The Japan Diaries

Japan Diaires: The end of a good year and the return of a king

Hey all

As I write this final email about the experience of my life in Japan, I can’t help but say that this year has been a very fast and fun year, perhaps the best year of my life so far. For the final week of my life in Japan, I was just full out busy with final dinners and lunch with friends, seeing off my fellow exchange students, packing my entire years worth of crap into my suit cases and just trying to face the realities of coming back to Melbourne.

I will talk to you about my crazy unlucky eventful Wednesday that I experienced. My American friend, Big Dan and I decided to leave Kumamoto early that day to have a nice day trip to Shimabara, which is located in Nagasaki prefecture, and is just straight across the bay of Kumamoto. After arriving, we took the bus to the main centre, and decided to walk around. On our little wanderings, we found 5 unused JR railway tickets, this would’ve been worth like $300-$500. Thinking that I could receive some good karma for my good deeds, we decided to visit the nearest Koban, a police station. At this police station, we gave our tickets to this old man, who took like 30 mins just to ask 3 questions and fill out a damm form!! So our little day trip started a bit unexpected. Anyways, we stroll around the city of Shimabara, a place filled with old people and nothingness. The main attraction to this place is Shimabara castle, which is mainly just a museum really. Although it is quite small for a castle, it does hold a great collection of samurai amour, swords and paintings. Shimabara is also the place where a peasant uprising took place and also the slaughter of many Christians during the beginning of the Tokugawa period. As we were about to head home, we took at the timetable board to check when the last boat leaves, which said 7:20pm. Holding that information, we decided to go to the local onsen for a nice clean dip. Now although the timetable board said 7:20pm, apparently that time only runs during weekends and public holidays according to the very fine print. So me and Big Dan had just missed our last boat back to Kumamoto, so what the hell do we do? We were not willing to stay in Shimabara, so we made the greatest decision ever by taking the train around the bay. We took a normal train west to Izahaya, changed to an express train heading north to Fukuoka, changed there and finally hopped on the midnight train to Kumamoto. We took a 4hr train ride back home, which could have easily taken 30mins by boat. Although it was so troublesome and just pure bad luck, I could not help but laugh at the situation because it was pretty much the first time in Japan or anywhere in the world perhaps, that I felt totally lost. Great times!

As I said earlier, my week was just booked out. On my final day in Japan, Kumamoto was holding its biggest festival, the fire country festival. Don’t really understand why its called fire country festival, but it is a summer celebration filled with music and dance. This festival reminded me of Italy’s carnival or Brazil’s mardi gras in the way that music was pumping and the people in the parade just dancing, skillfully or not. After the festival, me and my friends went to Jeff’s bar and enjoyed a quiet last drink in Japan. After receiving free drinks, I had the munchies and ate my last meal in Japan by having ramen. So much pork on that ramen, so much fat, actually felt a bit sick in the morning because of that.

The 10^th of August was the day I left Japan. I had only slept for 3-4 hours because of the night before, and finished packing my suitcases. I was to leave the dormitory at 6:30 in the morning, a very early start to the day. As I finished packing my entire luggage into my friend’s car, I said my farewells to all my friends. It was a very weird feeling because it felt like I was coming back, but I knew in my heart that I won’t see many of them in the same place anymore. Saying good bye is never fun.

AT the airport, I had a problem with my luggage, excess weight of 12kg. And also, because I used my dads credit card to pay for the flight home, they needed the actual card for proof or something, and yeah that was just crazy. One word of advice for travelling, be very careful of excess luggage, it will kill you! For me it costed like $400 because of that, my dad will not be happy.

And now, I write this last diary entry in Changi airport, where the journey had begun exactly 10 months ago. This year has gone by so fast, and it has taught me so many things that I would have never expected. When I meet you all again soon, you may think that I’m the same old Brendan, but deep inside, I feel very different. Studying abroad has truly expanded my mind, I understand the differences in culture, I understand people better and also I understand myself much better. I now have a somewhat plan for my near future. I don’t plan to stay in Melbourne for long, promised myself a year, two at most, then I’m off again on another adventure. For me right now, seeing the world and it’s beauties, experiences different cultures are the most important thing in my life. To become a better person, I truly believe that one must go abroad and understand people from different cultures. By doing so, it gives you another look, another way of thinking on things in life.

So for the last time, I will end my diary entries on Japan here. Thanks for reading these emails, and I hoped that I have inspired you all to get out and see the world. A teacher once said that you have not lived life until you visit another country. With those words, I hope that you will begin to life your lives from this moment. When I arrive in Melbourne, I will be very depressed, a stage of reverse culture shock. I will be whining, depressed, angry and all those negative emotions will run through me for a while and in advance I apologies for that. You will know what I am talking about soon. But you know, this is not the end of my adventures, like I said earlier, I plan to run away again within the next year or two. So with each new day comes a new adventure, there’s never an end just a new beginning. I will look forward to my next adventure, and with that said, this is the story of my life so far…

Brendan

Japan Diaries: Let the good times roll..

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Sorry for keeping you all waiting lol. What has everyone been up to? Been doing well I’m guessing?

For me, things are doing well I guess. Everyone in the dorms is feeling more and sadder these days since we all have to face the inevitable and go back to our home countries. I found myself even more sad on Friday because that was the day I booked my flight home, for those all awaiting for my triumphant return, it will be on the 11^th of August, at exactly 6:10 am (yes bloody early isn’t it), according to my flight plan. I don’t have much time now in this awesome country and it really does sadden me to leave, however when I do return to Melbourne I will be extremely happy to see all your beautiful faces again.

What have I been up to lately since my last entry? A lot actually, for the longest time I was working on my Japanese speech. 2 weeks ago, at Kumamoto Gakuen University, there was a Japanese speech contest for all exchange students, the winner receives $200 AU. I thought it would be nice to win the money, but also thought it would be nice to have a speech in a different language. Since it was a speech, I was thinking something motivational, moving and big; hence why my speech was about ‘the meaning of human struggle’. Pretty much the jist of the speech was a little about my problems, then went on about how everyone has problems and that although we have all this struggle in our lives, this struggle is what makes life beautiful. Now even though this was big, like noble peace prize big, I didn’t win unfortunately. Didn’t get placed at all, actually. However, even though I didn’t get placed or anything like that, I did receive $50 AU for just participating in the event. SO that was pretty awesome!

Living overseas has taught me very valuable life lessons. I find that I’m beginning to understand myself more, learning new tricks and things in life, for example, cooking. Man, I am loving cooking, like just yesterday I made myself ravioli for scratch. I find that cooking is very meditative, spending all your concentration on getting it right and then all your troubles and thoughts just seem to pass. Everyone tells me that I should open up my own café and all, but yeah I’m not that great yet.

