Japan, Day 9

Sunday, November 19, 2006

For the first time ever, I got to sleep in on our trip. Okay maybe only until about 9:30 a.m. or so, but that's a lot later than the rest of our trip. Dad and I weren't too hungry and the Chans had to head to Nagasaki soon, so we went off on our own to see Kintai Bridge and Iwakuni Castle.

We took a relatively short JR ride to Iwankuni and then took a cab to the bridge. The bridge was originally built in 1674, and is famous for it's very interesting architecture. It was destroyed by a typhoon in 1950, but was rebuilt in the exact same form in 1953.

The cab driver let us off at one end of the bridge, and we had to pay for a round trip ticket so that we could walk across it. Despite having rained pretty hard that morning, the bridge wasn't slippery at all. There are steps on the really steep parts of it, so it's not as hard as it looks to walk on. Even though it was still drizzling there was quite a crowd.

On the other side, there was a small park with a bunch of fountains, and we could see Iwakuni Castle up on the hillside.

Sorry for the crappy photo, it's from Wikipedia. It looks nicer up on the hillside than the picture shows.

Up close, this is what it looks like:

Originally, we wanted to get to Miyajima, so we did not plan on visiting the castle, but it looked so cool that we decided just to go for it. In order to get to the castle, there is a pathway that goes up the hillside that looked incredibly daunting. The other option is to do what we did--take the tram up the hill. It's pretty scary; I'm afraid of heights so it was even worse, but we got a very nice view of the city from above:

At the end of the tram ride, there is a short walk up the rest of the hill to see the castle. We didn't have time to go inside, but it was a beautiful castle from the outside. It was built in that spot so that the family could have a view of the bridge and see any intruders into the city. The original was built during the Edo period, but then it was destroyed, so this is a replica built in the late 1900's. Kind of disappointing that it's not an original, but I guess that there was a time when all castles were supposed to be destroyed per the emperor.

We walked around for a few minutes and then headed back to try and get on the first tram back. Everyone packed very nicely into the tram and we were on our way back down... It was somewhere between the tram ride and getting on the JR to Hiroshima that we realized that Dad didn't have his camera. The bad news is that we lost all of the photos he took, but the good news for you reading this blog is that from here on out you will be shown a greater quality and quantity of photos.

Dad and I stood around the JR station for a while, hoping that the cab driver would come back, but we think that the camera got stuck under the seat so he either didn't notice or that a tourist took it. I've heard that the Japanese are very good with things getting lost...Margaret said that one of her friends lost her wallet 3 times and each time it was returned with all of the money inside...So I think we're having the faith that it was a tourist.

We eventually gave up after an English-speaking cab driver had no luck going on the radios. Minus one camera, we headed back on the JR train to Hiroshima. In order to get to Miyajima, we had to take the JR ferry (yes, the pass works with it, too!), which was a short cab ride from our hotel.

I was hoping that the rainy weather would work for us, but everything was still packed with sightseers. This is the beautiful view of the mountainside from the ferry:

The shrine at Miyajima is called the Itsukushima Shrine. The red arch thing is called a torii, which welcomes visitors to the island. It's also an indicator that it is a Shinto Shrine.

During high tide, the water comes up to the top of those black marks, and make the shrine look like it's floating. The temple itself also looks like it's floating on the water during high tide, but when we were there it just looked like a building on stilts.

There wasn't much time to talk around, so we headed back through the small town to try and catch the next ferry back to Hiroshima. Unfortunately, I was too full from last night's Okonomiyake, otherwise I would have tried the oysters that Miyajima is famous for. We did buy a few more maple cookies though to see if there was a difference between the vendors and the cafeteria at the museum (there wasn't any difference that I noticed). The way that they make them is pretty cool, though, it's a huge metal press thing:

Dad also bought a few wooden rice paddles, which supposedly originate in that area. The wood is supposed to be better than other materials for scooping rice because it doesn't transfer flavors.

