I seem to have caught a cold. Fortunately, today we were just hanging around with my aunt and cousin. My aunt and her kid look more like me than most of the rest of my family, which is kind of odd. He’s the one who my mom and aunt call ??? or “alien” because they can’t understand what he’s talking about. There were several conversations about who is more the alien between me and him.

So we went to my aunt’s house, out to lunch, and to my cousin’s house where I passed out on the couch for a while. Stupid cold anyway.

Not really sure why we had an amuse bouche of spring roll.

Sadly, the food was much better looking than it tasted.

Fancy soup.

We had some cake and headed back to the hotel in the afternoon. I figured we should try going to the mall to find some dinner, and took a taxi. We were trying to choose between “Rock Town” and “Youme Town” and the taxi driver suggested Rock Town had more restaurants.

It was an odd mall that looked more like something in the U.S. than something in Japan. And it only had six restaurants on the mall map, and it looked like one of them was closed. It was a bit of a disappointment and so I talked to a couple of BMW salesmen who were showing cars at the mall. They told me there wasn’t much choice in the area and suggested we go to Mr. Bark, a Japanese steak & hamburger restaurant.

It was the Japanese version of an American restaurant and it wasn’t that bad. The bib is because everything comes on a hot plate and is sizzling and spattering.

So that was the day and another travel day tomorrow. Off to Okayama.

Holy crap it’s a long ways to Nagasaki. Today was a travel day and the first part was on the train from Nagasaki to Hakata.

We had a weird compartment on the train. It didn’t shut, but it did have a little cramped area for us to sit in. The leg room wasn’t ideal.

We saw some inexplicable views of the ocean, like the poles in the water.

Also, they tend to beach their boats for some reason.

And they stop at stations with ham radio antennas for no reason (actually the reason is that there is a single track for much of the trip and the trains can only pass each other at the stations.)

We had a SIX HOUR layover in Hakata, because my mom doesn’t like riding the Shinkansen that stops at every station. Don’t ask me. We could have been in Tokuyama much earlier. The food was pretty good, though.

We spent a lot of time wandering through a department store and then having dessert to have a place to sit down.

We also got massages and then got on the train to Tokuyama. Tokuyama is the shinkansen station closest to my aunt’s house and is quite depressing. What used to be a bustling little town is now a ghost town. This is happening all over Japan as the arcades move to the malls. The only restaurants we could find were drinking establishments and though the food was actually pretty good the fact that it was the only sort of business open was really pretty depressing. Next time we’re going to find the nearest mall and eat in a restaurant there.

OK, so I thought someone was running some sort of engine outside or trying to start a chainsaw for the last hour. It turns out it was the guy snoring in the next room. Tokuyama is turning into a kind of nightmare for me. At least we get to see another cousin and my aunt.

Before I start talking about my day, I am going to complain about my hotel room. I’m right next to the elevator and here’s my view.

The video-on-demand was also spotty and when I tried to watch Harry Potter or Sucker Punch, it just stuttered. I was tempted to see if it stuttered on the pr0n as well, since that’s probably what most people watch on it, but I figured I had better things to do with my time, like try to sleep. Fortunately, the room is fairly quiet, and the elevators are not noticeable.

We spent the day walking around Nagasaki with my sister’s online friend Jan. Jan’s been here for 20 years but she hadn’t been to the Museum of the 26 Martyrs for almost 18. We talked her into going in with us. It’s a serious Catholic museum, but heathen me found it to be a celebration of the ridding of Xtians. My sister wanted to see pictures of the Xtians hung upside-down over pools of excrement and my brother-in-law was curious about the practice of trodding on iconography. (They’d let the Xtians go free if they would step on religious images.) There were drawings of both, and also the casting of Xtians into the boiling volcanic pools. It must have happened; at least 26 of them were recognized by the Pope after all.