Oh yeah forgot to tell you all, I performed my first gig in Japan last tues. It was at a place called Jeff’s world bar, a bar owned by an American English teacher that teaches at my University, a very nice bar, good pub atmosphere. Also at this bar, you can find my drink that I created on the menu! Yes I have created a drink, I call it a ‘Citrus Sunshine’ however in Jeff’s bar, it is officially called a Mr. Wan. A Mr. Wan is made up of Contreau (orange liquer), Mangoyan (Mango liquer), sprit and lime syrup, garnished with lemon and lime. Some of you maybe thinking that it is a chick drink, however before you judge, try drinking this while enjoying yourself on a nice tropical beach with all your worries gone. So anyway back to my first live gig in japan, I only played four songs because it was open mic night, so first song I played my original (haven’t thought of a name for it yet, but I think I will call it ‘Bedtime stories’), then I did a blues improvisation, which wasn’t too bad made my signature mistakes but hey, then I played Monty Python’s ‘Always look on the bright side’, that was nice people in the bar joined in with the whistling part. For my last song, I played Eric Clapton’s Sunshine of your love with 2 of my other friends. The Englishman Chris played the keyboard to provide bass, now Chris does not know how to keyboard, he knows how to play the riff of ‘the final countdown’ and a few other riffs. So I asked him if he wanted to play keyboard for me, and he agreed. 4 hours before the performance, I taught him the riff and the chords for the chorus part, and to remember which notes to play, he used colored stickers to identify which part to play. My other friend is Candan (short for Canadian Dan), he provided the vocals, 1 hour before the gig, I called him to ask if he wanted to sing it for me, now being a pot smoking Canadian who has no limits, he agreed. So that was our mega band, an Englishman on keyboard, a Canadian on vocals and yours truly on guitar. Now we were terrible! Absolutely terrible, we mucked up on timing, chris was playing the wrong parts, candan just didn’t even sing the chorus because the sheet of paper said ‘chorus’ and I screwed up on a few notes. Absolutely terrible. Having said that, I have never had so much fun absolutely destroying a great classic song. It was a great night, got free beers for participating in the event, other musicians were there as well, there were a couple of guys that had crazy unique style of playing, one of them Joe, slapped the guitar strings instead of strumming, and yeah just amazing. But yeah, that was a great night. Hopefully when I get back to Melbourne, I can perform gigs with my awesome guitar legend in the making friend, Chris Hou. We’ll see how things go eh?

Anyways enough for me, I want to hear how everyone is going? Sorry for keeping you guys waiting on the japan diary entries, I was thinking that you guys were still reading the one about korea hahah. Anyways I will write again soon, so yeah till that time comes, viva la figa

Brendan

Japan Diaries: Kyoto, Himeji and Osaka

Hey guys!

How have you all been going? Doing well with all the holidays and everything I assume. I’m doing alright, as I said before leaving for home very soon, in about 1 week and a bit I think. Recently in Japan, my feelow exchange students that I arrived in this country with, one by one are returning back to their respective countries. So far, about 5 have left for home, one actually left 15 minutes before I started writing this email. When we had our official farewell party, it was of course sad, people crying and having a chance to say their final farewells and all. Always sad to say goodbye. However during this party, I wasn’t really sad, I was very energetic and all because I thought there was no point in being all sad for our ‘last’ time, might as well make it memorable and awesome. ‘it’s never really a goodbye, just a see you later’, that is the motto which I am following under.

Last Tuesday was the start of my last epic adventure in Japan before I go home. I alone made my way towards Kansai area of Japan, which holds cities like Kyoto and Osaka. I have been to these two places before, however each time I went there, it was only a day trip, so this time I wanted to experience the actual city a bit more thoroughly. If you really wanted to experience the old traditional Japanese history and culture, Kyoto is the best place to go to. A lot of attractions to see in Kyoto, so many temples in Kyoto that even after a month of just travelling in Kyoto, you still would’ve missed something. I started my journey early in the morning and took the Shinkansen (Bullet train) from Kumamoto to Kyoto, chainging over at Fukuoka. The ride took about 4-5 hours, and I just pretty much slept the whole way. On my arrival, I went straight to my hostel and left my bags there and then decided to go to Toji temple, home to the tallest pagoda in Japan. This trip was totally unplanned, all I decided was which city I was going to go to, it was only during the actual day I decided ‘okay lets go here’. Toji temple was very nice, it had two halls, each holding a wooden carved Buddha or the different gods of Buddhism. After Toji temple, it was late in the afternoon and all the temples and attractions were closing up, so I decided just to wonder the city, go through the back streets and alleys of Kyoto. Kyoto city has a very much feel to it when your just wondering around, I could feel what it would’ve been like during the feudal era. The district of Gion, place where many geisha can be seen, is especially very pleasant at night. Highly recommend night strolling in Gion.

My next day was very crazy and epic. I woke up early at around 7ish, and told myself that I will go to Himeji, home to the largest castle in Japan. My American friend told me that since I’m near there, I might as well check it out, and so I just did that. Himeji is a huge castle! Because of its great and well protected form, the castle has never been seiged once, an amazing feat considering that Japan has had many civil wars. Once you climb to the top of the main 5-storey tower, you can feel this great welcoming cool breeze that can give you a moment’s peace. Oh by the way, during the time of this adventure, it was bloody hot, like everyday was 30 degrees and above, so when you’ve been walking around in your sweat drenched shirts, this is the best feeling ever.

After having conquered Himeji castle, I made my way back to Kyoto, a nice 1 1/2 hr train ride. Although I was done with Himeji by no means was I going to stop seeing places, so as soon as I arrived in Kyoto I jumped on the bus to Nanzen-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple that was originally built as a villa for an emperor. There are many different neat building with great statues and artwork, however I did not have a chance to see that, for my purpose was to see the aqueduct that feeds this temple water. The aqueduct built with red bricks, and it reminded me of the old aqueducts you see in Europe. Although not nearly as close to the European ones, I was nonetheless impressed with this. I heard about this waterfall in this temple where monks can be seen meditating under it, and I just had to try doing this myself. I walked this little nature trail that was beyond the aqueduct, and found the water shooting pipe that was supposedly the waterfall. Althought not an actual waterfall, I saw it as more of a natural shower, so I took off my sweat drenched shirt and tried myself some good old Zen Buddhist waterfall meditation. The feeling of this heavy gushing water on your shoulders felt like heaven to me, maybe for a slight second I could have reached enlightenment hehe. The day was still young for me, and after having reached enlightenment at Nanzen-ji, I made my way south of Kyoto city to Inari shrine. For those who know what Inari sushi is (the sweet tofu wrapped around sweet rice), this is the birthplace of it. Here you can see this mountain trail that is just loaded with trails of Shinto gates. Theres a passage from the bottom to that top that is just trailed with tori-gates. Also on the way you can see statues of foxes, the messenger to the god of rice and cerel. The fox is know by the Japanese to be an animal that can posses humans through your fingernails. In order to ward off this spirit, people threw rice pockets, which in time became inari sushi. My best memory of this place would have to be eating Inari sushi that I bought at the 7/11 and eating it on the entrance steps to Inari shrine. Memorable!

My 3^rd day was a day when I would finally visit Kingaku-ji’s sister temple (the temple that is just covered with cold leaf plates), Gingaku-ji. Now Ginagaku-ji was meant to be covered in silver leaf plates, however since the guy died, this ambition was never realized. The actual building that was meant to be covered in silver was undergoing some repairs when I went, which was a pity, but wondering through the gardens was very pleasant. Next I caught a bus that would take my just outside of Kyoto city to a town called Ohara. Ohara holds a temple called ‘Sanzen-in’ which has ancient temples that store images of the different gods of Buddhism, and also is home to the most photographed garden in Japan. In the garden you can see these cute little statues that resemble praying monks. Right outside of the temple, I took a short hike up this trail to visit ‘The Soundless Waterfall’, a waterfall that is said to inspire Buddhist chanting. This was more of a waterfall than the previous waterfall I went to, but it was not soundless at all, false advertising there hm. Again I took a little natural shower under this waterfall and had myself a bit of enlightenment.