Another thing that Miyajima is famous for are the deer. They are EVERYWHERE. It said on Wikipedia that they are treasured creatures because they "guard" the shrine. I think they sometimes get violent because all of their horns were cut off. Pretty much anywhere you look, there is a group of deer plus a huge sign warning you not to touch them. The signs are in Japanese, but you get the idea pretty clearly from the pictures. Here are some of the deer we saw...They're cute from far away...

All of these pictures were taken really fast because we were in such a rush to get back to the hotel. When we finally got back, we had to rush to the Shinkansen to get to Kyoto. The train ride was nice as usual, but we were so exhausted that by the time we arrived at our "Ryokan," a traditional Japanese-style hotel, we didn't even have enough energy to look around. I passed out on my futon as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Japan, Day 8

Saturday, November 18, 2006

We had to wake up really early because everyone wanted to get to see as much of the museum as possible. Dad and I met up with Auntie Lorraine and Uncle Lionel for breakfast in the hotel downstairs. The breakfast was pretty huge; we had an American-style meal of eggs, toast, and sausage with orange juice and coffee to drink.

Then, we met up with Tiffany and her friend Kim to walk over to the A-Bomb Museum. Before we went to the actual museum, we went to look at the "A-Bomb Dome." The Dome was almost directly under the bomb when it was dropped on Hiroshima. Since the atom bomb exploded in the air over the city and then spread outwards, the building that was directly below it somehow managed to not be completely decimated. It's been restored since the bombing, but the structure shown here is what was left immediately after the bomb dropped.

Next, we headed over to the museum. The admission was something like 100 yen (about a dollar), I think because they want to encourage as many people as possible to go see the museum. It's split into two parts with an elevated walkway connecting the wings. The wing seen on the left side has the museum entrance. There is an entirely new area there that was donated by the Clinton administration. It has information on the Japanese history leading up to World War II, the build-up to dropping the atom bomb, and the reasons for dropping it.

The wing on the right side contains Japanese artifacts and dioramas showing the effects of the bombing and the aftermath. That side has a lot more of the really gruesome photos, bloodstained clothing, but also the heartbreaking stories of individuals who had initially survived the bombing (only to die a few days or even hours later).

Uncle Lionel had arranged for us to have a private tour of the museum and the grounds, so we were originally shown around by two volunteers, a man and a woman. The woman showed us around the museum itself, and then we were taken to the Peace Park outside with the male tour guide.

It had been said by the Japanese that nothing would grow in Hiroshima for something like 75 years after the bombing due to the toxicity of the area. Plants began growing much much sooner. This tree in the Hiroshima Peace Park was thought to be dead after the bombing, but somehow continued to grow. You can see the indent in its trunk where it almost seems to be protecting its scars and attempting to grow over the damaged areas.

This is another memorial from the Peace Park, which is a beautiful park stretching across the front of the Museum. Different memorials, each dedicated to various groups that perished in the bombing, are scattered around the area and surrounded by beautiful plants, trees, fountains, and rocks.

My favorite memorial was this one:

It's dedicated to the children that perished in the bombing. One girl who suffered what eventually became fatal injuries decided to fold 1,000 paper cranes for good luck--both for her and all the others in Hiroshima. Even though she folded over 1,000 cranes, she died shortly after.

Because of her, there are tons of little shelters that hold tens of thousands of paper cranes that are brought every day. You should be able to see the shelters standing behind the bell.

Up close, they are packed with cranes. One of them was open with barely enough room to fit a string of cranes, and there was a note on it that said that it had only been open for one day!

On our way back to the museum for a quick snack, we stopped at this memorial, which is right in front:

I believe that this one is generally dedicated to the city of Hiroshima. Behind the arch is a large reflection pool.

We then said goodbye to our other tour guide, and headed inside. We ate in the tiny cafe that they had at the museum. Nothing to write home about, they only had microwaveable stuff. I tried one of the maple cookies that seem to be all over the southern part of Japan. They look kind of like leaf-shaped mooncakes, but in fact are soft and spongy, and the one that I had was filled with a chocolate-y paste. It was okay; not something I'd crave. We had some time before our meeting with the Hiroshima survivor, so everyone wanted to get a closer look at the museum exhibits.

