Supermarkets and Service Stations

Imported fruit and veges are expensive, but even those locally grown are selected for quality before being put on the shelves. The strawberries were all identicle in size, shape, and texture, and were all perfectly aligned in each box. There was not a blemish to be found on any of the veges, and none of them were humorously shaped. The cucumbers were perfectly straight, and the capsicums individually packaged, and were exactly the same colour, size, and shape, making them look like plastic imitations. My guess is that all the imperfect veges end up in processed food or are exported. The other thing that caught my eye was the variety of alcohol! You can buy my favourite beer (Kirin Ichiban) in 135ml, 350ml, and 1 litre cans. Sake wine in available in regular 1.5 litre bottles, or you can get the 5 litre value packs! I wish Queensland would copy the rest of the civilised world and let supermarkets stock alcohol.

Another strange thing was seeing petrol station attendants in action. They shout greetings and hail each car that pulls up, directing them into a free fuelling bay. They fuss over their customers with the urgency of pit-stop mechanics. When the car is ready to leave, an attendant steps into the middle of the road (sometimes stopping both directions of traffic) to let the car speed off without hinderance. The attendant gives another shout of thanks, and a wave farewell before returning to their post to greet the next customer.

Gotenba Premium Outlets!

To stock up on winter clothes, I went to a massive outlet centre at Gotenba (near Mount Fuji) with Chihiro and her friend Tsugumi. It was a huge shopping complex where brand name shops sold last-year's discounted stock. We ate a nice but overpriced lunch in a large eating hall along with thousands of other shoppers. The stuffed moose-heads on the wall gave us a grotesque performance by animatronically singing along to horrible American country music.

Back in Shizuoka

I'm staying with Chihiro's family in Shizuoka until I can find a place of my own. They were very welcoming, and gave me some nice woolen sweaters. It's not snowing here, but it's still bloody cold! At first the cold was refreshing, but now it's just freezing. The living room is kept toasty warm with heaters and an electric carpet, and the futons are cozy with several duvets piled on. Chihiro's youngest sister taught me to tie my scarf in "Minyon style", named after a famous soapie star who is a big idol with middle-aged ladies. I tried to pull off the expression of longing that trademarks his character, but failed miserably.

It's tradition on new year's eve to send greeting cards to your relatives, friends, workmates, past school-friends, etc etc, wishing them a happy new year. (Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!) Each family sends and receives hundreds of these cards within one or two days... a tremendous feat of postal efficiency. The above group photo was made into a card by Chihiro's dad, however their 20 year old son was not home when it was taken, and I was there instead, so they received many questions back from relatives asking if their son had transformed into a Gaijin!

The Eagle Has Landed

At least, the bird of paradise has, since I was travelling Air Niu Guinea. I can definitely recommend them, being much cheaper and still good quality. I stopped over at Port Moresby, spending an hour in a 70's style waiting lounge, but it's directly on the way to Tokyo so the trip took 6 hours less than last time when I went via Singapore. Chihiro met me at the airport with a big smile and hug, but was a little shy about giving me a kiss with so many people watching (smooching in public is considered pretty rude in Japan).

The next day we spent in Ginza, the posh shopping district of Tokyo. It was snowing, but luckily Chihiro gave me a warm scarf for Christmas. And just two days ago I was swimming at the Gold Coast! We had massive lunch at a stylish restraunt for only $15. We had a main meal each, and stacked up our plates twice at a buffet offering all sorts of tasty soups, salads, tofus, and deserts. The service was impressive too - I had dropped a chopstick on the floor and was just about to pick it up when a waitress appeared with another pair for me!

Holiday in Japan Menu

Unfortunately my diary entries are shown with the latest entry first, so if you read down the page it sometimes makes less sense than usual. Here are links to my "Holiday in Japan" entries in order.

• Shizuoka
• Mount Fuji and Izu
• Kyoto
• Disney Sea and Shizuoka
• Tokyo

Holiday in Japan - Tokyo

Tokyo was the last place I visited in Japan before leaving. It was definitely worth visiting even though I'm not a big fan of crowded and polluted cities. The first stop was Akihabara, or the "Electric City". For several blocks around Akihabara station there was nothing but electronics stores, the odd cafe, crowds of shoppers, and aggressive sales-people wielding microphones at potential prey. I spent a few hours looking for a good notebook computer, but most stores were actually overpriced. The best place I saw was an internet warehouse/outlet that Chihiro's father had recommended. The staff didn't speak English, and didn't know many technical details, so even with Chihiro translating it was quite difficult to choose a notebook. In the end I got a very nice Fujitsu notebook that had everything I wanted and more (a remote control?!)

Inner Tokyo is literally a concrete and glass jungle, and we couldn't even find anywhere to sit and and eat the lunch we'd brought with us. Instead we went to a noodle bar to sit down and have a rest, where I tried udon noodles with wakame (seaweed) and unlimited green tea, all for only $5! It's so much better than western fast food. In Tokyo, convenience stores are on almost every street corner, and they generally sell better food than the ones in Australia. You can buy freshly made soups, steamed buns, bento (boxed lunches including sushi and sashimi), and onigiri (rice balls). One of the best things about them is that they sell beer too!