The Westside of Kyoto called ‘Arashiyama’ was next on my list to do. Arashiyama is a great place to escape the temples and just go for a walk through nature. Here I walked this massive wooden constructed bridge and had a walk through the bamboo forest. Also met a Korean guy who rode his bicycle from Sapporo (about the top of Japan) to Kyoto, and was on his way to Fukuoka (south of Japan), crazy! Later that night I visited a festival and walked around Kyoto and then bumped into a Singaporean guy that shared the same room with me at the hostel. He was with some random travelers from Euorpe, and so we had ourselves a drink. Great fun there, learned how to say ‘Drink till we die’ in German, French and Italian.

The fourth day was to be my last day in traditional city of Kyoto, and head to the modern city of Osaka. Before I was down with Kyoto, I wanted to visit Heian Shrine’s garden. It’s an awesome Chinese inspired shrine that welcomes you with a massive red Shinto gate. I’ve been here before but I wanted to check out the gardens, said to be the best in Japan. And how true it was. There I strolled around and fed the fish at the pond. After that, hopped on a train to Osaka and was there 30 mins later. Once I checked in my hostel I made my way to Umeda sky building, this futuristic building that has two towers that hold a glass escalator that goes from one building to the other. On the top of these twin towers is an observation deck where you can see a great view of Osaka city. After the nice view, I had to meet my old host sister that I stayed with the first time I came to Japan. It has been like 6-7 years since I’ve seen her and it was great to catch up with her again, she showed me the nightlife of Osaka through Dotombori. Dotomburi is where you go for food, usually the street and it’s side streets are just filled with food stalls selling various kind of foods. During the time I went, there was much happenings as the food stalls were all at the festival that I was to go to after dinner. The Tenjin festival is the 3^rd largest festival in Japan, and I was so lucky to have been in Osaka during this time, it was crazy! People crammed into each other on a hot night to see a great firework display that would last from 7-10pm. After the festival, I headed to a bar to experience some Osaka drinking. It was after I finished drinking I had a hell of a time getting home. The bar was in the south of Osaka city whereas my hostel was located in the north, and the subway was closed during that time, I had no money for a tazi, so I had to walk at like 1 in the morning, a bit tipsy and tired from all the walking I did during the day. It was painfully hell!

Th final day of my adventure was to take it easy after the night before and just enjoy Osaka Castle. Osaka castle should not be viewed as an actual castle, but more of a museum. The orginal Osaka castle was burned down many times, and now its just fully concreted and revamped. It has some nice displays of items from feudal Japan, also shows a great view of the city from the main 8-storey watchtower. A place called Den-Den town was next on the agenda, just a huge place where you get your electronic goods for cheap deals. In fact I bought myself a 4gb mp3 player for $100AU, a nice deal I believe. Once I was done with that I strolled around until it was time to go home and end my last epic travels for Japan.

Again sorry if it’s a long email, hope you had fun reading it :p I will be home very soon so hopefully I can catch up with you all and see your faces again. Since it’s getting near to the end of my stay in Japan, the Japan diaries will be coming to an end as well. Probably 1 or 2 more entries and we’re done, yeah!

See you in a bit,

Brendan

Japan Diaires: Golden Week in Korea!

Hello everyone!

How are we all today? Sorry I couldn’t update on you sooner but I have been a bit busy with school, it’s just test after test really. I’m thinking that most of you all are on holidays and are finished with exams and all. As always this will be a long email so grab a coffee or something, and make sure you have some time before reading this.

Well today’s email will be about my experiences in Korea, a real interesting country with a unique mixture of Chinese and Japanese heritage. In Japan, it’s uniqueness lies in harmony, it has this harmony between modern, state of the art technology and metropolitan cities and the spiritual surroundings of nature. China’s uniqueness lies within it’s deep history, a civilization that perhaps was one of the most advanced during it’s time. Korea, maybe because of the occupation from both of these countries, gathers both of these cultures to create it’s own identity.

The first day of May, two of my American friends (Dan and Sasha) headed out of our dorms at 6am in the mourning to catch a 2hr bus ride to Fukuoka. From Fukuoka, we all rode the ferry to Busan, the second largest city in South Korea. The three hour ferry ride was all too bad, didn’t get sea sick at all really, felt more like a train ride once it got going. We got this sweet package from the Beetle (the name of the ferry) website where we get a round trip ferry ticket from Fukuoka to Busan, a KR (Korean railways) pass that allows us to use any trains, except subway trains, in South Korea and also a pass in which we can use the KTX (the Korean version of the bullet train) unlimited times between Busan to Seoul. All of this was only for about $310, excluding taxes. Not bad for travelling to a foreign country. It was kind of weird when I was packing for my trip because it didn’t feel like I was going to another country, felt like I was going to another place within Japan, had to remind myself not to forget my passport.

Once we arrived in Busan, we ate our first Korean meal, which was at a buffet place downtown, and then headed to our hostel. Korean food is the best for a tight wallet, the buffet place was about only AU$5, actually come to think about it, most of the food we ate was no more than AU $10. After finding our hostel, we all decided to head to a temple recommended by the owner of the hostel called Haedong Temple. Haedong temple is located north from the downtown area and is a Buddhist temple that is placed on the rocky shores next to the sea. During our stay in Korea, temples were getting ready for Buddha’s birthday, which is on the 8th day of the 4th month on the lunar calendar. In Haedong temple there was these stairs that led to a dark underground room where people meditate to the sounds of dripping water bouncing from wall to wall and the sound of rushing civilization outside the meditating room. It was very pleasant to just sit with your eyes shut and take a few minutes from life. Once done with Haedong temple, we all took a $2 taxi ride to Haeundae Beach. Supposedly the best beach in South Korea, Haeundae holds a nice relaxing scenery where you can sit on the sand and watch the sun shut its eyes. Similar to the scenery you get at St Kilda beach or Bondi. In Haeundae beach, we went to find a hot spring place we heard about that has a strawberry milk hot spring. Yeah weirdly interesting eh? Unfortunately it turned out to be the wrong spa house however we did find it the next day, only to find a cherry champagne bath, salt bath and jasmine tea bath, but no strawberry milk.

Beomusa temple was the main agenda for our second day in Busan, before leaving Busan for Seoul. Beomusa is an extremely old temple built around 600-700AD, that is nicely hidden in the mountain forest. It surrounding environment is all just green trees, with spiritualistic wind blowing into your face and whispering it’s magic. From the nearest station, we did a 30min hike up a mountain and on the way we always saw a pile of rocks stacked up. I asked my Korean friend, Ji Young, later what the meaning of the rocks were and she said that in natural or holy places, people stack rocks like a tower and pray to the gods. I found this very interesting because everywhere I went I would see these stacks of rocks piled up like a pagoda 
After Beomusa, we decided to find the spa that was supposed to have a strawberry milk bath, called Hurshimchung. Once we finished with our fastination for this spa place, we finally headed to the station to board the Seoul train. Once arriving in Seoul, we found our hostel in Hyewah district of Seoul and chilled out in a bar, drinking soju (Korean rice wine) for the rest of the night.