This photo is of a watch, stopped at exactly 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when the bomb was dropped:

One of the new exhibits was a diorama showing what Hiroshima looked like before the bombing:

There was also a video playing, showing footage of Hiroshima beforehand. It was a happening city with a really big nightlife. After the bomb, everything was entirely floored:

This is a photo taken a few days afterwards:

The A-Bomb Dome looks pretty much the same as it does today...The bridges you see in the background are what we believe to have been the targets in the bombing.

Next to these photos and dioramas was text written by the Clinton Administration on why the bomb was dropped. Some of the most disturbing information was that the U.S. government wanted to drop the bomb on a city with a lot of civilians so that they could study the results scientifically and have a lot of subjects. In order to have a lot of victims, warning papers were not dropped over Hiroshima before the A-Bomb was dropped.

The next photos I have are of some very disturbing footage at the museum. I'm not posting too many since this is a food blog, so if you would like to see more, go to Uncle Lionel's postings):

This one has photos of all of their travels: http://www.teachingassistant.net/photos/asia2006/

This one includes photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Uncle Lionel knows a lot more than I do so I'll let you read his commentary and I'll stick to food as much as I can: http://mindobserver.com/compassion/

I thought that this photo was one of the most powerful. It was taken just after the bombing. It's in black and white, so at first I wasn't too taken by it. But then I noticed a caption below that explained that all of the black on these people's clothing is actually blood. The photo does the rest of the talking:

As I said before, the opposite wing, the Japanese wing of the museum, had more graphic images and artifacts. As we crossed over from the left wing of the museum, I felt the air get distinctly cooler. The lights slowly got dimmer and I looked to my right:

This diorama portrays children after the bombing. I read the book Hiroshima by John Hersey in an English class at Cal, which described a scene somewhat like this. One of the survivors described seeing her clothes being completely burned off of her, hanging in shreds. She then realized that it was her skin hanging in shreds, having melted with the fabric.

The rest of the wing has photos of the victims and artifacts collected after the bombing, such as blood-stained clothing and journals. There was also a cement step from a building that had a shadow of a woman burned onto it because the rays from the bomb were so powerful.

Another area was dedicated to the aftermath of the bomb. Not only were people killed from the bomb itself, but those who came into Hiroshima immediately after the bombing to try and rescue family and friends were killed also. The "black rain" killed anyone who was exposed, and the drinking water was lethal.

Again, there are a lot more photos on Uncle Lionel's site, so I definitely recommend checking it out.

We walked around for quite a while, but then had to head down to the basement to meet with a Hiroshima survivor. She was twelve years old when the bomb was dropped. You can't really see from the photo, but she has had something like 7 corrective surgeries since. She talked with us for about an hour about her experiences. Much of the information she gave us was about the bombing in general. Then, she told us personally what it was like during the bombing and afterwards.

One thing that we don't tend to learn about is what it was like for the survivors many years after the bombing. The corrective surgeries weren't available until much later, so while growing up, she was shunned even by the Japanese. People refused to sit next to her on the subway, and she was unable to find a husband. She did end up raising her brother's children, but from the way that she spoke, there was clearly a great deal of pain associated with not being able to find a husband.

It was quite an amazing experience to hear her talk. There are not many people who get to meet an A-Bomb survivor, and as time goes on there will be fewer and fewer. One of her messages, and the message of the museum, is to spread the knowledge of the tragic outcome of nuclear war. She and other survivors attend meetings, write letters, and give talks so as to teach the younger generations. In addition, to help keep the memory alive, the museum has been collecting survivor artwork for years, and she has contributed:

The museum was a very powerful place to visit. It's easy to be hardened and non-responsive to the Hiroshima bombing by sitting in class and just reading about it, or seeing a picture in a textbook. But looking at these photos, the artifacts, and speaking to a survivor really changes that. I'm so grateful for what I experienced in Hiroshima, and I feel that everyone would benefit from visiting.

There isn't any graceful way of transitioning from the museum to food, so I'm just going to go for it. After a mental break, we headed out to go try the food of Hiroshima...Okonomiyake.

