I think it’s getting close to time to go home. I’m bowing while I’m talking on the phone and when my sister asked me a question I started answering her in Japanese. Yeesh. Or it’s that I stayed up too late watching some Japanese TV show. A lot of them start at 9PM and end at 11:20PM. I’m not sure why, but I wish I had a DVR here. I’m so used to getting up to go to the bathroom whenever I feel like it that this TV live thing is holding me down.

I got up and we had the free breakfast down at the Toyoko Inn lobby which wasn’t that great but it sure wasn’t that bad, either.

We had tickets for the 2PM Shinkansen to Tokyo, so we had time for some more sightseeing. Mondays are a day for a lot of museums to be closed and the only things that were guaranteed to be open were the castle and the Orchid Garden. My mom is a fan of orchids, so my sister suggested the orchid garden. It was a lot smaller than we’d expected. The inside greenhouse was about the size of a basketball court, but the outside greenhouses were tiny.

I broke my rule of not taking plant pictures and I took a picture of these weird plants. They put faces on them because they look like animals.

We weren’t that far from the Osu Kannon Temple so we decided to walk there

The shopping streets on the way were filled with discount shops but as we got closer to the temple the stores got more interesting. “Omurice in a cup” is a lot better than the discount blank DVDs or cheap cosmetics. It didn’t take long to get to the temple, and while impressive it doesn’t take a long time to check it all out.

Right next to the temple is a shop with Japanese dumplings and I think they were better last year. Last year I had to stand in a long line and they were a lot fresher. This year we were there early in the day and there wasn’t anyone else there.

We took a taxi back to the station and I was having a good time talking to the driver and he forgot to start the meter! He told me about the two castles of the area and also that his brother is in San Francisco.

At the station we had another of Nagoya’s famous foods, their chicken! Oyako don all around and I also had some tebasaki chicken wings.

We wandered around the station for a bit longer and got on the train to Tokyo.

We’re in Tokyo now and I have a bunch of errands I may have to run. My sister’s friend has something that she wants from a leather works store. A buddy wants an old jazz CD from a special store. And I’m losing the battle of trying to keep from buying a nice watch. We’ll see what happens.

We left Matsuzaka this morning at a civilized 10:09AM which might’ve been a bit late. We did seem to wait for the train for a while just wandering around the two or three stores in the train station. Here’s a picture of a fat dude with a little metal bull.

We got to Nagoya about 11:30 and dropped off our baggage at the Toyoko Inn. I wanted to take my mom and sister to the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology (or the place with the looms and the cars) but we got there just about lunchtime. There’s really nowhere to eat around the museum but there are two places to eat in the museum. One’s a cafeteria and there other is quite a bit more fancy. Last year when I was here I didn’t choose either but today we picked the the fancy option.

Somehow I picked the more-expensive thing that had more items (fish AND meat) but there seemed to be less of everything.

I even got a dessert assortment.

After we made it through the museum we went to the Noritake Gardens and the museum there. The things they had as their examples of fancy were garish to me, and the things they had in the, “This is Noritake too,” exhibit were a lot more interesting to me. My sister did notice that I really liked the china patterns with blue in them.

That was pretty much the whole day. We went out to dinner to a place suggested by the woman at the front counter of the hotel. It was a food court-like restaurant that had miso tonkatsu as well as unagi that the area is famous for. Once again my mom and my sister got a filet cut while I got a roast, though today it was pork instead of beef.

I got a half-and-half of miso and regular tonkatsu sauce. Now I remember what I thought last year; I’ll get miso tonkatsu when I come to Nagoya but I think I like the regular tonkatsu sauce better.

Now I’m back in my room watching Japanese TV.

Tomorrow it’s off to Tokyo!

Another travel day! We got an early start to meet my sister’s friend in Ise, where we went to see the Ise Grand Shrine. I had the sneaking suspicion that it could be a complete shitshow, at least in the travel department, but it turned out we arrived only a couple of minutes late!

First off, I had a horrible night’s sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night with my nose plugged full of boogers. My stomach felt bad too. I’m hoping it’s not old age food allergies because I don’t want to cut anything out of my diet (especially not hamburgers filled with cheese) but I also had weird dreams. I’ve been off my game a little this trip. In fact, during my shower I was thinking about a bug I’d filed with another company that was rejected the day we left. I have some thoughts about that, but why am I thinking about it on my holiday?

