Mt Fuji - Go here for awesome food, hot springs and marriage proposals

Michael and I are currently sitting in the deserted common room of what appears to be a completely empty hostel in Kyoto, warming our footsies after a very eventful couple of days at Mt Fuji.

So, back on Monday we left the backpacker's hostel in Tokyo, still trying to recover from the previous night out. We had already arranged train tickets, and nearly 2 hours later found ourselves speeding towards a fancy onsen ryokan (Japanese traditional inn with hot springs). Our first sighting of Mt Fuji was absolutely breathtaking. It is not surrounded by any other mountains, it just rises up from nothing and completely dominates the entire skyline. It is ridiculously enormous, so big that the top third is covered in snow, and even though the weather was fine on the day we arrived, the top was slightly obscured by swirling mist. It looks slightly ethereal and other-worldly, like maybe it is some kind of illusion and isn't supposed to be there. especially since it didn't show up in any of our photos. The day we arrived it didn't show because the sun reflected off the snow, and the 2 days after that were overcast so the top was obscured by clouds.


Anyway, enough about Mt Fuji and onto the Ryokan. It was also pretty awesome, we had a private hot spring bath out the back, and one in the bathroom, we had personalised service and over-the-top 12-course dinners served to us one-by-one in our room, even more over-the-top breakfasts also served to us in our room, a driver to drive us to and from town and the train station in a big black mercedes with tinted windows to make us feel important etc etc. 

We didn't have time to do much on the first day. We arrived, had tea served to us, went for a walk (where we found some of those yummy waffle things filled with cream that we had in Asakusa), went in the onsen (so good!) and had ridiculously big dinner that we didn't finish. Started the second day with humungous breakfast that we didn't finish, then walked into town and caught the bus to the bottom of a 'mountain' (they only call it that, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a real mountain) and caught the cable car part of the way up. We had hoped for an awesome view of Mt Fuji like the day before, but it was slightly overcast so we couldn't quite see the top. We hiked right to the top of our 'mountain', where we found a secluded little shrine. 


That's where Michael popped the big question, after first waiting for me to finish nearly an entire box of Pocky (yummy wafer sticks coated in chocolate). As we turned to leave he dropped to one knee and pulled out the box. In true style I burst into tears and just about fell over. I said yes of course. 


The ring is very pretty and shiny and I keep moving my hand around to watch it sparkle. I'm a bit worried about someone trying to chop off my finger in south-east asia so we might keep it in the pack for that part of the trip.


We haven't set a date yet, probably about a year after we get back to Perth.


We celebrated by having a very romantic lunch of MOS burgers (these delicious little burgers that remind me of Whitecastle from Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle), chips and ginger ale, after Michael bought me a little Freeza Dragonball Z figurine from a games arcade on the way (I will treasure it always). 

We also had a very nice bottle of Sake with our gigantuous million-course dinner.


So this morning, after a very event-filled couple of days (and one last dip in the onsen), we packed our bags and headed back to the train station. Luckily Michael asked the driver (in his awesome Japanese) how to get to Kyoto, because he told us a way that involved less transfers than our original plan. He then proceeded to take us to the ticket office, organise our tickets for the bus, got the bus to wait for us (which is unbelievable over here since the public transport is never ever late), and gave instructions for us to write down regarding which stop to get off at and which shinkansen (really fast train) to take.


Unfortunately, the directions from the hostel were not so good. We got to Kyoto no problem however we found ourselves well and truly lost about an hour later. Luckily, people over here are soooo friendly and after asking about half the population of Japan for help, we finally managed to find it.


We are hoping that Kyoto lives up to its name as one of the best preserved cities in Japan, because after the amazing experiences that we have had in Tokyo and Mt Fuji, it has pretty big boots to fill.

Tokyo - That is going to be really hard to top!

Jen and I are sitting on the Shinkansen (bullet train) that is going to Mount Fuji so we can stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese style inn). The train ride is good because we need to wind down after another great night out in Tokyo with people we met at the hostel.

Before I get to that, I will do a quick re-cap on what we did during the past two days.