Our guy's stall was in a four story building in downtown Hiroshima. Each floor had about 8 stalls exactly like this one--how to tell the difference between them all I have no idea, but when we left, each stall was completely packed with customers. To make Okonomiyake, he starts out with a pancake.

It then gets covered with fresh cabbage and spices.

The one I ordered had squid, so on top of the cabbage, he cracked some deep fried squid on top. Next, come chinese noodles (he recommended these over Udon noodles), tonkatsu sauce, a fried egg, seaweed and green onions. This is the final product:

There are other things you can get in it as well, such as kimchee, other meats and seafood. It's pretty gigantic--they give you a pie cutter type thing so that you can cut it into fourths and eat it in pieces. I'm not the biggest fan of Okonomiyake, but I think it's definitely something that everyone has to try in southern Japan. For me, there are just too many flavors packed into one place. It is, however, very filling and somewhat healthy. If anything, it's fun to go just for the experience and entertainment of watching them make it.

Japan, Day 7

Friday, November 17, 2006

Okay sorry for the delay on postings. The holiday is over so I'm going full-speed ahead now.

On technically our last day in Tokyo, we packed up our suitcases and headed over to Katsumi's to do laundry. It's weird--for a country that is so far ahead of us, technology wise, the washers and driers are really slow! I would have thought that they'd be pretty advanced considering that people in Tokyo are no longer allowed to hang their laundry outside, but I guess not.

At Katsumi's house, we watched a lot of Japanese TV, which is highly entertaining. They were focusing that day on the acquisition by the Red Sox of the Japanese baseball player, Matsuzaka, and also did a heartwarming documentary on a teacher turning around a "rough" neighborhood.

As we watched, Katsumi cooked up a huge breakfast for us: ham and eggs with mushrooms, rice, soup, nato (fermented soy beans--something like 90% of the population doesn't like these), cucumber rolls and fruit. It was a pretty amazing spread, but I found that I'm one of the 90%. Nato is GROSS.

Since Katsumi had to go to a work meeting, he called a cab for us to go to Tokyo Station. It was time for me to experience the bullet train (Shinkansen) for the first time ever.

This is a picture of a Nozomi train, the more expensive, faster one. We didn't ride one of these because they cost extra on top of the rail pass price. It doesn't stop at all of the stations, so it sometimes flies through, making a "BOOM!" and then flashes by in about 3 seconds (according to Wikipedia, it goes 300 mph).

These are some of the trains that we rode on (Hikari); they're still really really fast...

The trains are nice and smooth and have tons of leg room, and the ride was really smooth and relaxing after our week of pretty much non-stop sightseeing. I got some good reading in (Time Traveller's Wife--SO GOOD!), which was nice, and Dad slept. Fortunately, the train has instructions in English as well as in Japanese so it was pretty easy to figure out our stops.

The hotel that we stayed in while in Hiroshima was picked out by the Chans. It's called the ANA (not to be confused with the APA). Compared to the bare-bones of the hotel we stayed in at Hiroo, this place was absolutely luxurious. Everything was really clean and they even had CNN in English! Here's a picture of the room, courtesy of Uncle Lionel:

The Chans hadn't made it into Hiroshima yet, so Dad decided to finish his laundry down the street. I sat down and got some more quality reading time in--at the time I was reading The Time Traveller's Wife, and I couldn't stop. It was recommended to me by Catherine at work and Margaret. Originally, I thought it was going to be a cheesy love story that I'd hate, but they had recommended it, so I thought I'd try it. Unfortunately, it was a cheesy love story but it was so good. Fortunately Dad took forever at the laundromat so I was able to bawl for about 30 minutes as I finished the book. "Henry, no!!" Very good, but it's definitely a book to finish in private.

Finally Dad came back and the Chans knocked on our door. Tiffany and her friend were supposed to be coming in from Shanghai, but were having some transportation trouble. So, we decided to go out to get some noodles while we waited. The hotel recommended a place down the street, so we headed over there.

It was a pretty standard ramen place--they had that thick pork broth, same as the ramen place that we went to earlier, but it was a lot thicker and fattier. I ordered ramen with pork slices on top, and both Auntie Lorraine and I could not even finish the meat because it was so fatty. The gyoza that we ordered was pretty good, though, and so were the radishes. It was the first time that we had to really fend for ourselves going out to eat. I had never realized how hard it would be without Katsumi!