We left without too much trouble and got in a taxi for Kintetsu Namba station. I don’t think I’ve been there before. On the way, we did see this car with a basenji sticker. My sister had a basenji and they’re weird dogs. I think this one’s name was Anchovy.

I thought Kintetsu would be like JR, but at Namba it was far underground like the Tokyo subway. It seemed like it was even below the Midosuji subway line. When we finally got to the ticket window, we had five minutes to get to the train I thought we were going to catch. The line took closer to 10-15 minutes. But instead of taking an express train to somewhere in the EBFE and switching to another express train, we just took a local train four stops and got on the second express train. Weird how that works.

On the way we saw some odd statues. I’m not sure that the Venus de Milo is supposed to be 40 feet tall and towering over the Statue of Liberty on the left. There’s also a gold goddess of mercy in the background.

We made it to Isuzugawa station that’s about 30 minutes walking to the traditional old shopping arcade next to the Grand Ise Shrine. My sister and I didn’t want to make my mom walk, so I was counting on taking a taxi. We found coin lockers to stash our baggage and went outside to find ALMOST NOTHING. I thought we were in the middle of nowhere (which we really were) but fortunately, a taxi came within about ten minutes. As we got closer and closer to the shrine, it became quite clear that there was one thing people came to see. And there were lots of people.

Here’s a picture of the Isuzu river from the Uji bridge at the entrance to the shrine.

Another picture from the bridge. That’s my mom in the purple coat with the hat she left at the soba restaurant the other day.

It’s quite a walk in the grounds through majestic trees. Huge old cedars, but I don’t take as many tree pictures as my dad used to. However, here’s an offering of sake from lots of different makers to the Grand Shrine.

We finally made it to the main shrine but you can’t take pictures once you get inside. People were lining up to get to the coveted middle spot to ask the gods for their favor. I figure if the gods are listening to me then I’m in big trouble, so I just went to the side. I’m not religious but I figure there’s no harm in being respectfully superstitious. That’s my sister and my mom.

No more pictures from the Shrine grounds. Here’s a picture from the bridge on the way out, though. 

Here’s a view down the shopping street. Can you see all the Asians? You can see my sister in the middle with her friend Yumi, and towards the right is my mom and Yumi’s friend (whose name escapes me right now) and very soon after this I LOST TRACK OF THEM. Fortunately, I saw my mom soon afterwards and she doesn’t move that fast any more.

In one of the stores we saw Ise beer.

Lunch was a great and way too much food. That’s mine, negi toro. Chopped fatty tuna with green onions and egg on rice. 

My mom and Yumi had seafood soup and maguro on sushi rice. My sister didn’t have the soup but had fried shrimp. Yumi’s friend also had the soup and maguro.

After stumbling out we went wandering around the shopping arcade before we could eat some more. Yes, there’s a dessert that we couldn’t pass up but we were incredibly full. Here’s a kid in his finery for shichi-go-san, which means he gets to visit the shrine when he’s five. Girls do at three and seven.

The main square in the shopping & food area.

Here’s Yumi taking a picture of zenzai (and her friend looking confused about my taking their picture). Zenzai is red bean soup. I ate it all.

We said goodbye to Yumi and Yuriko(?) and went on our way to Matsuzaka. It was the closest place my sister could find a hotel. Tomorrow we’re off to Nagoya for a day. Actually it turns out that we could’ve made this a day trip from Osaka and gotten back by 5pm, making logistics much simpler, but this is more of an adventure.

When I hear, “Matsuzaka,” I usually think of the famous Japanese beef and not the pitcher who the Red Sox brought from Japan for tens of millions of dollars. We went to steakhouse “Noel” for dinner and it was spendy but I was not disappointed. The beef was tasty and crunchy and melted in my mouth all at the same time. I got the “roast” while my mom and sister got the “filet”. I thought the added fat of the “roast” would make it more flavorful, but I had a taste of the “filet” and there’s really no wrong way to go on this.

“Noel” only had three or four tables and probably only seated eleven people on the main floor. They had upper party rooms as well, but I didn’t see those. We snuck in early and were lucky to get a seat because the tables were all reserved. They said we could get in if we could finish in less than an hour and I think we were in and out within half that time.

