Japan - Day 6 - Tokyo

Okay, it's our final day in Osaka, which means it's our final day in this hotel room, which also means, this is our last free breakfast. We get dressed and head down to the buffet area and do the same thing that we've done the past few days. Say hello to the lovely receptionist, get seated at our tables, make our own miso soup, eat cereal with yogurt, have fresh orange juice squeezing contests, etc.

We check out, pay our bills, hop on the train back to Tokyo. Not much happens again. Once we arrive in Tokyo, we make our way to our final hotel Tokyo Bay.
I walk up to the female receptionist, say konichiwa and inform her that I'm checking in, she says sure and hands me a brief form to fill out, I fill it out, and hand it back to her, along with my million dollar smile. She says okay and informs me of my room where abouts. No joy, maybe that smile only works on guys.

Steve and I head on up to the room with the bags in hand. We had to leave Ly behind since we only registered this room with two guests and from our Osaka hotel experience, they had someone show us up to our room, and we didn't want to run the risk of getting caught.
We drop the bags off, I go back down to grab Ly and we do the usual, take several snapshots of the room before it gets messed up. After a quick refreshing break, we head on out to Akihabara. This area of the town is known for electronics and manga, they have high rise buildings with department store after department store. Once we get there our first stop as usual is a food place, hey we're in Japan, we're allowed to pig out! We come across a place that's serving Tonkatsu, my favourite! So we head there and eat.
After that it was the Sony building, where they had a whole bunch of.....Sony products on display to let people view and if you're crazy enough, purchase. We explore the building for a while, but nothing really exciting.
We enter a few of the electronic stores and a few of the manga stores, since none of us are big manga fans, nothing really excites us, not even the hentai located in the basement levels of each of the manga stores. We even went into a 9-story Toy Store, one of the most popular ones in Japan, but we didn't really see anything that held our interest for longer than a minute.
I read in my Lonely Planet book that here in Akihabara they have cafes where the wait staff dress up in their favourite anime costume and serve you, we tried to find them, but couldn't, although we did see a whole bunch of girls dressed up in costumes handing out flyers to passing locals, but they ignored us gaijins, we can only imagine what they were offering.

After Electric City, we moved onwards to Ginza, a 4-chome intersection lined with high end department stores and prestigous boutiques. Now we're talking! If you're rich and famous, or if you have lots of money to spend, or if you're a Yakuza wife, then you'll be spending most of your time shopping here.

According to the Lonely Planet book a few years ago each square feet of Ginza, where the high end shops are located is valued at $5,500 US.



On this street, you name it, they have it. Cartier, Gucci, LV, etc. In fact this strip is so ballin that they have not one but two! count 'em two Tiffany & Co's.



After that, just dinner. No crazy stories here.

Japan - Day 5 - Kyoto

So once again we begin the day by stuffing our faces at the buffet. If we were to pay for an intercontinental buffet it would have cost us each about $30, but I doubt we'd eat it if we had to pay.

We hop onto the high speed bullet train again and arrive in Kyoto in about 30 minutes. First stop, the Toji Temple, not much to see here. Let's move on to my favourite temple of the entire trip, the Rokuon-Ji Temple a.k.a. The Golden Pavilion. This temple and the sites that it provided was absolutely breathtaking, it was at this point in my life that I wanted a DSLR camera so that I could pretend to be a professional photographer and capture this moment, but instead, I decided to immortalize the moment in a different way, by writing about it.
At the end of your temple visit you are bombarded with stalls that sell delectable treats, it is here where I purchased that gooey green tea ball on a stick treat along with a small pack of green tea powder that had golden flakes in it, for 1,000 Yen each. That green tea powder better give me special powers after I drink it, otherwise, I've just been conned.

After the Golden Temple, we made our way over to the Nijo Castle, a shogun castle, pictures weren't allowed to be taken on the inside, so I'll just upload a couple from the outside.