We were all really exhausted from travelling so all of us went to bed really early that night. Tiffany and her friend didn't even get in until after we had gone to sleep...

Japan, Day 6

Thursday, November 16, 2006

We set out kind of early on our last day in Tokyo because I wanted to do shopping in the fake food district, called Kappabashi (kitchen-town). Most of it consists of restaurant/cooking supplies, but the reason I went was for the fake food. I ended up buying a ton of sushi magnets (so cute!) and some food key chains.

They also have actual dishes that are entirely made of plastic, but they look very real. It's amazing how the quality of the fake food at a restaurant would sway my decisions as to where I wanted to eat, so I guess the fake food is pretty important. This chef guy is kind of a landmark for the area.

After I spent about half of my money at one of the stores, we set out to try and find the sumo museum. The sumo museum is located at a stadium where sumo wrestling is held, so it wasn't too hard to find, but the museum itself was kind of hidden. We searched around for a while, and finally found a door that advertised something for 900 yen. We assumed that was the price of the ticket, so we bought two, and headed over to the museum with our "free" sumo wrestler posters in hand. As soon as we found the museum, though, there was a sign that said that the entrance was free, and English guidebooks were available. Oops. Anyone want a sumo calendar?

The museum was really small and unfortunately, the guide was more of a booklet of information on sumo wrestling, not the exhibits. I think that it would have been a lot more interesting if we could have had a guide to tell us what all of the artifacts were.

Along one wall, there was a wrestler's kimono on display, which was so big I almost started laughing when I looked at it. Along the other wall is a sort of hall of fame with pictures of the top wrestlers.

We started to get hungry, and there was a really long line for the sumo restaurant (soup called chanko-nabe). Dad said that it might be fun to try a Japanese McDonald's, so we did that instead. Honestly, it's exactly the same, down to the portions. They even have a two-sided menu with Japanese on one side and English on the other. The bathrooms were a lot cleaner, but that was about the only difference.

When Dad first started coming to Japan, he said he played on some type of clay court near where his friend Rob was teaching. I forget what type of tennis it is, but it's played with a one-sided racket on a clay court. Sadly, everyone who was playing on it was using regular tennis rackets, so we moved on to go meet Katsumi for dinner at Kushinobo. Chris Cornell, a family friend, is working in Japan right now, so he met up with us too.

Kushinobo has an English website: http://www.kushinobo.co.jp/1950/1950_e_main/1950_e_index.htm

I think it's sort of a chain, actually, because they have locations throughout Japan. The one that we went to is on the top floor of a mall. It's a pretty fun restaurant. Everything on the menu is on a skewer, and it's deep fried. We sat at the counter, where they gave us unlimited bowls of fresh raw vegetables. When we finished each skewer, we were supposed to put the skewer into the mouth of a clay fish. Then, at the end of the meal, the waitress would count the skewers to determine how much to charge us.

We had so many things that I can barely remember it all. One of my favorites was a crab skewer that was wrapped in tin foil and then deep fried. We also had vegetables, chicken and fish. Another one of my favorites was the deep fried oyster (who wouldn't like that?).

For once in Japan, I wasn't able to keep up with everyone else, eating-wise. This place made me so full. Everyone seemed to be pretty exhausted, and even though it was our last day in Tokyo, we turned in early.

Japan, Day 5

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Kamakura was one of Zoey's favorite places when she visited Japan. Kamakura is a part of the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan. It's pretty easily accessible by the JR train from Tokyo, and the sites we visited were within walking distance of the train stop.

The first place that we went to is a temple called Kotokuin. It hosts "The Great Buddha," which is the second-largest monumental Buddha in Japan. The Buddha is outdoors and made of bronze; it is 13.35 meters tall and weights 121 tons. Originally, it was built inside of a temple in 1252 A.D., but the temple was swept away by a tidal wave in 1498. Later on, the Buddha was worked on so that its body could move freely on the base so as not to be damaged in the case of an earthquake.