My first full day in Seoul was spend by going on a tour to the DMZ. The DMZ tour is a very interesting tour that one should take when going to South Korea. The DMZ (The Demilitarization zone) is the boarder between North and South, it is like 4km wide and 250km long. The DMZ was a result of another pointless war between communist power and egotistical American fear during the 1950’s. Although it is very surreal with the amount of Southern soldiers around the area, and also the fact that you’re next to North Korea, gives this tour a certain cool factor to it.
We were picked up in the mourning by bus and brought to Imjingak Park, a peace park that is next to the DMZ. In this park it has the ‘Bridge of Freedom’, the place where both countries swapped hostage solders, and the memorials alter; a place where one who has family in the North would gather to during Thanksgiving. Apparently in North Korea, they have a similar memorial alter for their citizens.
Next was Dorasan station, which is located next to the boarder of the DMZ. This station is never used however a couple years back, the two countries decided to rebuild its connecting railways, symbolic for the road to unification. In this place I took a sweet picture of a sign that says ‘Pyongyang 205km, Seoul 56km’
The Dora Obervatory is an observation deck which allows you to get a view of North Korea When taking pictures of North Korea, the southern soldiers strictly ask you to take picture behind this yellow line away from the viewing deck. From the viewing deck, I saw an interesting site involving a tale of two cities, one on the north and the other on the south, holding up tall flag poles to symbolize the strength and power of their own nations. Naturally the North got the last laugh because their flag is taller than the South.
Finally was the 3^rd Infiltration tunnel, this is a tunnel that was discovered during the 70’s that was dug by the North in order to launch a surprise attack on the South, or so they say, as the North insist that the South made the tunnel in order to set up North Korea. Reportedly, there were 20 tunnels dug by the North, only 4 of them were found. The tour guide said since it was 56km from Seoul, it could possibly move 10,000 soldiers in one hour. Pretty crazy for a surprise attack, sneaky north Koreans

After the DMZ tour, we did some sightseeing of some districts in Seoul, and then stayed the night at a spa. Now in Korea, as I may have mentioned earlier, they like spas and hot springs, they love it so much that they have 24 hour spas. In these places, there is the segregated spas and a huge common room for relaxing. After having a dip in the spa, it was in this common room that we slept in. It was a busy night so we only had a pillow and we had to sleep on a marble floor. Although I did grab loads of blankets to make my sleep somewhat more comfortable, an old Korean lady woke me up, said something I didn’t understand and just took the blankets. So yeah, I slept on a marble floor, didn’t really sleep, more like zoning out for a couple of hours.

After a rough night at the Spa place, we deicided our agenda for the day was to visit Buckingham Palace or the Forbidden city of Korea, Gyeoungbokgung. Gyeongbokgung Palace is the royal palace of the Seoul, where once upon a time Korean emperors would dine, wine and rule their country. It was interesting to see the different styles of Korean architecture, Koreans put a very heavy emphasis on colour, its evident in their traditional clothing, silk dresses with bright dazzling colour to reflect the beauty of nature. Although the palace was huge, I still believe that the forbidden city was much more bigger somehow, maybe it has something to do with the huge imposing security walls guarding the palace. Later that night we went to Jonggak district to check out the Latern festival. This is were I saw great scenes of traditional Korean culture, with it’s colourful traditional clothing, the thumping sounds of the traditional drums and the gentle yet stylized dances.

After a night of festive culture, the last day in Seoul was to be spent with our Korean friend, Ji-young, who lived with us in the dormitory in Kumamoto. She showed us the market districts of Seoul before leaving the capital to go to her hometown of Daejeon. Daejeon city was the last place I would stay in before heading back home to Japan. It’s where my Korean friends live and only a 1hr KTX ride from Seoul. It’s not much of a big city, nothing much to really see, mainly doing my rounds of visiting old friends. We stayed with our friend Ji-young, and on the night of our arrival, we had a huge free feast full of Kalbi, Korean BBQ, and Kim Chi and all the delicious spicy cuisine that comes with Korean food. Ji youngs mother owns a small BBQ restaurant, so hence why it was free all we can eat.

I’ll take a minute to talk about Korean food, the main rule is that red pretty much means it’s spicy. Kim Chi is a must have when going to Korea, for those who don’t know what Kim Chi is, it’s cabbage mixed with spices that is fermented for either a day, a week or even years.

l         Bolgogi is my favorite meal in Korea, its just beef with this beautifully tasting sweet sauce similar to Japanese teriyaki sauce.

l         Renmen is very very chewy buckwheat noodles that are served cold, maybe with ice on the side even.

Last Korean dish that I know the name of is Bibimbap, a very simple dish that has rice with veggies, a fried egg and the red spicy sauce. To eat this, you first mash the hell out of all the ingredients in the bowl until all of its covered with the red sauce, and then eat. The most cheapest and simple of all Korean meals I must say.
For the liquor, the national alcohol is So-ju, a certain type of rice wine. Now I don’t really enjoy rice wine, frankly I think it taste like shit. However So-ju is very easy to drink, pretty much like drinking water, not really strong hitting at all, goes really well down the throat.  
By the way, I did experience some weird food during my stay in Korea. I ate silkworm, and what’s the flavor like you may be asking, it taste like bugs! Like it was terrible, you look at it and that is the taste you get from it. I couldn’t believe people ate this, they sell them on the street vendors for Christ sakes! My Korean friend Lulu was eating then normal, she enjoys them actually occasionally saying ‘hmmm its delicious’. The texture was bugg-ish, it was lukewarm and just bad!
My next weird food was eating fish stomach, now as weird as that may sound, it wasn’t too bad of a deal, much better than the silkworms.

On my final full day in Korea, I spent the day with my Korea friends, Ji-young and Song-ei, to visit the magnificent Beopjusa temple. Beopjusa temple is about a 2hr bus ride from Daejeon city, and it holds the largest standing Buddha in all of East Asia. This is also the place where Bruce Lee’s unfinished movie ‘Game of Death’ was set in. The village of Beopjusa is a very small, quiet place filled with various temple and nature reserves. The people in the main part of town will flock out and try and lure you into their shops. In Beopjusa temple, besides the 33m bronze standing Buddha, the temple also holds a unique 5 storey pagoda and many halls that display statues of the Buddha and Buddhist art. After Beopjusa temple, we met with another Korean friend called Lulu, and enjoyed ourselves the Korean way, eating kim chi, stew pots and getting drunk of soju.

This, I must say, has to be one of the cheapest holidays I have ever been on! Korea is a very cheap place to visit, the average meal cost less than AU$7 and the people are friendly and nice. This was also the first time going to a country where I have no understanding in the national tongue. Each country I’ve visited I knew a decent portion of the language, however in Korea, very interesting to get by, especially when they say you look like a Korean native.

Well your eyes must be tired and aching after reading the crap I just wrote. When I’m in the zone of things, I just can’t stop, the words just flow. Anyways I’ll stop here and yeah, enjoy, take care and have a good one.

Brendan

Japan Diaries: Aso fire festival, Hanami and My 20th birthday

Hey everyone!