On Saturday (the day after our first big night out) we went to Harajuku to see Meiji-jinju at Yoyogi park. There we saw kids dressed up in cos-play (i.e. dressed up in crazy outfits), a very large Shinto shrine in the middle of the park, a Japanese wedding and took some amazing photos of the parkland with the metropolis in the background. To the left is a photo of one of the arches in the park. Jenni is standing on the right hand side of the arch. We even got to get a sneak peak at some people training in Kendo at a martial arts dojo in Yoyogi park.

After Yoyogi, we went to Shibuya (the same place we had been out that previous night). Shibuya is a girl's shopping wonderland. Jenni was delighted to go shopping in Shibuya 109, an 8 storey high very fancy fashion store. All of the girls in there were all really made up and were all wearing amazing clothes. It was like walking through a fashion show. After shopping we grabbed something to eat for dinner, bought a box of doughnuts from Krispy Kreme and returned to the hostel to go and socialize with everyone in the common area.

The following day, we got up at a reasonable time so we could make our way over to Tokyo station so we could go and see the imperial palace. This was rather disappointing as you cannot see that much because you cannot go into the palace grounds and the palace is obscured by trees. We did however; meet a very nice Japanese man of whom we had a conversation with (in both Japanese and English) about some nice places to go in Japan as well as some things for us to do in Shanghai.

After the imperial palace, we made our way back to Akihabara so we could have a walk through electric town. We walked through a couple of multi storied shops selling all sorts of comics, novels, DVDs, computer gear and video games. We were really surprised to see the unbelievable amounts of pornographic material in these shops. It is EVERYWHERE in Akihabara.

We also tried to get into a 4 storey high maid cafe but the line was enormous, so we decided to give it a miss and headed back to the hostel.

We quickly changed and headed back out to Shinjuku to meet some people for dinner. A group of us which included the same two English guys (Nick and Nick) and the American girl from the previous night (Elizabeth), as well as another American girl (Ellie), a Swedish guy (Joel) and two local Japanese guys (Yoshi and Yuya) all went to an Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant. It had tea cups hanging from the ceiling, playing cards covering the walls in the toilets, tapestries with the original text and illustrations from the book hanging from the wall and all of the waitresses dressed as Alice or the Mad Hatter. We all had a set menu and 'nomihodai' - all you can drink for a couple of hours. The food was delicious and the company was even better. Just like the other night, drinks after dinner evolved into more drinking games. Some of the highlights were a group of us singing happy birthday to Elizabeth, various members of the group having to remove items of clothing, lots of haiku poems and someone having to ask all of the waitresses to come in to take a photo with everyone in it (I don’t think they were too impressed, but we thought it was great).

The highlight of the night had to be when we left the Alice in Wonderland restaurant everyone except for one of the Nicks went down the elevator. The rest of us decided to play a joke on him so we all hid around the corner on a set of stairs, ready to jump in front of him and surprise him when he got out of the elevator. Unfortunately for some random Japanese bloke, Nick took a little longer to come down than expected, so the poor Japanese bloke got the scare of his life when he exited the elevator and Elizabeth jumped out in front of him while seven other people yelled out. But he was a really good sport about it and we all had a laugh.

After our nomihodai time was up, we moved onto another place to drink. The Japanese guys took us to a gothic prison themed bar where the waiter and waitress was dressed in prison outfits and we were all 'locked' in a cell where we continued the drinking games. All of the drinks that we ordered were served in chemistry set glasses like test tubes and beakers and had things like novelty eyeballs floating in the drinks. At one stage a completely random drunk Japanese guy burst into our cell and stole one of our drinks (it was obviously a dare from one of his friends). Elizabeth chased him out of our cell and managed to get the drink replaced with a full one. Everyone was quick to laugh it off as a bit of fun.

At this stage (about 3am in the morning) Jen, the two English guys and I started to make our way back to the hostel as we all needed to get to bed because we were checking out in the morning.

It was truly an awesome night out!

So much for having a lazy day...

This is going to be a quick post, because I really need to sleep right now, pictures will be added later...

After deciding to take it easy we went to Tokyo Tower, which has an absolutely amazing view. Then we headed back to the hostel, on the way back picking up some snacks and goodies from the supermarket, and then stopping off at a bar for a celebratory drink for passing my CA exam.