So there you have it. I’m just taking it easy this evening since we’re in the middle of nowhere and I’m hoping to have good dreams of that steak.

It was a beautiful day in Japan today, about 72ºF. I was expecting this to be a shopping day, but when we left the hotel after doing some laundry my mom asked me, “What are you showing me today?” I thought of a few things but a quick trip to Ikeda City and the Ando Momofuku Instant Ramen museum sounded like fun.

Our first stop, though, was to the coffee roaster I went to last year. It’s in another old-school shopping street.

We could smell the beans roasting as soon as we got into the arcade. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s doing a lot of business and the coffee shop upstairs is no longer fully open. You buy coffee downstairs, and he brings it up to you in paper cups. It’s still the fresh roasted and ground coffee as before, but there’s no real service or ambiance. On the plus side, a cup of coffee that used to be ¥600-800 is now only ¥200!

Our second stop was also close to the station and it’s the shrine to the goddess of weaving. If you looked at my pictures last year, you know that if I was left on my own I’d be visiting and taking pictures of every shrine I could find. This is one I visited last year as well. I figured the goddess of weaving would be something my sister could get behind. She’s not the touristy type, really, she likes shopping a lot more.

Here’s more proof that I got her to a shrine. I think those are stained glass windows on either side of the entrance and quite beautiful as well.

The next stop was the Ando Momofuku Instant Ramen Museum. We took a very quick trip through because it was full of kids! I guess this is the season for field trips. Most of the museum is pretty simple. There’s a re-creation of Ando Momofuku’s shack where he experimented on instant ramen, and then there’s a repetitive but interesting story of how he developed the packs of instant ramen and also Cup Noodle! Then there’s a theatre and you can make your own flavor of Cup Noodle, add it to the pre-made noodles, decorate the cup, and take it home.

If you sign up way in advance, you can even take a class where you make instant noodles from the basic ingredients.

I mean seriously, this dude invented CUP NOODLE! 

We found some lunch at a soba restaurant that we recognized a little too late was the same chain as the place we had dinner last night. It was so nice that we went to Ikeda Castle to wander around.

We got back to Umeda in the early afternoon and I went to last night’s soba restaurant to look for the hat my mom lost (they had it!) and then went to Kinokuniya so my mom could buy more books. Very near Kinokuniya is one of our favorite spots to get Japanese snacks. I’m sure I have tons of pictures of this because we’ve been coming here for years. 

My mom got something different this time. 

By this time it was about 4 and my sister and I went on a shopping trip to get whatever the hell it is she gets when she goes shopping. OK, this time it was fabric, and no the store was not called “asse”. 

There’s a picture of my sister taking a picture of ATELIER to nani IRO, a fabric store.

She spent a bunch of money on fabric, just like she said she wouldn’t.

Dinner was another trip wandering and we decided to go get hamburg steaks. Mine was filled with cheese!

My sister got loco mock and this is just proof that I still take a lot of crappy pictures.

My mom got hamburger and porcini mushrooms cooked in foil. 

It doesn’t seem Japanese, but it is. And it was really tasty, too.

I finally got my mom to go to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living. It’s on the 8th floor of a municipal building and the first thing you do is take a 2-story escalator to see an upper view of an old Meiji Era section of the town. Then you go down into the town and wander about. After that there are dioramas on the 8th floor. Unfortunately, today was also the day for several grade schools to make their trip to the museum and it ended up being a loud mess.

Afterwards we went walking down the longest shopping arcade in Japan at Tenjinbashi, but it’s all very old-school, so we bailed and headed towards Shinsaibashi.

We had lunch and did NOT get the giant parfait.

My mom and my sister headed towards Daimaru, and I went on a trek to the National Bunraku Theatre to get my mom her favorite calendar.

When I finally got to Daimaru, I checked out the “watch fair”. Turns out they didn’t have any of the Grand Seikos in the area of the fanciest watches because, well, the most expensive Grand Seiko I saw was only EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Sheesh.

My sister and I did have a very nice cup of coffee while waiting for my mom to get a massage.

Eventually we all had massages at Daimaru and afterwards my feet hurt like crazy. I had “reflexology” done (feet and calves) and the tiny woman was incredibly strong.

I had to check out the Apple Store in Shinsaibashi. I’ve been by it a bunch of times but never went in. It’s just like an American Apple Store, except more expensive and not nearly as crowded.