How are you all this time? Going well I hope. As for me, things are as usual great; however I just started classes again after a very long 3 month break. It kind of feels good to be back in classes again, gives me something to do other than just sit on my ass all day. The subjects I’m taking at school are the usual Japanese language classes, but I also took Chinese and Korean. Chinese class is weird because when the teacher talks in Chinese I understand what she’s saying, but when she starts explaining in Japanese, that’s when my head gets weird. Koreans pretty cool, for my introduction lesson we just said hello in Korean 8 times and that was it.

Yesterday we had the welcome party for the new exchange students, huge turnout of Japanese students. Most of the exchange students prepared some food for everyone; I made chocolate fondue, such an easy recipe! I think I got my head around this cooking thing.

Firstly I will talk about a festival that actually happened a while ago called the ‘Aso Fire festival’. Now Aso is a country town up north from Kumamoto, about a 2hr train trip from our local station. The fire festival is like a 2 week celebration for the farmers, in which like the name suggest, they literally just light huge fires. The origins for the Aso fire festival started off with farmers burning their crops to make the soil richer, and over time, they turned the annual fire lighting into an actual festival. The main attraction for the Aso fire festival is when they light the Chinese character for ‘fire’ (火) on a side of a mountain. When one hears of a fire festival, you have to think about the dangers that go with it. It was actually chaotic to set up because a fire ended up getting out of control and burned some areas in Aso. During the day that I went, there was a nice festival atmosphere with food and drink stands and also a nice firework display. Food was awesome, nice yakitori (chicken skewers), okonomiyaki (Japanese styled crepe), yakisoba (fried noodles) and also a surprising lamb giro. The Aso fire festival happen around late February, and even though it was awesome with a mountainside having the character for fire being lit up, we only had 30 mins to stay there because it took us 2 hrs to get there, and then another 30mins to get to the actual festival spot. But all in all, great experience.

Next thing I want to talk about is Hanami (flower watching). Now Hanami is a very fun Japanese thing to do when you’re in Japan for the spring time. During spring, all flowers blossom of course, but Japan’s most beautiful and national flower, the sakura (cherry blossom) comes into effect and when they bloom, they are so beautiful. The whole nation goes crazy about the sakuras blossoming, I mean in the news, they reported where the first site of sakuras had blossomed, and had daily updates about all the great sites where sakuras blossomed. Now the reason why the Japanese goes crazy about Sakura is perhaps how the flower itself reminds us all about life. These flowers only blossom for about a week at their full development stage, but for that whole week, they blossom beautifully with a nice mixture of pink and white. So with this very short lifespan, the flower reminds us all that we too are only here on this planet for a very short amount of time, so we should always try and live our lives to our fullest. That is where the essence and beauty of life can be seen.

During Hanami, the Japanese would just go out to parks and enjoy the beautiful sakura flowers with a nice picnic. In Japan, because there are no non-alcohol zones, a picnic would pretty much involve a good drink as well as some bento boxes and snacks. For my first ever Hanami adventure, we all went to Kumamoto castle where the sakura trees surround the entire castle walls. A very nice time indeed, nothing better than just hanging out with your friends, under some pretty flowers in a park. My next Hanami party was just near the dorms at a small park. It’s always enchanting when you see the peddles of the sakura falling from the trees and being carried gently around by a fresh breeze. I will always treasure that sort of vivid memory deeply inside of me.

The final thing that I wanted to talk about is my birthday party. Now that was a very fun night indeed. After having a very grueling three classes in a row, I looked forward to being free, however that did come so quickly as I had to work that night. My part time job is technically teaching primary school kids English. I say ‘technically’ because it honestly does not feel like a job at all, I mean I am getting paid to speak English and just play around with them while reading awesome stories like Curious George and Babar to them. Anyways, after that fun one hour of work, it was time to enjoy a real good time. For my birthday, which is 12^th of April for those playing at home, I decided I wanted to try something that I have never tried before. Hence I came up with the idea that we should celebrate German style. In Kumamoto, there are surprisingly various kinds of cuisine around, so when I heard about a German restaurant I just felt intrigued. Now what is German food you may ask, it pretty much is what they stereotype, sausages and sauerkraut I never realized how great sauerkraut is, man that stuff is amazing. The sausages were pretty average, but the thing about this German restaurant is the beer! Since it was a special day in my life, (I mean I turned 20 years old, I am officially no longer a teenager, if the life expectancy is 80 years, I have lived 1/4 of my life already), I had the house special, the litre mug of beer. That was so cool to drink, I mean this was massive; the stuff you see in Oktoberfest was what I was drinking! A great beer that I recommend you all to try is a German beer called ‘Eva’, very nice strong tasting beer that has 12% of alcohol in it. A very funny thing about this restaurant is that in their world beer section, they have the national beer of all the countries in the world and for Australia, guess what they had, no not Fosters but good old VB as a proud representative for Australian beer. Anyways fun night with a great food and drinks, and a nice mix of different nations coming together.

Well I think that’s about enough from me now, I have classes tomorrow and I am writing this in the middle of the night. By the way, thanks for the emails from all the people who replied last time and thanks for the birthday emails. Last time I said I was planning to go to Korea, well that’s still happening, just reserved the tickets, got myself an awesome package deal on this one. But I guess that will have to wait for a next time.

Take care and have a good one,

Brendan

Japan Diaries: Beppu

Hello everyone,

How is everyone going? All well and alive I hope. It’s been a while since my last email, apologies to that one, been a bit busy doing…well mainly nothing really. It really has been a long holiday for me, and unfortunately my money has been a bit low and tight. You see I plan to go to Korea during Japan’s longest holiday break, Golden Week. I’m excited about Korea, there is absolutely nothing I know about Korea, haven’t read up on anything about it or where’s any hot spots and all, just going with only instinct this time hahaha. Recently new exchange students have just entered the dorms. Last semester was the final semester for the exchange students from Asia, so now we have new Korean, Chinese and Vietnam. But now, there are more students from America, England and even from Australia. With 30 people, this semester has the most exchange students living in the dorms that Kumamoto Gakuen University has ever had.

In my last email, I talked about how I was going to travel to Beppu, the hot spring haven. Well that was about last month I should say and for those four days in Beppu, I was so relaxed. My Japanese friend, Tomoki, and I went took a 3 hour train ride from Suizenji station (the nearest station near my place) to Beppu station and once we arrived, I met with Tomoki’s family. A very Japanese family if you ask me, father is a engineer and mother is a typical housewife, who by the way makes excellent home cooked meals. The main dish from Beppu is tori-ten, tempura chicken, my god that was awesome! Now Tomoki’s family lives in an apartment complex near the station, with their own hot spring on the ground floor! It was very very handy having their own free hot spring in their apartment building because it was night and we just arrived at beppu, so what else can we do but enjoy a nice relaxing bath to recharge our batteries for the next day.

On the first full day in Beppu, we visited the Jigoku, Japanese for Hell. The Hells are a collection of eight hot springs that have their own unique features. Five of these hells are close by and easy to get to, whereas the last two are a 2km walk away from the rest.