That was interesting because we were the only people in the bar and the bartender didn't speak any English, so ordering drinks was fun. Michael was able to squeeze a conversation out of the situation, but it mainly revolved around what was famous in Australia (Olivia Newton John, Koalas, etc)

Then we got back to the hostel ready for an early night, but when we got to the common room it was chock full of Aussies, Poms and an American. One thing led to another, and we ended up in Shibuya trying to find a bar. This turned out to be harder than expected, so as often happens, the group split up. Michael and I joined two Englishmen and the American girl ("Nick and Nick" and Elizabeth) and we found a licensed restaurant.

That's when the drinking games started, which involved some public singing of national anthems and Celine Dion songs. After that we managed to find a proper bar, where the blonde, blue-eyed American was an instant hit with the locals with the lively barman jokingly pointing at her and yelling at the top of his voice "Urusai!" (noisy) with one of the local business women claiming "Kawaii!" (Cute). This, however didn't stop them from trying to over-charge us.

By this time we had missed the last train (who would have thought that the trains in Perth run later than the trains in Tokyo??? No trains from midnight to 4:30am, what's with that!?!), and since taxis are so expensive we decided that staying out was the way to go. After the obligatory cheeseburger at McDonalds (at this point I would just like to state that it seems like all 24hr Maccas in party districts are the same no matter what country you are in... after the domestic dispute downstairs there was also a very drunk Victorian girl passed out in the bathroom... she was one of the Aussies in the original group), we got a private karaoke room (when in Rome!) and spent the next hour or so in good company with Bon Jovi, the Little Mermaid and Neil Diamond (Michael just reminded me to add Red Hot Chilli Peppers, the Foo Fighters, Bryan Adams and Guns N' Roses).

By 4:30am the trains started running again, so we went back to the train station and bumped into the drunk Victorian girl who was being looked after by a bunch of security guards (to whom she attempted to give her email address to and invite them to Australia). She couldn't even remember how she got to the train station, so we took her with us. You would not believe how many people are catching the trains at 4:30am in the morning. It is jam packed! Don't these people sleep!?!

We made it back to the hostel at 5:20am, and after a power nap (we didn't want to sleep through the day and upset the body clock!), we managed to fit in a Shinto shrine in Yoyogi park, kids dressed in Cos Play outfits at Harajuku and some shopping in Shibuya (definitely the place to go for partying and shopping in Tokyo!) before ending up back at the hostel.

This is where I am now... making sure that I note all of this down before going for a real sleep, because I'm sure I will forget parts of it by tomorrow!

(Michael and I would like to thank "Nick and Nick" and Elizabeth for joining us for what was truly an awesome and unforgettable night out in Tokyo)

I PASSED!! Also featuring markets, dragons and capsule hotels

I'd just like to start off this post with the news that I passed my last ever CA exam!!! 

Apparently my diploma will be in the mail shortly and should be received within 10 working days :-) So now I am officially a fully-fledged Chartered Accountant which is a huge relief and I never want to study ever again. 

Anyway - onto what we have been doing recently, apart from celebrating passing my CA exam...

Yesterday it was time for a change, so we left K's house to go to a different part of Tokyo. We really liked it there and were sad to go. Would thoroughly recommend for anyone going to Tokyo, the price is budget ($70 per night, per person for a double bed with ensuite) but the actual place is very nice, amenities are great and the location is brilliant.

We checked out early, but left our backpacks so that we could check out more of Asakusa before leaving. For breaky we grabbed a very interesting combo of buttered toast, coleslaw, a fried egg topped with ham and half a banana (very yummy). Then it was onto the legendary markets.

This was the best move ever! About 30 seconds down the first arcade we realised that something was up. There was a crowd of people waiting outside the 5-story pagoda and a little way down the street we saw a little temple garden filled with important-looking people and a big golden dragon! No, not a real dragon, one of those long ones held up by guys with poles. Then the music started, coming from a moving pagoda with women playing traditional instruments and dressed in traditional make-up and kimonos. The procession went from the garden to the pagoda, preceded by these cute little school kids carrying staffs with bells on them. Then they started doing some speeches that we couldn't understand so we left.

At the time we had no idea what the special occasion was, but we found plaque in a nearby shrine that talked about festival rites performed on the 17/18 of March to honour one of the deities that supposedly protected the temple from raccoon dogs, or something along those lines. Anyway, it was very cool.

