At Madz's request I’m going to briefly hijack her blog so I can tell of the adventures we had last week once I had arrived and recovered a bit - as I was rather jet lagged!
I had a great flight over to Japan but didn’t really sleep very much with all the excitement! I was greeted at the airport by a very happy JET! We then made our way back to Iiyama via Nagano (Starbucks required).
I made a little visit at Madz's School on Monday (described by some as a celebrity appearance, by myself as the circus coming to town ;-) ). I was given a very detailed map to find my way there!! At this point can I just take this opportunity to mention the incredibly large, long hill that Madz has to get up every day on the way to school – I sympathise! I met Madz shortly after school lunch at the gates; I went straight up to her class who were all waiting with anticipation. After some constructive questions (which I’m sure were heavily screened before hand) we passed round some pics of Scotland and I showed a big Scottish flag I had brought!
Afterwards I was given a brief tour of the school and met some of Madz's colleagues who are all very nice and saw her office.
The school itself is quite large and not entirely different to most secondary schools in Scotland. After a quick photo shoot around the grounds Madz had to finish her class so I headed back to the flat.
That evening we had a gathering with some of Madz’s Jet friends, Makoto and Yoko at a local restaurant / bar. This was a great night and everyone was on good form and considering English isn’t Makoto's first language he had great jokes and the banter was flowing!! I was delighted to receive gifts from everyone too as a welcome present which was most unexpected and very kind! This was also a good introduction to Japanese food where I got to sample some tame Japanese dishes as well as a few with a more western flavour! A couple of beers may have been consumed to wash it down!
Madz gave me a guided tour of Iiyama on Tuesday, using pedal power we took on the local traffic and I was shown the highlights. Iiyama is a great place and it certainly isn't short of a few amenities ie shops, bars, restaurants etc and my favourite (which we found by accident and madz didn't even know where it was) a high quality Bakery putting on a great spread of cakes!!!
At night we headed through to Nagano for some dinner where went to a very interesting little jazz bar! It was quite unique inside, rather cool and we had some excellent curry and some very large Nan. The highlight of the evening was definitely the performance of several songs by far the best of which was ‘what a wonderful life’ – I’m sure Louis Armstrong would have been very proud!..........’I see skies of brue’ (yes brue) etc
On Wednesday it was a very important person’s birthday - unfortunately she had to work in the morning!
After morning classes Madz was able to open her pressies. With hunger setting in we headed out on the bikes for lunch at a local diner for a dose of suitable birthday junk food then a bit of shopping (I’m always comforted by the fact that no matter where you go now in the world you can almost guarantee to find somewhere that sells a nice wholesome cheese burger no matter how obscure the rest of the menu is!!! ;-)
In the evening we went to Nagano to a Restaurant called Sandalwood for Madz's birthday dinner. We had a great night with some excellent food and a few celebratory cocktails. Later in the evening Kyla joined us and we were having such a laugh that we completely missed the last rain back to Iiyama.
There was surprisingly little worry about this and we were fortunately able to hail a taxi that could take us home. The return journey was made quite interesting by the fact that the taxi driver didn’t really have a clue where she was going and had to stop in the middle of nowhere and ask another taxi driver directions to the Iiyama station. I found this all very funny especially when Madz tried to explain where to go which she mistook for us wanting out and proceeded to pull over on the outskirts of Iiyama to let us out, anyway we got home safe in the end!
Makoto had very kindly offered to give us a tour of the Iiyama area on Thursday he - had even taken a day off work. We started at the station in Iiyama and then worked out through the Temple road with all its many shops selling small temples for inside peoples homes (prices starting from £2000!
We then headed out of Iiyama towards the country where we stopped to take in the dramatic scenery, all of which will be snow covered and transformed into ski resorts very soon. He then drove us up into the mountains and to a very scenic lake with a lot of water sports going on.
From here we went to his family temple not far outside of Iiyama this was so interesting to see and unlike many other temples, we were the only people there not a tourist in sight! There was a caretaker for the temple with a very interesting Californian accent (he had strangely never spent a day in the US in his life!!!) he was very excited at being able to practise his English on us as he had very little opportunities normally.
The temple was most impressive inside with a huge amount of gold leaf and incredibly intricate carvings and Buddhist statues.
Makoto truly went above and beyond so we were both incredibly appreciative and if that wasn’t enough he insisted on buying both Madz and I lunch afterwards. Lunch was amazing and consisted of Soba noodles (which taste a lot better hot than cold) and Tempura. This also gave me yet another chance to dazzle everyone with my chopstick skills and this time there weren’t even any chopstick related injuries – I must be improving!
After lunch we had to go to the station with our entire luggage to start the next part of the adventure in Tokyo. So it was bye bye to Iiyama which I was sad to leave as I was starting to warm to it!
We arrived in Tokyo in the late afternoon and headed straight out to the one and only Tokyo Hard Rock Café we were served great Nachos followed by disgustingly large burgers which went down very well (we managed to resist dessert)!
After dinner we went out to explore Roppongi, the district of Tokyo we were in. It is such an amazing place very busy and alive possibly even more so at night than during the day. We happened to stumble across a department store which was six floors of everything from food and household goods to Jewellery and Cameras!!!! What was even more interesting was that it was open from 11am to early ie 3am or something stupid – we were very restrained (well till we were back on Saturday night)!
Friday found us at Disneyland, we had a brilliant day and a huge amount of fun! We arrived just after 1pm and as it was a school (week) day was relatively quiet. We went on Space Mountain twice which is an amazing ride (even better when you open your eyes – no names mentioned)! Thunder Mountain was great too as was the pirates of the Caribbean boat ride which took us through the middle of a fight between pirate ships and a huge set like a pirate town which was done very well.