The eight hells and their features are explain in the following

Umi Jigoku- This has a very pale blue looking hot spring, where you can eat hot spring boiled eggs

Oniishibouzu Jigoku- has a bubbly grey colour to its feature

Yama jigoku- has steam that rises from the cliffs

Kamado Jigoku- has a strange looking demon looking over the hot spring that somehow naturally changes colour

Oniyama Jigoku- not really a hot spring but just a place where they have a crocodile zoo, not much of a feature

Shiraike Jigoku- has a interesting clear white colour to its hot spring

Chinoike Jigoku- chinoike literally means blood pond, so the colour for this one is a blood red colour

Tatsumaki jigoku- has a hole that spirts out steaming hot spring water every 20 mins or so.

They were mildly interesting however great picture taking opportunities. One of my favourite museums or sites that were in Beppu was, the sex museum. That’s right; beppu has an interesting museum that showcases a variety of karma sutra moves, ancient Japanese porn and some modern porn to go with it. Also they have life sized figures of animal’s sexual organs and snow white getting it on with her seven dwarfs. Very very funny museum! Anyways after visiting the hells and the sex museum, Tomoki and I decided to go and try out the local hot springs, first was Takegawa Onsen, which is a very simple and very hot bath house that was built during the late 1800’s. Most of the onsens in Beppu are very cheap; Takegawa Onsen was only $1 to get in. This Onsen was bloody hot though, I mean I couldn’t last more that 5 mins, had to go in then get out and repeat this until I complete gave up.

The Next day was started with a trip to the tsunaburo, the sand baths. Now this is a pretty simple, you’re only wearing a yukata (tradional Japanese sleepware), you lie down and an old Japanese lady just shoves sand onto your body until all the body except for the head is complete covered with sand. This sand has lots of minerals that are healthy for the skin, and is unbearably hot. Though it was relaxing laying down with a small umbrella to block out the sun and a view of the ocean, the sand was freaking hot. Sweat just poured down my forehead and I couldn’t last more than 15-20 mins. A great relaxing experience, I recommend anyone to give it a try. After the sand bath, we headed towards the monkey park where there are five hundred monkeys living on this mountain just outside of Beppu city. Very cute monkeys indeed, I managed to take the best picture I have ever taken in my life. After the monkey park, we just strolled around the city of Beppu until we called a night.

The next day was the final day of our stay in Beppu, we started with going to a mud bath at Onsen Hoyoland. This bath house has everything, traditional onsen baths, a mud bath, outside baths to enjoy the scenery of the nature, and sauna that used the natural hot spring water. The mud bath was very interesting, apparently this mud is good for your skin, something like the mud they use for beauty facials, but I felt like the guy in predator when he realizes that the predator can’t see him when his covered in mud. Hahaha. After my final visit to an onsen, it was time to call it quits and head back home to Kumamoto. It was an awesome experience, living with my friend’s family and enjoying the relaxations of a good hot spring. Well hopefully this email for you isn’t too bad, anyways as always tell us how you going and till next time I guess.

Take care,

Brendan

Japan dairies: Reigando and Hiroshima

Hey how is everyone going? Has everyone already started uni already? I know some people have started earlier for some reason. Don’t worry about it, holidays are over, but doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of fun eh? By the way, this may be a long email, so yeah drab a coffee or something.

Anyway, as for me, since I’m on holidays I’ve had some days where it was just packed filled with adventure, and I actually mean it. Two weeks ago, my friends and I rode our bikes from our dorms to a place called Reigando, or better known as Musashi’s cave. For those who don’t know who Musashi is, he is a very great samurai, ever since his first fight at the age of 13, I think, he has never lost a sword battle until his death. Musashi is also the man responsible for creating the two sword fighting style and also the writer of ‘The book of five rings’. It was at this cave, that Musashi wrote this great piece of literature that involved ingenious theories on military warfare, one of his sayings was the famous ‘know your friends well and know your enemies even better’. The bike ride to Reigando was very very tiring. It took half an hour to ride to the bottom of the mountain, in which we had to go over it, and a grueling 2 and a half hour ride up the mountain. I realized how the riders of the tour de France feel when going up the French Alps!  The most rewarding part of the ride though, was of course the ride down. We all realized how long the mountain road was since it took about 20mins just to ride down to the bottom. On the way down, I witness a beautiful scenery of Kumamoto city, while trying to keep my eye on the road.

In my last email, I may have talked about how I planned to go to Hiroshima, the city which the first atomic bomb was dropped. Well I just recently came back from my trip from Hiroshima just on Sunday night actually. The Hiroshima that was once buried in a devastating destruction, is now a bustling major city that has moved on from its past. I only sent 3 days in the city, but I did eat a lot of the special cuisine that Hiroshima is famous for. Hiroshima is famous for it’s seafood, especially oysters and eel, and it’s version of Okonomiyaki, the Japanese version of a pizza or a crepe. The common okonomiyaki throughout Japan is just batter mixed with lettuce and other veggies and cooked on a hot plate, however in Hiroshima styled Okonomiyaki, the veggies are sandwiched between two crepes, and man was it good!.

The most famous sight in Hiroshima is of course the iconic Atomic bomb dome. When the bomb was dropped at exactly 8:15 on August 6^th, the building was situated slightly below the blast, so the dome of the building still stood. As you look at this building, you can see the effects and the power of such a disaster. One of the pillars that held the building is now twisted and bent due to the blast.

Next was a stroll in the peace park where I visited the statue of Sadako. The story of Sadako is a sad story which shows the effects of the blast and also the innocence of children. Sadako was still in her mothers womb at the time of the blast, but escaped with no harm. However at the age of ten, she developed leukemia and was sent to hospital for the remaining time of her life. During her stay at the hospital, she heard an old story in which if you make 1000 paper cranes, then your wish would be granted. Hearing this, Sadako began making these paper cranes in all different sizes and actually made more than 1000. However her wish was unfortunately not granted, and she sadly passed away. Her classmates finished the unfinished paper cranes for her and urge the city to remember not only her but also the children that died as a result of the blast. So a children peace statue was built in Sadako’s honor. You can see origami paper cranes donated by people displayed around the statue. I was read this story when I was in grade 4 by my teacher. The strangest thing about this though is that of all the stories and books the teacher read to us, it was this one that I remember the most.

After visiting the statue, I went to the peace museum, which likes the Nagasaki peace museum, made me again angry at how we can let ourselves do this. Outside the museum stood the cenotaph, which holds the names of the victims and also the flame of peace. This flame is lit throughout day and night, and will only be extinguished once the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. As I stood in front of this flame, I couldn’t help but think, wouldn’t it be a great day to see this flame be extinguished.

The next day I went to a nearby island called Miyajima. In this island holds the floating tori gate that is the entrance to Itsukushima shrine. The picturesque view of the gate surrounded by water only happens when there is a high tide. When I went, it was during a low tide, so I wasn’t able to get that great picture, however I was able to walk out onto the muddy beach and touch the gate. Itsukushima shrine is an impressive place that dates back to 600 hundred years. I was lucky enough to even witness a traditional Japanese wedding at this shrine. My friend that I was staying with during my stay said that a traditional Japanese wedding is booked one year in advanced and cost about $10,000, and that’s just to hold the wedding. For a traditional wedding, so many other factors are involved, such as buying presents for the in-laws and also dowries.