Then we meandered the markets, which were really interesting. There were sooo many little stalls. Like Bali but not, because the stalls are all orderly (even the roller shutters are painted with lovely Japanese landscapes), the place is really clean, the salespeople don't hassle you or rip you off, the merchandise is great quality and it doesn't smell. 

Basically this was an entire day of shopping and food. First I had this 'ice-cream burger' which was a wafer shell filled with sakura (cherry blossom) ice-cream. Then I had this chocolate custard sandwiched between 2 waffle/pancake things. Michael tried the chestnut flavour but it wasn't as good as the chocolate. We bought a nice set of chopstics and I got some gloves because it is REALLY COLD!

Then we picked up our bags from K's and went to the new place near Shinjuku in Akebonobashi (Ace Inn), which is a capsule hotel and not as nice as K's. You get a locker and a coffin shaped capsule with a mattress, in a dorm room with about 28 other people. It is shared bathrooms. But it is less than half the price, so more money for food and entertainment, yay!

Anyway, we dumped our bags and continued our shopping and food spree by going to Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. It was once the biggest mall in the world! Now - not so big, but still at least twice the size of anything in Perth. 

We started at Macca's and then tried to do some shopping. Trying on clothes is a pain because you have to take your shoes off before going into the fitting room (not cool with lace-up sneakers), then you have to tie your hair up in these little hair net thingies, plus the sizes are not quite the right shape for me! I felt super-under-dressed, since all of the girls around that area were pretty dressed up, and there's me with my cargo pants, t-shirt, fleecey jumper and sneakers!

The fashion is definitely centred around denim, plaid or tutu mini-skirts teamed with either boots or knee-high socks with high-heels (haven't seen one pair of ballet flats yet!). The clothes shops definitely catered towards that kind of thing, very eclectic but girly, with lots of frills and shirts with english slogans that make no sense. Shops which sell sensible and casual clothes are few and far between, but I still managed to find 3 nice tops that weren't too crazy.

We stayed at the shopping centre for dinner, we had some surprisingly good Italian food, finished off with a delicious banana, chocolate and custard crepe. Mmmmm... crepe.

By the end of the day my feet were in agony, but we saw heaps so it was worth it. I limped back to the hotel and had an awesome sleep (possibly due to the fact that Michael and I are in separate capsules, so no fighting over blankets!).

We are having a lazy day today - maybe will go see Tokyo tower a bit later, and then go and try some of the local sake to celebrate, did I mention passing my exam??

Ueno - A Nice Surprise: Cherry Blossoms

We started our day by attempting to replenish our cash supplies. The guy at the place we were staying had mentioned a couple of days earlier that there was an ATM at the local seven eleven. When we tried this ATM, we were a bit worried because it kept rejecting our card, but we were relieved shortly after when we attempted to use the post office's ATM instead as this accepted our Australian debit cards and allowed us to withdraw some cash.

After that we set off to Ueno. If you ever go to Tokyo and have an iPhone, I highly recommend you get the app 'trains.jp'. Thanks to this little app, we think we have finally figured out the best way to deal with Tokyo's crazy rail system. The app allows us to enter in a departure station and a destination station name and it will tell us what trains to take, which trains to transfer onto and how much it will cost you to get to each station. Using this app, getting around via the trains is a breeze.

Once we arrived in Ueno, we walked through the Imperial Park. Here we saw the 'Grand Fountain' (sorry to be a spoil sport, but that just didn't seem that grand...). To our surprise we also saw some cherry blossoms (Sakura). The cherry blossoms only appear once a year in Japan for a very short period (about 2 weeks I think), so we were delighted to see these as we thought that we would be too early to see them. There were lots of people in the park, including us, taking photos of them.

We continued on through the park to the Tokyo National Museum. It too was very busy due to a special exhibit. We decided to get a regular pass (rather than paying the extra money to see the special exhibit and brave the line which snaked its way what looked to be about 500m long) and see the regular exhibits in the museum. This did not disappoint. We spent a good 2 hours or so navigating the amazing building seeing sculptures, tapestries, swords, samurai armour, dolls, gowns, pottery and many other things that were all from various periods throughout Japanese history. The oldest pieces we saw were from about 20,000 BC. The most impressive exhibit that Jenni and I saw would have to be a clay statue that pre-dated a few thousand years BC that were very intricate. How on earth someone managed to excavate that piece and retain its intricacy after so many years is beyond me.