We then headed over to Hasedera, a temple on the hillside in Kamakura. The temple has multiple levels, and a different feel to each area. At the bottom level there are a bunch of bamboo fountains that feed water into moss-lined reflecting pools. There's also a cave carved into the side of the hill as well, and we were able to go inside and see all kinds of engravings.

Up at the top of the hill, there is a beautiful view point where we could see almost all of Kamakura.

This is the temple at the top of the hill. It was pretty big, and had all kinds of rooms with candles, incense, etc. Everything was in Japanese, so I don't have too much information on the actual temple.

This is called a Kyozou; inside is a rotating book rack called a rinzo, that holds important Buddhist sutras for the temple. Supposedly if you rotate the rinzo, you can earn the same merit as from reading all of the sutras. Dad tried it, but I didn't notice too much of a difference in his spirituality...

Next, we went out for lunch at a soba place. The soba was okay, but it was just nothing like the place that we had gone out to with Katsumi. I ordered hot soba (in soup) with a yam, which I thought was a tempura yam like we get in the States, but actually the yams that they put in the soup end up being a goupy white thing. It wasn't bad, just not great either.

In Japan, the schoolkids are all required to learn English, but it's really hard for them to find people to practice with. We learned that often, they are sent to major tourist attractions with a list of questions to ask foreigners. The kids would look at me, get confused, look at Dad (for those of you who don't know, he's obviously white), and then get really excited. Most of them had to ask us where we were from, what we were visiting, etc. There was one group of girls that started screaming and wanted to take a picture of us when they found out that we were from California.

After we walked around for a while and saw some lacquerwear (that's what Kamakura is famous for aside from the shrines), we headed back on the train to meet Katsumi, who was taking us out for a special dinner that night.

Before we met up with Katsumi, though, we had some time and Dad showed me around a ritzy Japanese department store. In the basements of most of the department stores, they have really nice specialty food shops. To give you an example of the great prices in Japan, check this out:

For 12 fresh strawberries, they charged 2800 yen, which is equivalent to about $25. For one of those cantaloupes, it was 5000 yen, which is about $45!

After that fun experience, we found Katsumi at Tokyo Station and walked over to a really famous yakitori place. Isehiro serves solely Yakitori, and is supposed to be a popular place for Japanese businessmen to take guests (as we found out, the Western guests often don't understand that they need to take off their shoes!).

Here is the website for the location that we went to. On the main page, they talk about the amazing quality of the ingredients they use:

http://www.gnavi.co.jp/gn/en/g133300h.htm.

We were able to sit at the bar right in front of the chef. It's a really small bar with just enough room for four people. Katsumi had to reserve it a month before we flew in! It was so neat because we got to sit and watch the chef cook, and all of our food was fresh off of the grill.

Yakitori is basically chicken skewers, utilizing all parts of the chicken. Isehiro is famous because they use the best quality Japanese coals and get fresh chicken from their own farms. Since they know how fresh the chicken is, it's often undercooked. I'd never had undercooked chicken before, but it was really good. Before the chicken is cooked, it's dipped in yakitori sauce. In the States, it usually tastes the same as teriyaki sauce. In Japan, the sauce is smoky, understated and not overly sweet. It's also a lot less viscous. Katsumi said that during the war, the one thing that a lot of families saved was their yakitori sauce because it lasts for hundreds of years.

Another neat thing was that the restaurant had patented a fork-like device that is meant to push the chicken off of the skewer onto the plate, and then eaten. It was pretty neat and kept me from stabbing the inside of my mouth with the skewer.

We had the 9 course meal:

(1) Bits of chicken breast barbecued with salt and served with wasabi, (2) Chicken livers cooked in yakitori sauce, (3) Chicken gizzards barbecued with salt, (4) Chicken thighs sliced thin with green onions, mushrooms and green peppers, (5) Chicken balls made of ground chicken meat with flax seeds, barbecued with salt, (6) Chicken skin, (7) Chicken thighs cut in chunks with green onions and green peppers, (8) Duck meat chunks barbecued with salt, (9) Chicken Soup, pickled cucumber, and organic vegetables, (10) Chicken wing barbecued with salt.