The ques for the rides weren’t bad; longest was probably the Haunted house but still worth it. By early evening you could almost get straight on most rides including star tours which considering is just a simulator is brilliant (even in Japanese)!
We had dinner at the Blue Bayou this was a Deep South / New Orleans style restaurant which was amazing. It was late evening and dark when we were seated and it was sometime before I realised we were indoors not outside due to the bayou sound effects and a river that flowed though it. The food was very good and much needed!
After dinner we went on a couple of other rides as well as to the 3D cinema to see Micro Adventures (Honey I shrunk the kids style).
After some Mickey Mouse waffles we were lucky enough to catch the highlight of the fireworks display which was a great end to the evening. On the way out we did do some shopping but by this time (10pm) the park was closing and there was a bit of a rush going on for the last set of Mickey mouse ears so we called it a day.
My last full day in Japan was Saturday and could potentially have been sad one. It definitely wasn’t - Madz came up with an incredible plan to see as much of Tokyo as possible in 8 hours!! We started the day in Roppongi and then made our way to Harajuku. Harajuku is well known almost the world over for its teen culture (similar to Goths in the UK). A large number of local school kids dressed pretty bizarrely in make up and strange clothes meet up in this area (mainly on one street in particular). What was even odder about this was the large number of photographers that take pictures of them! I didn’t take any pics but it was quite cool to see everyone dressed up.
Picture - Omote Sando, Harajuku
This area is also a very good place for shopping and has a lot of the usual high street names inc Gap (Madz was very happy to see this and may have made a purchase or three) and some more upbeat offerings inc Ralph Lauren. We had lunch in a very cool bar which served up some great food (chicken sandwiches and potato wedges) and some interesting cocktails – Madz's coconut one contained some rather strange brown coloured balls at the bottom which seemed to have no taste whatsoever no idea what they were!!?? After a quick look at a few more shops we made our way back to the subway and on to the next place – Asakusa .
We were keen to see one of the more famous temples in Japan and Sensoji is Tokyo’s oldest temple so made it a good one to visit.
The district of Asakusa was several changes and a fair distance from Harajuku and on the way to Asakusa we made a quick stop in Shinjuku.
Lets just say there was a fairly large (well actually massive) camera shop here which Madz suggested I might like a look at. Yodobashi Camera was enormous and I used a very large amount of will power not to spend any money. Cool to see but you could have spent a week in it and we had lots to see and do!
By the time we arrived in Asakusa it was nearly dark (no I didn’t spend that long in the camera shop) but this made it even more atmospheric. Several hundred yards before the temple is a very large archway or ‘gate’ (size of a small house) with a giant lantern hanging from within, high up. The gate marks the outer boundary of the temple grounds and there is a gate either side of the main temple.
Walking through the gate found us in a large market which was brilliant and I went a little bit mad buying a lot of gifts and souvenirs to take home, there were also great opportunities for photos! The market also sold a large variety of traditional food from dumplings (which possibly contained squid) to soba noodles. We also saw a local man sitting on a stool preparing some form of food holding something down with his bare feet while scrapping it with a knife – I may have been a snake or fish skin – who knows (or wants too). At the end of the market is a large walkway leading to the temple Sensoji, here many people were lighting incense sticks and leaving offerings at the temple. We had a look around and took more photos, during which a man cycled up to where the incense sticks were being burnt. He was on a bike which had a large basket on the front and in it was a small tired looking dog; he placed some of the ash from the incense sticks on its head and cycled off.
We left the temple and market and went back to the main street leading back to the underground where we were offered a Rickshaw ride. We had both read about this and had decided earlier in the day that this would be fun to do if we got the chance and upon being given the opportunity it was impossible to refuse! Our incredibly Genki rickshaw runner gave us a choice of several routes and we decided to go with what seemed the most interesting one – around the park and temple then through the streets of the surrounding area down to the river. This was a very good way to see the sights but I did feel rather sorry for our brave guide as he negotiated Tokyo traffic, ran and gave us a guided tour all at the same time!!
He had a lot of interesting facts and took us down some very interesting back streets where we would definitely not have gone otherwise. This was a real highlight of the trip and one I can’t wait to do again! By now it was getting late so we jumped back on the subway to Roppongi – must say that on the way we passed Baskin Robbins and as we were starving by this point we had to have something (in this case in the form of a chocolate ice cream) to help me survive till Dinner!
As it was our last evening in Tokyo we wanted to get dressed up and go somewhere funky for dinner………. A short taxi ride took us to Roppongi Hills which is a massive complex. It houses everything from shops, restaurants, offices, bars to a hotel! It was very cool and we went to an extremely trendy restaurant called Xen – bamboo bar! Inside it had everything from a waterfall to big light tubes (I’ve figured now- they were meant to be shaped like bamboo!?) that changed colour! Dinner was awesome I had Salmon Tagliatelle and Madz had Sweet and Sour Pork this was followed by great desserts too – Apple crumple and Chocolate Soufflé.
Afterwards as I still hadn’t sampled Sake we went to the bar and tried a Lychee Sake which was very nice and was a bit too easy to drink! Having eaten so much we gave the taxi home a miss and walked which was great to see Tokyo one last time and the whole day was a superb end to my trip!
Unfortunately Sunday was my last day in Tokyo and in turn Japan; even though my flight left at 1pm it took quite a while to travel to the airport and there wasn’t any time to spare even for last minute shopping etc! I got to the airport on time and after a sad bye bye was en-route to London.
This was undoubtedly one of the best holidays I’ve had and I have to thank Madz for her excellent navigational skills around the most complicated transport system in the world – Tokyo subway, as well chopstick lessons and putting up with me taking lots of photographs!!!
I just can’t wait for Christmas now!!!!!!!!!!!! Dave