After visiting the Shogun Castle and walking around the grounds we made our way to Nishiki market, where we walked up and down the aisles browsing and purchasing various deep fried goods. I stumbled upon a place that sold tempura battered shrimp but they were round, 5 for 300 Yen, they looked pretty good, so I bought a box. When I went to go pay, the lady said the word 'discount' to me, we were all very excited that I was getting a discount, after handing the food out and sharing with the guys, we each took a bite into it and quickly realized why she gave me a discount. Fail.
(This isn't it, but Ly purchased the round thing in the middle, which he said was pretty good)

After all that teasing of good food, we came across a Lipton Noodle House, thinking "oh, we don't have this in Canada, let's eat here" so we did. Steve and Ly ordered some weird rice while, I ordered some weird pasta. Major Fail! The food was expensive and horrible.

After a whole bunch more sightseeing we finally make it back to Kyoto Station. This was the most futuristic or new train station that I have EVER seen. It has a hotel attached to it, along with a sky walk that connects you to a shopping mall. If you travel up to the 11th Floor of the building you can get some pretty nice views of the city. This is where Ly was too tired to make the climb up another flight of stairs.

Okay. Okay. Enough of the boring crap, let's get down to the somewhat more interesting crap. Roppongi Crossings! So it's night time, we're wandering around a section of the city known as Roppongi Crossings, this is the "it" spot at night. We're looking for a good place to eat. I come across a black guy who asks us what we're looking for, I tell him that I'm looking for food, and he points me in the direction of a Starbucks. Uh?

So we move on, then we come across another black guy, who asks if he can also help us find what we're looking for. They're so friendly eh? I tell him that I'm looking for food, he asks if I'm Chinese, I say yes. Then he replies with "so you must be looking for Chinese food". Friendly but not that bright eh?

We finally find a place to eat, but for some reason, I can't find pics of the food, I guess I didn't snap away this time. Fail on my part.

After we eat, we proceed to make our way back to the subway station, we're stopped by another black guy yet again. This time he's more direct and he asks us if we're looking for girls. We stop and give him the time of the day to proceed. He informs us that he knows of a place and he can get us in for 5,000 Yen and we can stay for 90 minutes, and because he knows the manager there, he can get us unlimited drinks as well. After talking to him for a bit, he decides that we're nice people, we're on vacation and that money is tight, so he's willing to cut us a deal and drop the rate down to 3,000 Yen. He tries to persuade us by telling us that this place has international talent, Romanian, Russian, Canadian, etc. He invites us to just come with him and take a look, since we've already invested so much time into it, we figured what have we got to lose, right?

Wrong! We almost lost our dinner. When we got up there, he had the "talent" line up in a straight line for our viewing pleasure, we all took one look and practically bolted out of there, he needs to get his eyes checked.

We leave and begin to make our way to the subway station again, and before we even get to the crosswalk, we're approached by an Indian dude. An Indian guy in Japan, can you frickin believe it? And here's the kicker, he speaks Japanese too! This guy was probably in his late 40's and after a whole bunch of talk, he basically offers us the same deal, and the same resource of girls, however this guy had access to an all Japanese club, and we wanted in, but since we didn't fit their profile, no go, so we leave.

Believe it or not, a few steps later another black guy comes up to us, asking if we're looking for girls. Oh! So that's what those black guys back in Kabukicho, the Red Light District that we visited a few nights ago were offering! I thought they were pimping themselves! Silly me.
We talk and talk, he gives us his name, we give him ours, well kind of, I gave him my pseudo name, James. Steve used Steve and Ly used PrettyBoy.

He tries to persuade us to go visit his club and check out the "talent" he's got there, but we're reluctant to go since based on what we've seen available in those places were sub par. He really wants us to go to his club, so much in fact that he was willing to pick up PrettyBoy and carry him there, he made the motion of it, but we thought that if we was trying this hard, his place must be good, right? Wrong! It was the same thing.

We had to ride inside a cozy elevator with him and up to the 7th floor, in order to politely reject him and his "talent". As we were in the elevator making our way back down, we were stopped on the 3rd floor, by another, yup, you guessed it, black guy, he motioned for us to come in and check his "talent" out. We figured since we were already on the floor, we might as well have. The girls in this club were slightly better than the previous ones. Ly and Steve wanted to settle and stay here but I told them that we're moving up in this world, that we need to elevate our company, so we left once again.