Wow this is a very long email. I’m not going to apology for the length hahaha, if you don’t want to read it, then bugger off, hahaha. I reckon that staying in Hiroshima for 3 days was just right. Other than the peace park/museum and Miyajima, there wasn’t much else. It was enjoyable, oh and also this was my first trip going by a bullet train. From fukuoka to Kumamoto, it only took 1 hour! That is bloody fast, considering it took me 8 hours travelling by normal trains. Anyways I better let finish up here, as always tell me what’s been happening in your end of the world. Well take care and have a good one. Next week I will be going to Beppu, the hot spring capital of Japan. I’m looking forward to that one. Bye

Brendan

Japan Diaries- Nagasaki

Hey all!

Happy Chinese New year to those playing at home. How has everyone been? Holidays been treating you good? I am finally on holidays myself actually, finished the last classes of school 2 weeks ago, and now i have 2 months off, where hoepfully i can do some travel, if my wallet permits me to. I think my last email was pretty long eh? sorry about that one, im pretty sure this will be shorter. Now what did i do this time, last week I went to Nagasaki, the city of the second atomic bomb blast. I went with my two American friends and we just only had a 4 day trip there, more than enough time if you ask me.

Nagasaki is a nice small city, its actually smaller than kumamoto. During the day, its quite interesting but once it hits 6pm, the city literally becomes dead. Many shops and restaraunts are closed, and bars and what not are pretty scarce. The speciallity for food in Nagasaki, is Champon (Chinese influenced noodles with veggies, seafood and chicken in a pork brooth soup) and Castella cake (a kind of Dutch sponge cake). Both were great to eat and reasonably priced as well.

Nagasaki has a history of being the only point of communicatin with the western world after closing its doors during the 1600’s to the late 1800’s. The only countries that japan had any contact with was the Dutch and the Chinese. Hence why the influence of Champon and Castella cake. In fact, the japanese were serious about keeping foreigners out of japan, that a man made island was built outside the port of Nagasaki, this island is called Dejima. The island still exist to this day but no longer an island to keep out the foreigners, but instead a museum that is surrounded by modern buildings.

While staying in Nagasaki, you can’t help but notice the tragedy that Nagasaki went through during the war. The Nagasaki Peace Park is just one of those places that reminds you the dark side of humanity. In this park, stand this renaissance like statue that holds his right arm to the sky, to point out the atomic bomb, and the left arm held flat out symbolising peace. Around this park, there were many statues that were given by other countries to the city in the purpose of a better world. As i looked at each statue and read its meanings, I couldnt help but figure out why we all don’t learn from our past to create a better world. Is it really that hard if we try? With the Iraq war, terrorism, suicide bombings and religious jihads, this world we live in looks fucked up, but who said it was too late to try and make this a better place. A visit to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb museum surely does wake you up and realise how much we all have to try and work for that better tommorow. ’The idea of  ‘world peace’ is something that every one of us should try and strive for…’, these were the words that woke me up.

After the Atomic Bomb musuems and the Peace parks, Nagasaki has many Christian cathederals to visit and small hidden Shinto and Buddhist temples to wonder about. SOme of these old temples can date back to 1600’s and were damm lucky not to be destroyed by the atomic blast. 

As I said earlier, Nagasaki is a small city which can be fully visited in 4 days. It’s always interesting to see what you can learn from travel. Doesn’t mean i’m going to become some great influencial peace leader, but I will take more notice in these things from now. So enough about me, let me hear from you guys? I actually haven’t heard much from any of you all lately, must be having a great time eh? Well till my next email, have fun and take care everyone.

Brendan

Japan diaries: Happy New year, Tokyo and Kyoto

Happy New Year Everyone!

How is everyone? how did you all spend your new years? tell me everything about it. I have been great, just got back from a backpacking trip and my body is now aching like hell. There’s lots to tell so this will end up being an extremely long email, might want to get yourself a coffee or something for this hehehe.

Okay firstly a little back story on how i went there. As you all may know i went from kumamoto to tokyo via kyoto by normal trains, no bullet train involved, just normal suburban trains. It took 15hours from kumamoto to kyoto, the longest train ride i had to ever rode. It was a great experience though, i got to see many of the country side that is japan, went through man made tunnels that cut through mountains and saw the ocean view from my window. we left kumamoto at 6pm in mourning and arrived in kyoto at about 10:30ish at night. We arrived on Kyoto with our minds drained from a 15 hour train ride, all we wanted to do was explore the city, but we decided to rest our bodies for the next day as we only had one full day in kyoto. Kyoto is a major city in japan that holds 2000 temples that can be dated far back, we only had one day so we decided to visit the major ones, which is also a fair feat.

The first day of our travels we headed to Kiyomizu temple, a temple that i have previously went to when i last came here. This temple is one of my favorite temple because of it’s natural surroundings and it’s great view of kyoto city. It was a bad day in terms of weather, patches of rain and cloudy skies is what we could only see during the day. After Kiyomizu Temple, we made our way to Heian Shrine, one of the biggest Shinto temples in kyoto. This temple is very chinese inspired with its architectural and interior design. A huge gate leads to this temple that reminds you are visiting such a grand shrine. As we finished looking around with Heian Shrine, we rushed quickly to Sanjusangendo temple. This place is absolutely amazing, it holds 1001 statues of Buddha in the great hall, once you look at this works of art, you can hear the echoes of the past. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures inside the place, so all i have to remember it is with my memory. Next was Kinkakuji, the temple that some you have seen in photos, a temple which is covered with golden leafs. By this time of the day, we were absolutely dead but we had to carry on. So much more to see, our hostel was in Gion, a red light distinct in it’s hey day where many geisha would walk about and a place where one can see Kabuki theatre. In fact, come to think of it, we did see one Geisha, in this age it’s kind of a rarity since it’s sadly becoming a dying practice. Just to remind you people, Geisha are NOT prostitutes, they are entertainers in the art of conversation, music and dance. As the clocked reached 12, we decided to go back to our hostels and get ourselves prepared for our next train ride to tokyo, this time a nine hour train ride.

As we rode the train to tokyo, we saw the great sight of Mt fuji, Japans tallest mountain which is still an active volcano. Such an amazing sight, the Japanese landscape is so different to that of Australia. Australia can be seen as a harsh landscape with the bush and the dryness of the air, however i find that the japanese landscape has more of a peaceful and gentler surroundings. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but it’s always interesting to make these comparisons.

Tokyo is a crazy city! When i first arrived at Tokyo station, all i saw was just neon lite lights that shined so bright you would’ve thought it was day. The city never sleeps, there is always a crowd of people walking about. The first full day that i spent in tokyo was on new years eve. First we went to Asakusa temple, a temple that has a crowded market in front and at the entrance there’s a huge lantern to greet you. Next, we went to Ginza, the rich district of Tokyo. Here in this place we took a visit to the Sony Building, a place where one can indulge in the state of the art electronic gizmos, and electronics that haven’t even been on the market! After the excitement of the Sony building, we went straight into what can be called ‘true tokyo’, Shibuya. This is like the city central of Tokyo, one of my favorite places of my holiday. There’s an intersection you see called ‘shibuya centre’, in this intersection, 1000 people cross this intersection at each light of every day. On the side of this intersection I went to Starbucks and grabbed myself a nice Mocha and looked out onto this great view of the intersection. A Thousand people crossing this road, each having a place they have to be, that was the kind of thoughts i was having when i looking from the starbucks. If any of you get a chance to go to Tokyo, i suggest you try doing this, something you wouldn’t hear from travel programs of books.