Across from this image was a giant root and a plaque that, paraphrased, read: “This is a camphor root that has nothing to do with the 26 martyrs, but it’s interesting nevertheless.” We also saw some kids hanging out in the corner of the green space in front of the museum and didn’t have any idea what they were doing until they broke out some dance moves.

After that we walked to downtown Nagasaki for which I have some quick observations:

1. Nagasaki is smaller than I thought.
2. Nagasaki is hilly as hell.
3. They sure like their stairs in Nagasaki (probably because they’re used to walking up and down the hills).

Of course we did the touristy thing by seeing the meganebashi.

But a few steps away was the shopping arcade which was much livelier than most I’ve seen in Japan. The arcades seem to be closing in favor of the giant malls. I like the arcades better a lot of the time.

And, of course, lunch in a traditional and busy Nagasaki restaurant.

Jan left us after lunch and we continued on to Dejima, which was a small artificial island that was Japan’s only contact with the outside world for a time. The buildings behind the re-creation of Dejima shows how much more land has been reclaimed since that time. What was harbor is just land now.

We were pretty tired, and after a bit of rest we continued on to an Indian restaurant named Milan. I guess it means something else in the dialect of the chefs.

So my sister threatened to make me buy her an outfit if I didn’t start spending money. I bought a plastic “shitajiki” (just a thin piece of plastic you put under paper notebook pages so you don’t have to push against all the other pages) but she said ¥105 didn’t count. I then got a membership to the hotel chain we’re staying in, Toyoko Inn, for ¥1500, but she said that didn’t count. I did finally get off the hook by buying a t-shirt for ¥3800. I’m not converting that into dollars, because it hurts too much. Plus, you can’t get a t-shirt from a traditional Nagasaki shochu company for any less.

Today we traveled from Osaka to Nagasaki. My mom and my sister have been to Nagasaki in the past, but I haven’t. Most of the day was spent on the train where we did have some nice bentos on the way.

My aunt got off on the way, at Hiroshima, and we had to change trains at Hakata but it was mostly uneventful. We’re not sure if my aunt actually made it home, because she doesn’t like to answer her telephone. It was raining when we got to Nagasaki and the hotel was a few minutes walking from the train station. Dinner was another five minutes walk. Nothing is as close in the country as it is in the city, is it? But we wandered around another Japanese mall and found a place that had Nagasaki chanpon.

There weren’t many people in the restaurant and we were surprised at how good it was.

Tomorrow we’re going to wander around some of the places the white devils, I mean, foreign influences are in the city but not the big influence that went off in 1945. I’ve been to the Hiroshima atomic bomb memorial museum and I don’t need to see another one. Instead, I’m trying to find where they hung the Xtians upside-down over pools of excrement before they just plain gave up torturing all the converts. But now that I think of it, isn’t it just like America to drop an atomic bomb on the most Xtian city in Japan?

I’m totally failing at stimulating the Japanese economy. In fact, the only thing I think I bought today was another can of beer. I have seriously thought about buying a USB hub and a foldable Bluetooth keyboard, but those aren’t that expensive. I also not-so-seriously thought about buying my dream watch, a Grand Seiko with a 24-hour hand, but at today’s exchange rate it’s about $6,600 or probably the same as my car is worth. If I get a big raise I may go for it, but that’s about as likely as winning the lottery right now. I suppose it’s just as well; it didn’t have exactly the band I wanted and for ¥462,000 I should have the band I want.

Today we visited my uncle and my cousins in Nishinomiya and that was fun as always aside from a slight disaster where my mom dropped her wallet in the taxi and didn’t notice it until the taxi left. My cousin and I rode bicycles back to the train station and told them our plight, but didn’t tell them we had an incredibly unfriendly taxi driver. Most of the drivers got out of their cabs to help us, but we didn’t notice that the guy at the head of the line did not. The next passenger getting into that cab found my mom’s wallet and, being Japan, we got it back intact. But it was because of the passenger, not the driver.