I wasn't the biggest fan in the world of the gizzards, but other than that this place was awesome, even just for the experience of getting to watch how precise they are about cooking. We learned that in order to be a yakitori chef, one needs to work his way up from making the skewers all day, running food to customers, refilling the coals, and then finally cooking.

It doesn't look like the most filling meal, but I was stuffed afterwards, and really tired from walking around all day. Speaking of which, this was a really long day to chronicle on here and I'm tired. Til next time.

Japan, Day 4

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

On Tuesday we woke up as early as possible to go to the Tokyo fish market. Unfortunately, tourists were really disrupting the auctions, so that part was closed to visitors, but we got to go to the market itself. The second we turned into the market area, we were practically run over. Everywhere we looked, there were people running and pushing carts, mopeds driving and motored carts moving in all different directions, all at high speed. I really want to know how many tourists get run over and killed every year there.

Ahead of us was the market, which looks like a gigantic covered parking lot. It looked like it was about the size of a stadium--I couldn't even see to the end. It's set up so that there are narrow aisles going forward and slightly wider aisles going across, where the carts zip through. We had to look both ways a million times before wandering across. While walking down the narrower aisles, we had to also watch so that we didn't get hit by fish pieces, water or running fishermen. Chaos is the word that comes to mind. You can't even see to the end of the market because it's so big. It's just stall after stall...

That's a huge pile of tuna. The ones sitting there are frozen solid--they just throw them around like it's nothing, but Katsumi said that they can go for up to 2 million yen!

Sometimes, they use huge picks and hack away at the bones. The fish are completely frozen, so when I stood within a few feet, I got sprayed by tiny bits of frozen tuna.

Then when it's a whole fish, they cut it with electric table saws, as if the fish are just pieces of wood.

One of my favorites, salmon roe! It's still in the sac (not something I'm a big fan of), but still it looked pretty good ("That makes great bait."--Andy).

Here are some live eels. Dad tried to convince me to stick my hand inside, but I wasn't really about that.

Another one of my favorites, I've been told that these are scallops. I never knew what they looked like in the shell until now.

This stand had just a ton of octopus. After our sushi dinner, I got really hungry looking at these--just a little bit of salt and some real wasabi, mmm...

Some beautiful, colorful, giant shrimps. Still alive, but not for long.

I have no idea what kind of fish these were, but they were gigantic. Really fat, too.

We walked around for quite a bit. To be honest, it was a really stressful place to walk around in since we were constantly having to dodge carts, fish, and those motorized cart things. It took us like 15 minutes just to try and get out of the place. Eventually, I figured out that if you pick out a local looking person and just run behind them, you can usually get out safely.

On our way out, we started to get really hungry, and not for fish, so we stopped at a family restaurant called "Jonathan's." It was pretty much a Denny's, Japan-style. We both got a stack of pancakes, which were really cute but definitely Japanese-sized, meaning about a quarter of the size of any pancake you'd get in the U.S. I was pretty full anyway, so after our pancakes, we headed over to the zoo to see the panda.

The first animal we saw at Ueno Zoo was a red panda. He was almost like a raccoon, but so cute.

This is the giant panda. Unfortunately, I didn't understand how to use the picture stabilizer on my camera, but you can probably get the gist of how cute the panda was.

Normally, I wouldn't think that seeing lions and tigers was a big deal, however at Ueno Zoo, it is totally worth it. When I'd go to the zoo at home to see lions and tigers, there would be a glass wall, a moat, an electric fence with barbed wire and then another moat. In Japan, there is a stone wall in some areas and a thick glass wall. We were able to get within inches of the animals! This is the one male lion...

And one of the female lions...

We were also within inches of the tiger. There were a bunch of little kids at the zoo who were not about getting up close to this window.

When we were leaving the zoo, there were tons of kids walking all over the place. According to Katsumi, the zoo is a really popular place for schoolkids to go on field trips. There was one group of kids that were absolutely adorable, they had made little binoculars out of toilet paper holders, and were walking around the zoo trying to look through them. I just hope that the panda's area is sound proof because when we walked by the cave he was in, all we could hear were screaming kids.

