Tokyo - Goodbye for Now

I'm Gonna Miss You

Tokyo - Yanaka Neighborhood

Going Back in Time
Yanaka is the only neighborhood to survive the WWII firebombings and as such, it looks like no other area in Tokyo.  This is the first time either of us had visited.  Unlike the rest of Tokyo, there are few high rise buildings.  There are a lot of weathered wooden single family homes, many covered in vines and flowers.  No one house looked like another, as if each had been built by hand by the great great grandparents of the current tenants.

Tokyo - the Signs

Open for Interpretation
Like any large city, Tokyo comes with instructions.  There are signs telling you what to do and how to do it.  However, since I don't know Japanese I often applied my own spin.  Are you only required to stop when a serious man in a hat is crossing?

Tokyo - Sumo

Fall Tournament Live
The fall tournament was showing live on television.  Every day, no matter what we were up to, I would harass Dodo to go back to the hotel from 4pm to 6pm to watch.  At first she did so just to keep me happy but after a few days she got caught up in the drama.

Tokyo - Neon

Shooting in Shibuya

Only Ginza has more neon than Shibuya.  At night, you feel like you're walking inside a giant light bulb.

 

Tokyo - Back to the Maze

Sayonara Sapporo
On this visit we stayed near Shiba Park, home of the Tokyo Tower.  Neither could be seen from our hotel window.

Sapporo - Wandering

Without Tour Guides

After eight glorious hours we popped out of bed and hit the streets, just the two of us. Like Toronto, Minneapolis and many other winter cities, Sapporo can be criss-crossed on foot underground.  Our hotel was linked to the underground by a small staircase in the lobby.  We joined the throng, who were walking, shopping and pondering the many small art exhibits.  These strange dolls peered up at the ceiling as if expecting the arrival of a spaceship.  

 

Hokkaido - Sapporo

Greysville
I'd only known the word Sapporo from their famous beer.  It was nice to put a face to the name.  It was cold when we arrived, near the freezing mark.  Perhaps that colored my perception.  The buildings were hunkered down together, trying to find warmth in numbers.  What little light there was struggled through the clouds to get there. 

Hokkaido - Soba Master

It Ain't As Easy as it Looks
After our Otaru afternoon we headed to the outskirts of Sapporo for a soba making class.  If you're not familiar with soba noodles, they're made from buckwheat and are often eaten cold with a dipping sauce.  The word "soba" means buckwheat in Japanese.  I was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint.  This is the finished product that Dodo, David (a colleague of Dodo's) and I made.  Looks good, right?  The small round container holds the dipping sauce.

Hokkaido - Being a Tourguide

Comic Timing Helps
As I explained earlier, our tour guides were from Hong Kong.  One, shown below, is married to a Japanese lady and lives in the outskirts of Tokyo.  He had some interesting insights into Japanese culture and he delivered them with great comic timing.  I knew this only because after listening to him speak in Cantonese for five or ten minutes the entire bus would erupt in laughter.  I asked for a translation of a few of his stories.  Here they are....

Hokkaido - Otaru

Cheesecake City!
Otaru is a small port town of 130,000 people on the Sea of Japan.  It's a thirty minute drive north of Sapporo and is famed for sushi, glass works, ice cream and cheesecake.  We took our bus from Noboribetsu, past Sapporo to Otaru for lunch and an afternoon stroll.  Dodo and I stormed right past the glass works and everything else on our way to a lunch warm-up of cheesecake and coffee.

Hokkaido - Goodbye Hotsprings!

Thanks for Nothing, Yukijin
Our two days of hot springs in Noboribetsu were up, we were heading north to Sapporo.  On the way out I took a shot of Yukijin, the demon whose job it is to guard over the hot springs.  Looks like he was undergoing a distracting touch up.  In my two days I'd spent a grand total of 2 minutes soaking in our hot springs tub - it was just way too hot for me.  I think the thermometer was broken and now I know why.

Hokkaido - Driving to the Rim

Man = Insect
On a late evening drive home we stopped at a scenic lake for phototaking just as the sun was setting.  Light flurries were being whipped about by a slicing wind.  I was so cold that I had a hard time focusing the lens.  It was a very large, round lake with a mountain range poking out of its depths.  I suspected we were standing on top of a volcano, at the rim of an old caldera that had filled with water over the millenia.  I shrugged off the thought, it was simply too big.

Hokkaido - Long Live the King

King Crab and Co.
When you can't read Japanese, you rely on context.  Clearly we were in store for a crab and seafood lunch.  Not just an ordinary one, our tour guide promised, but a superior one. He'd made an earlier observation in his tour-guide-slash-stand-up act: "What's the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese?  Simple, in China everything good is exported but the Japanese keep the best things to themselves."  Part of this theory was about to be put to the test.

 

Hokkaido - Edo Wonderland

Historical Theme Park?
I didn't know what to make of this place, a re-creation of an Edo village. If nothing else, it was photogenic.  I would've liked to learn more Edo period history but that wasn't to be.  I settled for photo taking and cheesy samurai reenactments.

Hokkaido - Setting the Scene

Let Me Help You With the Big Picture
In Asia many companies have an annual trip to reward employees for their hard work.  Not all of these trips are created equal, this one being grander than most due to the Boss, a hard drinking bon vivant originally from China, now transplanted in Australia.  This is the same Boss whose bus of a Mercedes I tool around Singapore in. The Boss, seated on the front left of this photo, does everything in a big way.  His aim, from what I can tell, was two-fold: for us to enjoy as much expensive food and pricey sake as possible while draining from the Frenchies a maximum of Euros.  You see, this was an all expenses paid trip a la my former French company.  Every bite and sip tasted the better for it.  All I packed were my fancy Paris sweaters and an appetite.

Hokkaido - First Imressions

Natural Beauty
After a one and a half hour flight from Tokyo we landed in another world.  The Russian on the airport signs stopped me dead in my tracks.  I later checked the map and noted that Sapporo is closer to Vladivostok than it is to Tokyo.  In addition to Japanese and Russian, the signs were in Chinese and Korean, all close neighbors

Sapporo - Coming Up Next

Another Dodo Company Trip
I missed Dodo's company trip last year due to my Paris work schedule.  Luckily I'll make this one.  We're headed to Hokkaido, Japan's northern most island.  It's home to Sapporo beer and a famous ramen loaded with seafood.  Included in our itinerary is a visit to a volcano, walks along a downtown canal and soba noodle making.  We leave on Monday night, spend a day in Tokyo, then fly to Sapporo for a five day stay, then another three days in Tokyo.  Sapporo shares a latitude and weather pattern with Syracuse, so I'll be packing my sweaters and leather coat.  After this trip, I'll have experienced this wacky, interesting country from top to bottom.

Singapore - Babbling in Chinese

At Least I Passed...
I was nervous throughout, you can hear it in my voice.  I said "ummm" a thousand times, so embarrasing.  Enjoy.  Click on this LINK to watch the video.