My sister and I did some more shopping (with the previously noted failure on my part) and we all went out to dinner. We found the “coffee shop” that we used to frequent in a different spot on the 14th floor of the Daimaru building and we had two of the specials and one sandwich set. The cakes there are tasty as well. Last year we had a surprisingly good stew there.

Tomorrow we’re off to Nagasaki. We couldn’t get on the train we wanted because it was full, but we’re getting there in the late afternoon. I’m not sure what’s in Nagasaki since I’ve never been, but apparently there’s an area where the Japanese used to torture whitey in the olden days. I’m all for that.

Today was a day to wander around Umeda with my mom, sister, aunt, and aunt’s sister-in-law. It always involves eating and shopping for odd things. First was my failure to pick a decent place to eat. We went for omurice, or rice omlettes, and there was a good place at the top of Yodobashi Camera but the place we went was in the basement of the Hankyu Sanbangai.

That’s my mom, my aunt, and my not-really-my-aunt.

It just wasn’t all that tasty. Not awful, but not great.

Afterwards we went wandering around shopping at Yodobashi Camera at first, getting hats for my mom and my aunt. My mom kept telling my aunt to throw away her hat since it’s 30 years old, but you know how little a younger sister’s opinion can mean at times. My favorite t-shirt shop is gone (!) because of remodeling to Yodobashi Camera and so I really haven’t bought that many things for myself. I bought a gift for Dr. Kawasaki, who was given some sort of award by the Emperor of Japan, and I bought my mom a calendar. I suppose I bought myself a LAN cable that I didn’t really need and some batteries, but those hardly count as anything interesting. I’ve tried to buy things at Uniqlo, but they’re out of my size in the colors I want and there’s always another Uniqlo down the street from wherever I’m going.

In any case, we were tired and we went back to Hankyu Sanbangai to get our yearly green tea and dumplings. This is probably the third picture of the same thing on my blog. Or maybe it’s the fourth. In any case, it’s delicious.

I think my aunt, my mom, and my not-really-my-aunt would agree.

After that we went looking for the new rooftop garden that was designed, in part somehow, by my sister’s old piano teacher’s niece. My sister’s old piano teacher still calls my mom for hours at a time several times a week (and sometimes several times a day) and would never let her hear the end of it if we hadn’t gone to see the rooftop garden. If we found the right one, it’s at the top of the fancy Isetan department store. But you know what’s also at the top of the fancy Isetan department store, at the entrance to the garden? A convenience store!

The garden itself is a work in progress and not completely interesting, but I did take some pictures.

A panorama looking north-ish, where I lived-ish. Even if you click on the picture and expand it, the place I lived is a microspeck on the image.

The trip down was more interesting than the elevator up to floor 10, the escalator to floor 11, and the the climb up the stairs to floor 14. There are a set of escalators in the covered atrium that go from floor 10 to floor 7, floor 7 to floor 4, and floor 4 to floor 1. It was just short of being spectacular. Very interesting, though.

We said goodbye to Mrs. Takanaka (my not-really-my-aunt) and my sister and I continued shopping at Hanshin where I did buy myself a plastic Hanshin Tiger’s card. Later we went to dinner at Daimaru and even more shopping at Tokyu Hands, a Japanese drug store (for yet more Japanese fingernail polish for my sister), and Sofmap (a computer/camera chain). And yet I still didn’t buy myself anything more than that plastic card. I’m failing at this consumerism thing, but it’s still more fun than being at work.

We left Toyama today around noon and, fortunately, I wasn’t as hung over as everyone else thought I’d be. That’s because I hid from the drinkers and went to Baskin-Robbins instead but I still didn’t sleep worth a darn last night.

We got into Osaka in a rain storm to the hotel that we had so much trouble booking. And wouldn’t you know it, they put us in a couple of smoking rooms. Fortunately, that was easily fixed. In the evening I got to meet my old co-worker’s family. He’s remarried and now he has three boys. They seem like good kids, though.