Next was Yokohama, an harbor city an hour away from tokyo and is the second largest city in japan. It was here were one can find authentic chinese food, something i have been craving for a very long time. It was bloody expensive though, $20 for just a set meal, but since it was New years eve, i thought i might as well treat myself. After an expensive dinner, we made our way to meiji-jingu shrine to celebrate the countdown. In this shrine alone, there is 2 million people celebrating the new year, wanting to wash away their previous sins by ringing the huge bell 108 times. It was bloody packed! I still can’t believe that i was one of the 2 million people that was in the temple on that exact time. After celebrating the new year japanese style, we headed off to the hostel and slept for the next day. Told you it was going to be a long email hehe, shall I continue? Why not…

Our first mourning of the new year was extremely hard for my body. I had to drag myself around Tokyo since my body was still recovering from all the walking and exploring. Our first destination was Akihabara, a place where cheap electronics are sold and otakus (The japanese word for geeks) gather. This is the place where you will find the bizarre japan, maid cafes in which have waitress dressed in European maid uniforms, shops selling anime, anime figures, illegal dvds, games etc. After dragging myself around Akihabara, we went to Harajuku, the fashion district for the young. this is the place where you can see the dragon ball Z hair styles, crazy gothic/Lolita clothing. Next was Shinjuku, the best place for Japanese nightlife. This is the place where neon light rule and tall skyscraper stand. We walked around the place for a few hours and made our way to the Park Hyatt, one of the most luxuries and expensive hotels you can have in Tokyo, or in the world perhaps. For those who have seen ‘Lost in Translation’ this is where they filmed the hotel scenes. We went to the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt and went to the New York Bar. I heard that from this bar you can see all of Tokyo, and that was what i exactly saw, spots of light that stretch to the far ends of the horizon. This was the most classiest place i have ever been in my life, the way the waiters talked and treated us was, to be honest, strange. This is a place where i definitely felt i did not belong here, I ordered myself a drink, a Monte Carlo, which cost $20 for a slim glass. Most expensive drink i have bought in my life! The view from the Park Hyatt was amazing, as i said just million spots of lights that stretch to the ends of the earth. Another memorable experience which you all need to try.

The Next day was an early day to begin with. Woke up very early at about 6am, to witness the fish market of tsukiji. This is the place where people bargain their way for the fresh fish, a great place for freshly made sushi. However, once we arrived at the market it seemed to have been closed, the reason behind this is because it’s a Wednesday, the most quiet day for the week. Such a disappointment since we woke up early, but we did get to do something else that not even many Japanese people get to do once in their life. We arrived at the Imperial Palace that houses the Royal family of Japan. Now the Imperial Palace is not open for the public, all but for only 2 days of the year, 28th of Dec (the Emperors birthday) and the 2nd of Jan. We just happened to be in Tokyo at the right time eh? It is on this day, not only did we get to walk inside the walls of the Imperial palace, but also we got to see the Royal Family and the Emperor of Japan himself! Thousands of people gathered outside the balcony in which he made his speech of peace and a prosperous future.　After having such an honorable experience, we headed to Yasukuni Shrine, the shrine that has been the controveｒsay surrounding Japans war time crime acts, then Tokyo’s museum of historical art at Ueno, then finally the recently built Ronppongi hills, a massive shopping complex where i drank my first Guinness beer in Japan.

Okay, we nearly finished with this email, almost there. On our final full day in Tokyo we headed out to the country side of Kamakura, the city that’s main attraction is the biggest bronze made Buddha statue. In kamakura, there are many temples and shrine since it was the old capital city of Japan. We visited two of the five major temples in Kamakura, Engaku-ji and Kencho-ji. Both are temples of Zen Buddhism, and both were built during the 11th century. These Zen Buddhist temples are very peaceful and calming. The main attraction of the Daibutsu was incredible, there is was a huge bronze figure sitting calmly and looking down on you. After a successful trip to Kamakura it was time to head back to the hostel, and prepared ourselves for the train ride home.

Yeah this is a long email isn’t it? The reason why i worte such a long one this time was that i wanted to share how much i experienced in such a very short amount of time. Everyone can say i went to tokyo from here by plane or by the bullet train, but its so different to hear that one has travelled half way across japan by normal suburban trains. During this trip i was very very luck to see things that not even natives can get to do. All in all it was a great trip, something that I badly needed after a very stressful last week of school. Oh by the way, La trobe has accepted my extension, I am officially staying for a year. Well I know you all must be tired of my writing so i will stop and leave you be. Again, keep me updated on what’s been happening with your lives and yeah, hope to hear from you all soon.

Brendan

Japan Diaries: Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

How are we all this month? i heard it’s getting really hot these days back home. Damm you guys, right now in Kumamoto it’s getting cold, cold as in below 10 degrees. Although it’s technically still autumn here, i don’t think i’ll be celebrating a white christmas this year. A bit too warm for snow.
So what is everyone’s plans for christmas and the new year period? Any travelling adventures or holidays?
As for me, during christmas i plan to have a weekend party with my japanese friends at a place 2 hours away, not exactly sure where though. However for New years i’ll be celebrating it up at Tokyo city! I’ll be going with my two american housemates and since we’re poor university students, we’re going from kumamoto to tokyo entirely by public trains! You see there’s this pass called the ‘Seishun 18 ticket’ that students can buy for only $100 or so and one ticket is valid for five (not necessarily continuous) days (midnight to midnight). It can also be used by several people simultaneously; for example, five passengers can use one ticket for their one-day trip as a group instead of one passenger traveling individually for five days. The only problem is that we can’t use the ticket for the bullet train or any other express train. So it’s like going to sydney or somewhere by connex trains and not by V-line. We calculated the time it will take us to get to tokyo and it’s about 25 hours, so i’m planning on what the hell do i do for those 25 hours.
As for school, next week will be my last week for the year, yay! However during mid january i have to come back for only a week and a half, then i’ve got pretty much 4 months of doing nothing. By the way, i’m not sure if you all know this, but I’ve decided to stay in japan longer than i plan. Orginally it was mean’t to be one semester stay, but i had a think about it and said to myself ‘one semster is really short’ so i’ve decided to stay here for the full year. Kumamoto Gakuen University has already accepted me to stay longer, it’s just now up to la Trobe to hurry the bloody paper work. So there you go, brendan Wan is staying longer in Japan, so that means more crappy Japan Diaries to read, haha.
Oh what i will be writing next may disgust people and may change your opinons of me as a human. Recently one of my friends returned to her hometown of Yamaga. She brought back two of the towns culinary delights. These two were, fugu (the Japanese posionese blow fish that needs to be carefully cut or else one will die) and whale meat. Look once again i apologise to all whale lovers, vegitarians, RSCPA and the UN and many other people. I won’t talk bout the taste of these two foods unless you really want to know, but one thing i will say is that with the fugu, one of the scariest 24 hours of my life. I actually got a video of me eating it, very sacry.
Well I think i should finish up here, any questions regarding weird foods or whatever, just give us an email. I hope you guys are taking it well take there, how you all dealing with drought and the hot whether? Anyways have fun, take care and till next time.

Brendan