After the museum we found ourselves very hungry so we on search for some food. Unfortunately all of the local museum restaurants were full (probably due to the fancy pants special exhibit). Instead of waiting we thought we would take a quick walk through the National Museum gardens before exiting and getting some lunch. At this stage it started to get really cold, but luckily on our way through the gardens there was a food stand where we were able to purchase a 'Japanese Lunchbox' and a nice hot chocolate. The gardens had old Japanese houses throughout. It was interesting to see how short the houses were. The little old Japanese ladies walking in front of us were right at home with their height, but I had to duck under some of the low roofs.

After our late lunch, we moved onto the Ueno zoo. Entry was nice and cheap (600yen ~ about $8 AUS). We only had about 2 hours to rush through the zoo before closing time, but we managed to see pretty much all the exhibits we were interested in.

The zoo is as big as Perth zoo, but the exhibits are far more exotic. The highlights would have to be: very colourful birds from around the world that looked like someone had painted the colours on them; a couple of very frantic Red Pandas that looked like they had been drinking red cordial; massive eagles that stood about 2.5 foot tall; massive penguins that were about 2 foot tall; lions and tigers prowling back and forth in their exhibits; a gorilla with a tea towel on her head; polar bears, Japanese black bears and a sun bear; Hippos that were swimming about 1m away from us; orange and pink flamingos; small mammals chasing and wrestling with each other; and a family of lemurs huddled together to try and stay warm in the cold.

After the zoo, we went back to Asakusa. There we went into the ROX shopping centre. ROX is a multi storey department store, similar to Myer. There I picked up a funky looking T-Shirt for about $15 AUD. Jen and I have noticed that prices for clothes are quite comparable to Perth. In fact, we have noticed that Perth is actually probably more expensive in terms of clothes, shoes and electronics in comparison to Japan; not something I was expecting. (Claire: We found a franchise of fashion accessory shops named after you!)

Even an amateur shopper such as me has noticed that the variety of clothes available in clothing department stores is far superior to the selection available in Australia. I will let Jen elaborate on the available fashions in her next post.

After some shopping we had some ramen at one of the local ramen stores and then headed home to do some laundry and get an early night so we could wake up at a reasonable time the next day to get out and see the rest of the Asakusa markets before making our way over to Shinjuku for our next place of accommodation.

A Computer Nerd's Take On Akihabara

Jen and I agreed that she would write up what we did the day we went to Akihabara, but we agreed that I would do an additional article as a computer nerd's take on what is essentially Japanese nerd central.


Akihabara is known as 'denki town' (electric town) because it is a maze of electronic stores that sell all sort of electronic gadgets, video games and computer gear. It is also home to what is probably the biggest collection of manga and anime (japanese comics and cartoons) shops in Tokyo.


Many people claim that Japan is ahead of the rest of the world in terms of electronics and computers. After visiting Akihabara, I would have to say that I disagree. Let me explain... They definitely have the latest electronics and computers, but they are by no means ahead of anywhere else. Pretty much everything we saw in Akihabara anyone in little old Perth could either buy from a shop in Perth or at the very least order it over the internet.


HOWEVER, what you CANT do in Perth is go into one single bloody department store and buy EVERYTHING in one fell swoop! THAT is the difference between Akihabara and the rest of the world in terms of computers and electronic gadgets.


As Jenni mentioned in the previous post, the first Akihabara store we went into was Yodobashi Akiba. This is the Mecca of electronics. It is a EIGHT storey high electronics store, with each floor about the size of a single floor in Perth's Murray St Myer Store. The first floor was just mobile phones, netbooks and laptops. I have NEVER seen so many mobile phones for sale as well as so many phone accessories. I am talking aisle upon aisle of headphones, replacement batterys, phone cases, you name it, they have it. They had pretty much the same netbooks and laptops available that we have in Australia, but already have the newest models that we would not be getting for another month or two. I was quite surprised to see that the prices of the netbooks and laptops were actually about 3/4 of the price that we would pay for the same models in Australia.


