping. i'm not exaggerating, they wrap and wrap and wrap everything. then tape it closed. creates so much waste.
4. japan is incredibly clean. yet it is next to impossible to find any trashcans in public! weird.
5. they sell everything imaginable in vending machines, including hot coffee (which is very good btw). it's rumored that they even have "schoolgirls' underwear" but no one i know has yet to see those. very odd.
6. even tho it is very obvious we don't speak a word of japanese, they continue to speak to us in japanese, very fast. and loud. and whenever you go to a restaurant or store and make a transaction, they give you a long speech, which i'm guessing has something to do with "thank you for coming to our restaurant/store, we appreciate your patronage, please come back soon, thank you very much again, thank you thank you thank you."
7. nobody drinks water, everyone drinks alcohol. beer is cheaper than soda. so yeah, i was screwed, since i don't drink alcohol, let alone beer (blech).
8. sushi is very different there. no california rolls or spicy tuna rolls.
9. the japanese are immaculately clean, yet it's okay for drunk men to pee on the street.
10. the japanese have this tendency to destroy entire cities, tearing everything down, just to rebuild it again. they do this a LOT.

we had an amazing time. thankfully L&D were there to show us around. L is there working for JET as an english teacher for high schoolers, and D teaches small children. we're trying to figure out a way for us to live there. seriously. if the right opportunity came around, i would do it. i could definitely see myself living there. but now, i'm terribly jetlagged, and hoping that i'll make it thru the day tomorrow! we took about 700 pics, it's gonna take forever to sort thru them all. sorry this was so long, hopefully at least ONE person appreciates it, and actually reads it all!