Seriously, we're trying to get to the subway station to make our way home, but it's not as easy as it sounds, we're stopped yet again! I feel like I'm in a Pokemon game where I'm on the bridge just trying to cross it, but I keep getting stopped by these trainers who all think their Pokemon is the shit and battle me, only to end up losing. Anyways, this guy is a younger chap, and no, he's not black, don't be so mean! He's Indian. He was probably our age too, I think we might have met his father a few streets back. He tries to get us to go to his club, we sigh and reluctantly check it out, but of course it's a no go, so we quickly leave.

We just get out of the building and onto the streets again and WHAM! We're approached again! This time it's by a Taiwanese woman, offering Happy Endings. Uh, no thanks.

I don't know how but we finally manage to get out of there, alive and with our dinners still in our stomach!

For some odd reason we were all directionally challenged in Japan, maybe traveling over the international date line messed up our internal compasses. We could never remember which N.E.S.W. exit to take once we emerged from the subway.

So that night after de-boarding the subway and arriving at our "home" station we couldn't agree on which exit to take so that it would lead us directly back to the route we usually take to get to our check-in point, the hotel. So someone came up with the ingenious idea once again to split up, and we all go our separate ways. Problem is, we only had one map.

We decided that Steve needed the map more than either Ly or myself, but we took one last look at it, put our left in hand into the middle to form a small circle, said 1 2 3 Japan! and off we went in three different directions.

I took off in a random direction, not caring if I went in the opposite direction or not, my mind for the past hour and a half was on something else. At that point, I could care less if it was Japanese Style or Western Style, I needed to go, bad.

I walked as fast as I could until I found my checkpoint after that brief break, my mind was ready to work, to figure out how to get to the final pit stop. I kept walking until I came upon an underground passage way, and I knew that this would lead me to the hotel, since that is the route we took this morning, however the trick was navigating it backwards.

Time was against me, who knows how far ahead the others were, so I decided to take it, I walked for a few minutes, until I came upon a couple forks in the road, at that point, I wasn't sure which one I should take, I knew that if I took the wrong one, it would set me back a great deal. So I decided to play it safe and back track to where I started and find a new route from there, I figured it was better than being lost underground for god knows how long.

After being "lost" for quite sometime, I felt like just giving up and going to the tourist info station and just ask where the pit stop was, but I didn't, what kept me going was that, the others could be just as lost as I was too, and I wanted to beat them, fair and square!

Eventually I found the exit or entrance we usually frequent, so I took it and started walking at a much faster pace, then switched it to jogging for a brief moment, and then wait a minute what's that up ahead? It's Ly, turns out he was just as lost as I previously was and he was walking pretty fast too. So I decided to blow past him like Sonic the Hedgehog and tap him on the shoulder to let him know that he's just been beat. I only took it a few steps further only to let his mind think "what was that" and waited for him. I knew that if it boiled down to a foot race in the end, I would beat him and be safe from elimination.

When we got back to the hotel, we just saw Steve cross the lobby. Instead of heading up to the room we decided to hit the Club Lounge for some refreshments and drinks. Shortly after Steve comes down to join us, with a smile on his face. Informing us that he already showered. We just said good for you and asked if he had asked anyone for directions and he said "of course".

It took us about 45 minutes to navigate our way back to the hotel, after what seemed to be a trial and error system, where as if we worked together we could have solved it in 20 minutes.

But hey, where's the fun in that?

Japan - Day 4 - Nara

We wake up, get dressed and ready for another full day. We're all very excited at this point because today is the first day that we get to enjoy our complimentary breakfast over at the club lounge.

We walk in and we're greeted by a very cute looking Japanese woman. She asks me what room number I'm in, and I tell her it's 2313 without even having to consider it. I hope she's got handcuffs!

She smiles and walks us over to our table, we pretend to sit down and take it all in for a minute, but as soon as she's out of sight we rush off to the buffet table. They have a selection of breakfast cereals, a variety of juices, two kinds of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, toast, buns, rice, miso soup and vegetables.

We neatly pile the food onto our plates and head back to our seats to consume and enjoy.
After breakfast, we make our way over to Nara to begin our sight seeing for the day. We start off the day by visiting the second highest pagoda in Japan, the Five Storied Pagoda, which is also a national treasure. We snap a couple of quick photos and move on.
We run into some messengers of God, Deer, and they tell us to watch our backs, and to try the green tea soft served ice cream. The entire area is filled with free roaming deers. At this moment we're looking for the Todai-Ji Temple, but before we get there we stop at the Observatory Musuem / Tourist Info center to use their washroom and drink some free green tea (so hospitable). While Steve befriends the nice Japanese lady behind the info desk, Ly and I go try the earthquake chair. It's a chair that simulates what it feels like to be in an earthquake, it wasn't as exciting at it sounded.