The 2nd floor was all PC gear and small computers like PDAs. I was quite surprised to see all of this because I always assumed that the Japanese weren't that big into computers, but I must be wrong. I was really surprised to see that you could buy things like replacement laptop batteries and power cords right off the shelf. In Australia, in order to buy these sorts of things, we would have to contact the manufacturer directly.


The 3rd floor was a photographer's heaven. It had pretty much EVERY camera available on the market today. There were hundreds of digital point and shoot cameras, SLRs and even polaroid cameras to choose from. Stands, replacement lenses, bags, etc etc were also available to buy.

The rest of floors had heaps of other electronic things in them that I will skip over, but I will have to mention the video game and toys floor. This floor was completely jam packed full of anime toys, hundreds.. nay, thousands of boxes of model Gundams - popular cartoon robots (Anth: You have to check out the pictures, you will probably wet your pants!) and stacks of video games. I was not surprised to see that Nintendo hailed supreme in the video game section taking up about half of it. Just like the mobile phone section there was stacks of Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS accessories. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Xbox 360 section was about the same size as the PS3 section (but neither was anywhere near the size of the Nintendo section). One thing that they had which we don't get many of in Australia was hint guide books. There was a rather large section of video game hint guides with a guide for every game under the sun available for purchase.

Speaking about books, the floor above the video game and anime floor was the books floor. About a quarter of this dedicated to Japanese comics. The comics were quite cheap in comparison to the imported ones that we can get in Perth (about half the price).

Another highlight of Akihabara was the video game arcade that we went into. We have noticed that instead of standard arcade games, most people play "UFO" games. The name of these games in Perth are "Skill Testers", the ones where you have to try and navigate a claw to pick up a prize (in Perth, it is typically a stuffed toy, but in the arcades here the prizes range from anime figurines to boxes of chocolates). I did have a go of a 'standard' arcade game (Anth: if you didn't wet yourself before, you probably will now!). It was a Gundam game where you have to first buy a 'pilot card' from a machine that prints out a card like a credit card with your 'pilot name' on it. You then you take the card and go into a private giant cockpit, insert the card and then you get to pilot a virtual Gundam. You use it to fight against other people in a giant virtual arena. The game connects to the interent, so you can be fighting against people who are playing in other arcades around Japan, not just the one you are in. There is a voice communication and everything, so you can try and co-ordinate your attacks with your team mates - although this didn't really help me because I had no idea what they were saying.


All in all it was a pretty interesting day. With all of the computers, video games, anime, manga and girls dressed up as maids trying to hand you flyers to go to their 'Maid Cafes' on the street, I definitely feel like I need to watch a good old game of football to make myself feel less nerdy and more 'blokey' again... not that I was ever that 'blokey' to begin with!

Day Two - Gadgets Galore

After an awesome sleep, we were pleased to discover that Michael's plan had worked and we had a lovely cheap breaky of cereal and OJ (and then realising that there is a shared fridge downstairs!) before heading off to Akihabara. After first attempting to buy a train ticket using the bike rack ticket machine, we finally figured it out and arrived at Akihabara - the electronics district.

Most of the time we spent in the 8 stories tall department store which specialised in electronics but also seemed to have everything from cosmetics to golf clubs. I got a lovely Japanese style watch with a mother of pearl face and Michael got some electronic stuff. After lunch we went off to see the rest of the district. We wanted to see a maid cafe, but when we found one, the entrance was off this dodgy alleyway and it kind of put us off the idea, so we had to make do with Starbucks instead. It is coming up to cherry blossom season (Sakura) soon - there are fake cherry blossoms all over the place. Even Starbucks had some special Sakura additions to the menu. I tried the Sakura Frappacino and a Sakura steamed bun - they were delicious. 

After that we headed back to 'A-sock-sa' and checked out the temple area. It was  a beautiful place to have a wander around. The temples weren't open, so we might go back tomorrow. There was also a nearby kiddy park which had an awesome slide which I decided to have a go on. Unfortunately, I forgot that I'm actually not 5 years old anymore. The slide was a weeee bit small for me and I ended up scraping the skin off the side of one of my thumbs. But all better after some Betadine (ouch!) and a bandaid from Nurse McGonigle.

After some cheap Bento and watching Hot Fuzz we are ready to crash again - Konban-wa!