We finally got back to the hotel and they switched my room when I complained about my incredibly creaky bed. Apparently a lot of the mattresses are creaky, but I got a new room on another floor that seems a lot cleaner and smells a lot better. I think I win this one.

Oh, and here’s a picture from last night. I’m not sure if you can see it, but this is when I was waiting at the wrong part of the platform for my train (it was further down towards the right). The guy’s jacket says, “bitch,” and i shows a guy shooting a woman in the head. No idea what the hell that means.

Right now I’m sitting in my hotel room in Osaka, doing what I’d do at home. Playing with my computer. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but it’s kind of nice being in a hotel room and no someone else’s house. Not that I don’t just sit at our friends’ house in Toyama playing on the computer (which I did). I even found a bug in the Vim configure.in while I was there.

This was our travel day to Osaka, and I think my mom is taking it easy with my sister in their room which is right next door. I’m sure I’m overdoing the free intarweb access here because I just downloaded a 2+GB compiler onto my Mac. Not that I needed it right away, but like I said, we’re taking it easy right now. My mom isn’t that young any more and we don’t want to torture her too much.

We left Toyama station, where they’re going to have the new Hokuriku Shinkansen come through and that’s the construction in the background. On the complete opposite end of Japanese train lines is the one-car diesel car which I think heads up to Mt. Tateyama.

Ugh, I have lens flare!

I told my sister to get some of the coffee out of the vending machine but she didn’t like it at all. I thought it was fine. We made jokes about the name of the coffee. By the way, we stopped at Tsuruga today, which is the the terminus of the ??? (the Obama line). 

Here’s our train!

I like not having to belt up like on a plane, and it’s a whole lot quieter as well. My only complaint is that it’s harder to use the men’s bathroom, as the train rocks a bit. Other than that, I’d much rather take the train.

I had to have one random shot out the window.

One not so random, of a giant Kannon-san (goddess of mercy).

And of course a picture of the Suntory distillery as we sped by. 

I’m still sitting in the hotel now, but I have to leave to meet my old co-worker tonight.

We’re still in Toyama, and really this isn’t about me or my sister but my mom hanging around with her friends. We went to a sushi restaurant for lunch, for example, and my sister couldn’t find much to eat. She did have a green tea soft ice cream for dessert.

The shopping center has restaurants and a grocery store and used to have a Beard Papa. The B&R is still there as well as the Mr. Donut.

Tomorrow we’re on the road for Osaka. I’m meeting an old friend from work at 8PM. I’ve been going to bed pretty early this trip (I usually stay up) so 8 sounds late. It isn’t, of course. I’m old but not that old.

Not much more to add today. Still in Toyama, and we went to an Indian restaurant for lunch. I think I bought a couple pairs of pants at Uniqlo, but we’re just taking it easy in Toyama.

Not much happens when we’re in Toyama, and that’s still better than being at work. So today we went to a small, local coffee roaster for coffee and spent not too much money at Uniqlo (the Japanese equivalent of the Gap). It’s hard to spend much money at Uniqlo, because everything there is very inexpensive.

But really, that’s about it.

Today we finally made it to Toyama. We started off with a breakfast at the onset and it was as impressive as dinner.

The picture doesn’t show the rice or miso soup. Unfortunately, that also meant we overdid it a bit. My digestive system wasn’t feeling that great, and my mom wasn’t feeling good either. My sister and I think we were also feeling the effects of the lack of coffee in the morning and passed out on the drive to Toyama. Every time I was awake, it seemed like we were going straight downhill.

We had a lunch of Mos Burger in Toyama, and we went shopping at Uniqlo. That might be the only stop at Mos Burger for this trip, but it certainly isn’t the only stop at Uniqlo.

Today we started off on the way from Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture to Toyama in Toyama Prefecture. It’s an easy day trip but we’re stopping off at Shirahone Onsen on the way.

We went through Matsumoto on the way and here’s a picture of the highway parking area with the Japan Alps in the background. The highway speed limit is only 80 kph (about 50 mph) but it’s also a toll road which means lots less traffic than you’d think.

Matsumoto appears to be a wealthy town of which I know very little. It is a castle town and the castle has been standing since the start and didn’t need to be rebuilt from the ground up like a lot of other castles.