After that we make our way towards the temple, the path to the temple is very far away and a very long walk, luckily they have green tea soft served ice cream vendor stands available along the way. Wait a minute......

So Ly and I each purchase a cone for 300Yen each, I don't recall what Steve was doing exactly, but he was probably taking pictures of little kids, but who knows he probably had one too, I don't see how anyone could resist. Before even finishing his first cone, Ly wanted to opt for another one, since he wanted to try a different flavour I believe, but we told him that there would be plenty of opportunities afterwards.
So we're all just standing there enjoying our ice cream cones, that's when a deer unknowingly comes up to Steve's back pocket and picks the ONLY tourist map of Nara that we had. This map had every single tourist attraction that we wanted to visit circled with routes on how to get to each of them outlined as well. This was a big setback and a major FML for us.
Luckily, I had taken notes and brought along my Lonely Planet Japan book, which outlined the sites that we wanted to visit and it had a semi-useful map, but at that time, it was better than nothing. So we relied on those resources to get us through the rest of the sites and day.

As we were leaving the tourist/temple grounds we noticed that there were quite a few more shops selling soft served ice cream, however this time it was 250Yen.

In my tourist guide book, it outlined a market that had plenty of food to be eaten along with a highly recommend tonkatsu place, Tonkatsu Ganko. It was high quality tonkatsu, you could watch them make it behind a clear pane of glass, the portion sizes were nice and the price was cheap. This was easily our best Tonkatsu meal in Japan.
I wanted to visit another temple but it was almost 5PM by the time we finished eating, so I knew we would never make it, so we headed back to Osaka to continue exploring there. We went to the Osaka Castle. I don't get how they could fit a castle right in the middle of a city. This is where we caught sight of the infamous fish tail.
There wasn't much time to visit any place else after Osaka Castle, since most places were closed by that time. So we headed back to the hotel to shower and freshen up. When we were all ready to leave, Steve caught us off guard by saying something we'd never thought he'd say, "ya'll go ahead, I think i'll kick it with my girl today".

So we left his tired ass and we went to go find food on a stick, it's amazing the kind of leftovers you can throw on a stick, fry it and then feed it to people. They served us liver, chicken gizarts, chicken fat, pork fat, etc. It wasn't that great of a meal, but it still cost us 3,000 Yen. Never again!

So Ly and I are sitting at the table, across from each other, nothing special, and to my left at a 45 degree angle there are another two people, one was clearly a girl, but the other one reminded me a Miss Piggy,

so naturally, I thought the other person was a girl, but Ly was very certain that it was a dude, so certain in fact that he was willing to put some money on it. Ring Ring, she, I mean he, picks up the phone and answers it in a manly tone. Dammit. I guess I was more tired that I thought.

However, I was still hungry, so we walked by a conveyor sushi belt place, but didnt' feel like stopping in to eat, so I wanted to grab a bento box, haven't had one since. I walk in, get welcomed like a King and ask the nice Japanese lady if she speaks English, she says no. So I take her by the arm and drag her outside and point to one of the many plastic food displays that they have. Now I can cross that off my mental checklist.

Japan - Day 3 - Osaka

After a late night we all still managed to wake up pretty early. Our 3 hour train ride to Osaka wasn't until later on in the morning so we decided to make the most of it by going out for breakfast.

We head on over to KFC for a light breakfast. Fuck it. We're on vacation, in Japan! Give me more food! So we head over to another curry vending machine. This place was different from the other curry shops that we've previously been exposed to. This place offered a free service that we weren't use to, they had porno mags available for your viewing pleasure. It's only 9AM, it's too early for porn, yes even in Japan it's too early for porn, so just the curry please.