Next, we met up with Katsumi (who was ditching work!), who picked us up and we drove out to Yokohama. Yokohama is a really gorgeous city that is right on the water. We went out for dim sum because Yokohama is supposed to have the largest Chinatown in Japan. Leave it to the Japanese to have the cleanest, nicest looking Chinatown I've ever seen. The dim sum place that we went to was pretty decent, but I just couldn't fathom the fact that it was relatively expensive. My experiences with dim sum are paying $5.00 for take-out and still having leftovers, so I was a bit confused. Either way, it was still pretty good and I was full.

We walked around Yokohama for a bit too. Since it's a port city, they host a ship that used to be the only way to get from Japan to the States.

Next, we drove out to take a look at Kei-Oh University. It's a university that also hosts the high school that Kohta goes to. The campus was really nice, and had great facilities. We weren't allowed to go watch Kohta's rugby practice, so we decided to go back to Tokyo and get dinner.

That night, Katsumi decided it was time to introduce me to real soba noodles. The restaurant was within walking distance to our hotel, so we just parked at Katsumi's house and walked over. On the way, I noticed some interesting restaurant names that I'll just let speak for themselves.

For once I was smart enough to take my own photos of the meal! We started out with what my sister and I call "rags," the skin of the tofu that is peeled off during some stage of making it. It was served with a little bit of real wasabi. You can click on this picture to get a closer look at the wasabi.

Next was seaweed covered in fish roe. It was a little bit sour, as if the seaweed had been pickled. It was also really crunchy due to both the seaweed and the roe.

Next was probably the most interesting thing I ate on the trip. Now, looking at the food below, it looks pretty appetizing...Without any questions, I began to pick some of it up and was about to pop it into my mouth when Dad goes, "What is it?" Katsumi told us it was whale right before I began to chew. Ugh. I kept it in my mouth to try to be polite and was really weirded out when I started to kind of like it. The part that we ate was the blubber, which was boiled down and then served cold. It wasn't greasy/fatty/oily at all. It was actually kind of like the "cloud" fungus that Paw Paw puts in Wintermelon Soup, only a lot lighter. It kind of melts in your mouth, but has a bit of a crunch to it. The taste isn't fishy, but you can definitely tell that it comes from the ocean. It's served with a lime wedge, so there's some citrus flavor to it as well. Anyway, I really liked it, and so did Dad, but it was a little bit disconcerting ("You ate SHAMUU!"--Andy). Plus, I really couldn't waste it, because it's a delicacy in Japan. Margaret says that they justify whale hunting by saying that it's for "scientific research." Might as well...

Now for one of my favorite parts of the meal. Restaurants that serve soba noodles also serve tempura...But not sushi. That's one of the things that most people, including myself, tend to get confused about. In the U.S., when we go out for Japanese food, you can get noodles, soup, sushi, and tempura at the same place. In Japan, there are restaurants that only serve sushi, and other restaurants, like this one, that serve soba and tempura. The tempura that we had was eel tempura. It was awesome. Really tender and flavorful on the inside, and unbelievably crispy on the outside. It was also served with little tempura green peppers.

For me, Katsumi ordered cold soba noodles, and also a plate of udon noodles (on the left) so that I could compare. The noodles come cold, served on baskets. That soup in the front is piping hot, and really strong in flavor so that I could take the noodles, dip them in the soup, and then slurp them up. Though I liked both noodles, the soba were definitely my favorite. I was very proud because Katsumi said that it was very "Asian" of me to like them better.

Soba noodles are very hard to make, especially to make good ones. Katsumi is in the process of learning, which is supposed to take at least three years. It's something that has to do with achieving the perfect mix of ingredients, otherwise they fall apart. Plus, they have to be made fresh every day, otherwise they don't taste right.

The last thing that I tried were these little fish. I have no idea what kind they were. They weren't salty enough to be sardines...They were dried, so they were really chewy and slightly salty. Very good.

After this meal, I was about to slip into a food coma, so we started to head back to the hotel. It was another really eventful and filling day.