The inside of Japanese castles is quite similar. Lots of incredibly steep stairs to keep your enemy from rushing up to kill the head honcho. You usually get a great view from the top, but I sure wouldn’t want to be THMFIC because it is a long ways up. This is also the season for chrysanthemum contests and you can see the tent at the very left where that was happening. 

We made the trip into the hills to Shirahone Onsen. Shirahone means white bone, and the water of the springs appear to be full of calcium and sulphur by the smell. You can see the bluish color of the water in the tub, which was part of our room! There were also communal bathing facilities on a lower floor.

Everyone but my sister tried the tub in the room. We all went to the big baths downstairs later, though.

Just like most place like this, the dinner was fancy and there was way too much to eat.

I thought this was quite a lot, but this was just the appetizers.

Some very tasty sashimi (including salmon) was brought out.

 The teapot held something special. 

Matsutake and ground chicken meatballs.

 After that there was soba and they lit the heat underneath the wrapped tray. 

It was steak on miso and some vegetables to grill.

After that, we had a grilled fish that I destroyed before taking a picture.

Some onsen croquettes.

At this point I think I was in a food coma and don’t know what I was getting (but I do remember it was good).

And then, about the time we were thinking “please stop”, we got a seafood gratin baked in an apple with some gingko nuts.

 And then, to finish us off, miso soup and rice. We asked for very little rice.

We still had matcha cake for dessert!

After that was when we waddled our way to the “public” bath. There were two baths at the Shirahone Shintaku Onsen, one for women and one for men, and both had an inside bath and and an outside bath. You did all your washing inside, warmed up in the big bath, and then walked down a long, cold wooden path to the outside bath. Unfortunately, the men’s outside bath wasn’t all that warm.

And there you go for day 3!

I’ve been having a bit of trouble sleeping but what would you expect after the 9 hour time change? Heck, I even have troubles when daylight savings time starts.

We went on a trip to somewhere in the middle of nowhere yesterday, and by the middle of nowhere I mean Costco. Actually, we also went to the mountains to see the scenery.

It’s quite a ways up there, and more a mountain range than just “a” mountain so there’s no one mountain. We even went up to the top of a cable car ride to see more.

Of course, at the top you could walk up even further to get to a shrine. The shrine and the view were not worth the extra walk, nor were they worth more pictures.

Here’s the view from the top of the cable car ride. Here I present a view of Mt. Fuji the haze from China.

You can kind of see the edge of the lake from the view up top (it’s at the right edge) and here’s a better picture. That’s my mom and sister at the left.

Another view from the trip was the stairs at somewhere I forgot the name of. These are famous stairs, as I’ve seen them on Japanese TV. There’s really no end to these stairs (I exaggerate, they’re just very, very long.) We went twice as far as you can see in this picture and we weren’t a quarter of the way up the stairs. I think the top of the stairs leads to another path to another shrine. Very Japanese of them. This picture needs some enhancing too, but that’ll have to wait for later.

I’m not sure how they decide what sort of restaurants are on these mountains. Two years ago we went up a mountain that just had soba noodles. This mountain was all udon noodles. We had way too much udon for lunch.

Oh, and here’s a giant moth for you from the parking lot.

We got back to town in mid-afternoon and my mom and sister had never been to a Japanese Costco. I have no idea why they sell some of the things they do. A lot of things are just like what they have in the US, like those giant pizzas that won’t fit in a normal refrigerator or a normal oven. I don’t remember seeing a Japanese oven, so I’m not sure why they’d have that for sale. Why not get the cooked pizza?

You’re not going to find another giant drink for ¥60, or another giant hot dog for ¥180 in Japan.

I also don’t think I’ve ever seen 48 pieces of sushi for ¥3000 in any country.

My sister isn’t huge, but this bag of potato chips sure is. They also had those giant bags of tortilla chips they sell in the US and I saw this white dude with two bags of them.

I’m not sure who is going to eat this much bread.

Afterwards my sister and I went to the cheap eyeglass store and I got computer-tinted glasses for about ¥12,000. ($120) My sister’s were ¥7990. It took them 15 minutes to cut the lenses for both sets.

Dinner was at a yakiniku place and then I fell asleep watching a baseball game. While the World Series of Baseball is over, the Japan Series of Baseball continues with The Sendai’s Rakuten and The Tokyo Giants.