After that "light" meal, we head back to our hotel to pack our bags and check-out. Steve was closest to the door so head said "Alright, let's go" so he picks up his bag to head for the door, and as he was picking up his bag, he didn't realize that he hadn't zipped it up, so everything that he had just spent the past half hour packing neatly fell out of his bag an onto the ground. Can you say major fail?
So we get to the station with a little time to spare, we each take turns, watching the bags and going into the little convenience store that they have on each platform. I walk into the store and notice that they have an assortment of Kit Kat bars in flavours that are rare here, such a Green Tea, Apple Vinegar, Grape etc. But I resist the temptation to purchase any more since I had already made my snack purchase earlier. Next thing I know, Steve comes walking out of the store, happily munching on an Original Flavoured Kit Kat bar. Fail!

So the train arrives and we board, not much excitement for the next three hours. So let's fast forward ahead. Vrrt!

We arrive at the Ana Crowne Plaza Hotel with our bags ready for check-in. I make my way up to the check-in counter smile and wink at the male receptionist, and voila! He informs me that he has upgraded me to the Club Level, so we get a larger room, we're on the 23rd of the 24 livable floors of their building, we get a nicer view and on top of that we recieve a variety of complimentary Club Service Features, which includes free breakfast buffet in the mornings, free snacks and refreshments in the afternoons and free alcholic drinks in the evenings. Cha-Ching!

We all rush into the room and begin snapping pictures of a nice clean room before we trash it. After a short break we head out to our first tourist attraction in Osaka, the Tsutenkaku tower.

Tsutenkaku means "tower reaching heaven". Back in the day this tower lived up to its name, it was the highest tower in the East at that time. However that is not the case today.

Inside this tower lives Billiken, the God of Good Luck. He is very popular with the locals, people pray to him to pass school entrance exams, find mates, etc. It has been noted that the prototype of Billiken was a unique god who appeared in a dream to an American girl back in 1908. Okay, so even though an American girl dreamed him up, people still believe that if you rub the soles of his feet, your wish will be fulfilled. I guess it is true then, that people will worhsip anything!

After that tower, we went to go look for some kushikatsu, a dish that is popular in this area of the neighbourhood. Kushikatsu consists of pieces of meat or vegetables sprinkled with bread crumbs, skewered and deep fried, it's made to order and consumed right on the spot. The sauce is important and each piece had it's own flavour, they even have rules for applying the sauce. Well, the restaurant we ate at, had it's own rule for the sauce. It said "absolutely no double dipping". It didn't occur to me at the time as to why that rule was in place, I only figured it out after we finished eating, I thought the rule was in place so that you don't ruin the flavour of the item by double dipping, sadly that was not the case. *cough

After visiting the Tsutenkaku and rubbing the soles of Billiken and wishing not to catch Swine flu, we had just enough time to visit one more attraction, the Osaka WTC.


We got to go all the way up to the 51st floor and enjoy a nice romantic view of the city. This was probably the most romantic spot that we went to during the trip. So romantic that we even had wedding bells on our minds and before we left, I put my name on the waiting list for 2015.

After visiting the WTC we needed food! We must have wandered around the city for hours, searching hi and lo, but for some reason, we could not find a decent food place to eat. Finally after what seemed like a decade of walking, Ly noticed that they had an underground food court in a train station, so we decided to head there and check it out. It wasn't much, but it'll have to do, they had a subway, a Mc Donalds, a bar, and a small shop that served what I believe is called Takoyaki(?).

After walking up and down the limited selection of shops and unable to come to a conclusion on what we wanted to eat, we finally settled for some good old fashioned Mc Donalds. I tried their spicy chicken burger, along with their french fries fried in Japan, along with their coke that was also poured in Japan. Steve opted for Mc Donald's as well, he went with a good ol fashioned Japanese burger with a bacon potatoe pie and some weird drink.

Ly went to the Takoyaki shop, which served octopus / squid inside a fresh baked batter in a ball shape. It sounded weird, but tasted a lot like congee.
After dinner, we made our way back to the hotel. As we're walking along, we came across a detour. We could take Route A, which was a new route and this route may or may not pay off in bringing us back to our hotel quicker than the old route. Or we could take Route B, which was the route we knew would surely get us back to the hotel.

I said that Route A was quicker than Route B, but they guys didn't believe me, so the other two chose Route B and I chose Route A.

Lo and behold Route A was a lot quicker. As my reward for completing this challenge, I got to shower first!