Oh, and I googled it and it looks like Sodick is a real company, not just a bad sign on a building.

We were joined in Toyama by more of the Kawasaki clan and on our travels through town we made a short trip to Koffe, a specialty coffee roaster south of the train station. The owner even made a trip to Ventura to demonstrate the Japanese method of making single cups of drip coffee. My sister and I also got a cappuccino and I’d recommend looking up the coffee shop if you’re in Toyama.

The coffee was delicious!

We were in Toyama for day 3, going to a hot springs and shopping at the local mall. Not many pictures, though, because there’s really no reason to take pictures of a bunch of old naked dudes or of the inside of a mall. The most confusing thing to me at the hot springs was when I was looking for the toilet. There was a sign for the “Rest Room” which turned out to be a room full of lounging chairs for after you soak and there was a sign for the “Bath Room” which turned out to be the way to get to the actual baths. I finally found it, along with a sign for the “Rocker Room” where they disappointingly kept all the lockers.

I did get a picture of a barber shop with more than a normal allotment of barber poles.

Our usual second day in Japan. We drove from Maebashi with my mom’s friend Mieko to Toyama to see our friends the Kawasakis. It was a beautiful day in Maebashi.

We headed towards the expressway and saw some things I found interesting, including a zinc factory built on a hill. Most structures I see nowadays are built on flat land.

As we headed towards Nagano, there were some interesting hills and I think one of them is the one that the writer of Crayon Shin-chan fell from.

We got on the Japanese expressway (with a speed limit of 70-80kph – a non-speedy 44-50MPH) and headed towards Nagano Prefecture.

On the way we went to Obuse which is famous for chestnuts and the Hokusai museum. I don’t think it was worth waiting 1 1/2 hours for the chestnut rice lunch, but it was pretty good. That’s my mom on the right.

The Hokusai museum was also on the same level of interesting but I’m not sure if I’d go out of my way to get there. There was a sign that was worth the price of entrance. I”m not sure why it was so funny at the time, but my sister and I were laughing so hard I thought I was going to pass out.

We made it to Toyama and I passed out immediately after dinner. I’m getting old.

Not much to say about the first day in Japan because we got to Narita at 5PM (1AM Portland time) and after getting our rail passes and my rental cell phone, we got on a bus for Maebashi. Four hours later, we arrived at the train station in Maebashi and went out for dinner with our friends. The big surprise is that we were met by Dr. Kobayashi who is generally too busy to see us. It’s always around 10:30PM by the time we get to dinner but the okonomiyaki restaurant is open at that time.

I passed out soon afterwards. I saw an interestingly tiny car, on the way home, though.

I’ve been tired at the gym before and today was quite special. I’m thinking it might have been a good idea to take a nap instead, but I often think that when I go to the gym. But now that I look at it in retrospect, I probably do need a rest. Good thing I’m going to be eating instead of exercising for two weeks.

I usually don’t get very stressed out about my trips to Japan. I think it takes me about 10 minutes to pack, if you don’t count the time I spend deciding what sorts of electronic entertainment I’m going to pack in my carry-on. That takes another 10 minutes at least. Once in a while I can get nervous about traveling and sometimes it’s subconscious, keeping me from sleeping well the night before, but I know that as soon as the plane leaves the ground I just need my ID and my credit card and I’m OK. Other than that I don’t worry too much. This year I might be getting more stressed than usual because I had a couple of weird dreams. One I was in an airport transferring to my Japan flight, wondering why I wasn’t on my direct flight from Portland to Narita. Second I was buying Japanese potato chips with two co-workers, wondering why I was in Japan working stuck eating junk food instead of being on vacation eating something better.

I also remember some sort of dream where I was in a graveyard watching ghosts hover over their gravestones. I’m missing Halloween, but I’m not missing Halloween I guess.