The biggest highlight for me was the Studio Ghibli museum out in one of the quieter suburbs. I've been a fan of their animated movies for quite a while (Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke are their most well-known works), so it was really interesting to learn all about them. The whole place was built and decorated to look like something straight out of their cartoons. There was a history of how the animation evolved, and a history of the studio, as well as a replica of Hayao Miyazaki's study, full of all the things that have inspired him. One of the most impressive displays was a spinning set of character models that were lit by a strobe light timed perfectly to animate them. There were also displays of the animation process, and a section about Pixar studios. We also saw a short movie in the museum's cinema, which had the same masterful blending of reality and fantasy as most Ghibli films, and was about some kindergarten children trying to catch a whale in their imaginary boat. The museum cafe was very crowded with a long waiting line, so for lunch Chihiro took me to a place near Shinjuku called Ben's Cafe! It had a great atmosphere and there were quite a few foreigners there chilling out and playing Go.

We also visited Harajuku, the "alternative" fashion capital of Japan. The funny thing was that all the alternative people wearing platform boots and costumes looked very similar - they were all conforming to the same trend! It would have been a great place to spend enormous amounts of money, but luckily I'd already done all my souvenir and gift shopping. I wasn't looking forward to the end of my holiday in Japan, but all good things must come to an end, and it had been a wonderful experience. In such a short time I'd already become used to most of the small differences (such as sitting on the floor, using chopsticks, and sleeping on futons) that arriving back in Australia seemed a little strange at first!

Holiday in Japan - Disney Sea and Shizuoka

After getting back from Kyoto, and having a solid day's rest, we embarked on an adventure of a different kind - Tokyo Disney Sea. Everything is related to the sea somehow, from the Voyages of Sindbad, and the Little Mermaid to 20000 leagues under the sea. (Although I couldn't work out the nautical relation that the Indianna Jones attraction had.) We had booked a day trip to Disney Sea from Shizuoka, which meant getting up at 3am and riding into the city to catch a bus which would arrive at the park at 8.30am. I knew it was going to be a big day, so I tried to get some sleep, but everyone around us was excitedly chattering away. As we got near I started to get excited too, and we passed a lot of famous places in Tokyo as we drove through. The theme park itself was absolutely enormous. We decided to go on the biggest ride first - "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". It was definitely the most enjoyable ride, and lucky we went on it in the morning because later on the queue waiting time reached two and a half hours! I was glad we had brought some food, because there were queues of people waiting for about half an hour just to buy some snacks! We managed to see almost all the attractions, and the longest we had to wait was about 40 minutes. The attractions were very well made and the shows were quite entertaining too (the 3D genie show was my favourite, even though I had to guess what was being said). We took some time to relax too, but by 10pm when it closed we were entirely exhausted. We were the last people back on the bus, making it just in time! On the way back everyone on the bus slept - a big difference from the morning trip! It was 2am when we were dropped off at Shizuoka and started riding our bikes back to Chihiro's place, and 3am by the time we made it to bed.

After Disney Sea we had a few relaxing days in Shizuoka, visiting some nice cafes, going shopping, and seeing a festival. I also got to see Chihiro's sister's school sports day. It was very different to the ones I've been to in Australia. The family and friends of the students had to sit behind a fence away from the students because of a killing at another school in Japan several years ago. I thought it was a bit of an extreme reaction because it had been a once-off occurrence by some crazy guy. Anyway, the students played some interesting games like tug of war, and a skipping competition involving 40 people skipping the same rope at once! They whole school also performed a complex dance-kata together.

The suburbs around Chihiro's home were very different to Brisbane suburbs. The houses had no yards, and were very close to each other, but surprisingly there were many small plots of land that were still used for agriculture. I didn't think it would be economical enough to farm such a small area, but it was very common to see rice or tea growing between houses. One night I got to try Hanabi (Japanese fireworks)! We went to a place by a canal to set them off with Chihiro's sisters and brother. We also attracted some onlookers with the loud bangs and showers of sparks. There were so many different types including rockets, screamers, birdcages, volcano, and ufos.

On my second-last night in Shizuoka, Chihiro's aunt and uncle took us out for dinner at a really nice sushi restaurant. It was quite large, and there was a single sushi carousel that served the entire place. We had powdered green tea, and many different types of sushi including sakura ebi, eel, salmon, tofu, crab soup, and amai-ebi (sweet-prawn). At the end the waitress waved a scanner over the plates which totaled the price instantly! Chihiro's relatives were very generous and paid the bill (again)!

On my last day in Shizuoka, I was finally caught on film in my new yukatta from Kyoto. For lunch we went into the city to Chihiro's favourite cafe to meet her friend Mayumi. It was quite cheap, at only $13 for lunch, cake and coffee! The cake we had was an amazing mixture of sponge, cocoa, maccha (green tea), strawberry, cream, banana, peach, bean cream, cheese cream, marron, and custard sauce. It was a bit sad spending my last day in Shizuoka. For dinner, Chihiro's brother cooked a greet Chinese meal for eveyone, and afterwards we had chocolates and wine. I really appreciated the hospitality of Chihiro's family, so I gave them a present for letting me stay with them for such a long time - a book of Australian photography, and Doraemon sweets from kyoto.