It was October, 2005. I was in Hiroshima, in the restaurant on the top floor of a highrise hotel, having dinner. They sat me at a corner table, with a corner window that faced the night-lit city. Being that the hotel is on the water, the road stretched out, away from the hotel – I could see for miles.
My dinner companions, as they had been throughout my trip, were my pad and pen. I no longer have the pad, but I remember writing how I felt – the awe-inspiring enormity of being completely alone, thousands of miles away from everyone and everything I knew. Not a soul in the world who could recognize me and know my name knew where I was at that moment. When the waitress approached my table she bowed, placed a cushion on the floor and knelt to take my order. It was the same when she brought the food and cleared the table – bowing deeply before she knelt and when she stood. So so foreign.
Being completely alone, I discovered, is a surreal experience. With no responsibility to anyone but myself and the world – what felt like the entire world – stretched out before me, I was simultaneously a speck on the face of the earth and an entire universe in and of myself. I don’t remember if the fact that I looked out over a city that was once wiped out, turned to rubble, its innocent population murdered in a single explosion of proportions larger than any of us alive can imagine had anything to do with my perception of surreality that night, but I suspect it did.
But I was there. The place I’ve read of in the history books. Hiroshima, Japan. Anything could have happened there.
Anything.
From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima
From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima
Remember waaay back in December when I went to Japan? Yeah, I’m finally almost finished writing about it and sharing my pictures. Queen of Procrastination… it’s me.
On my last full day in Tokyo I had plans to meet a friend for dinner. They’d been forecasting rain–100-120mm of it–and that scared me a little. That’s more than we get in an average month here in Ontario. In fact if they forecast more than 30mm in a day we start filling up sand bags and check our canoes for leaks. So it was, on the 16th of December, that I headed out with my umbrella, silently bemoaning the fact that I hadn’t brought water wings or a pool noodle to Japan with me.
I stopped first at a Doutor coffee shop in my local train station for some breakfast. Here’s what I wrote in my notebook:
Kokusaitenjijo Station, ODaiba
Tuna sandwich for breakfast… but the coffee’s good! Actually, so’s the sandwich.
I went everywhere yesterday. First to Shibuya, then Akihabara, then to Shinjuku to meet Kellie. Today I’ve decided to go to Asakusa. It’s raining a little – more to come. I hope, regardless, to go shopping a bit more.
Noted: the trains don’t have whistles. Everyone just obeys the signs.
And.. I’m listening to the theme from Sesame Street on the overhead radio. No shit. It’s hard not to laugh out loud.
Oh thank God that’s over.
“We’ve Only Just Begun…” not the Carpenters.
At least it’s not Earth Wind and Fire belting out Christmas carols.
Coffee’s finished. Time to go.
So with that I boarded a train and went back to Shibuya to meet with Susie, who I missed, then on to Asakusa.
It’s a quaint little district of Tokyo most famous for its Sensou-ji Temple. I walked around for a while in the pouring rain and took some pictures.
From there I went shopping. In Asakusa there are narrow streets, some covered, some not, with vendors down both sides. I wish I’d taken pictures. I managed to finish my Christmas shopping there but I still had some time left before I had to meet my friend, so I went into a Starbucks for a coffee and a drip-dry.
4:50pm – finally made it to Starbucks – looking out the window at the rain coming down. It’s very close to freezing out there – probably about 4 or 5 degrees. I’m in Asakusa waiting to go to Ueno Station to meet Shigeyoshi at 6. I can’t believe this is my last evening here. Did I get what I came for? The 5:36 certainly. The experience – the knowledge that I can still travel alone and be happy and content to do so is invaluable.
Do I want to come back? Definitely. This is such a fascinating country. Yes. But next time I’ll be more prepared. I’ll come back with a plan when I’m rich from the sale of my novel…
Off to meet Shigeyoshi.
…with whom I had a wonderful dinner. We ate in a Japanese restaurant right in the Station and he was kind enough to be patient with me as he watched me struggle with my chopsticks. I ordered a plate with shrimp and something else… when I asked him what the something else was he looked up the translation on his phone – which meant nothing to me. So he went looking for a picture – and showed me one of a sea urchin. I must say it was delicious!
I regret not taking any pictures at our dinner, but you can get to know him yourself by visiting his blog here: https://sotacf.wordpress.com/ which is where I first got to know him myself. His interest is in cars, but he also has some gorgeous pictures of his travels around Japan on his blog. Please do go and say hi – I owe him for waiting so patiently for me to get to this post!
One more post to go before the reports of my adventures come to a close…
Being Christmas time, and still having to do a fair bit of shopping, I decided to make my final two full days in Tokyo shopping days. I started out going to Shibuya – an absolutely fantastic place to go if you like crowds of people. I can’t stress enough how overwhelming it is just to cross the street there. I found this:
It’s a live camera at Shibuya crossing. (I swear I could watch this video for hours, especially when it’s crowded at lunch time. Is it just me?) On the far left side, outside the shot, is the train station. It is from that side of the street that I took this picture:
and here are two photos I took
facing the train station
at the end of the crosswalk on the far right of the youtube video screen
I went from there just a short way up the block to Tower Records
and bought a CD by, you guessed it, Buck-Tick, as well as a Christmas present for my best friend John – the new AC/DC CD with a bonus poster. He’s now likely the only person in this little town of ours to be in possession of an official AC/DC poster in Japanese.
Its funny, here in North America McDonald’s seems to me to be generally the most garish thing in any cityscape. In a place like Tokyo, the golden arches get all but lost.
Can you spy the McDonald’s?
amongst the karaoke bars and cartoon characters. But there it doesn’t seem garish. It just all awesome scenery.
From there I went to Akihabara, the area of Tokyo which is famous for anything gadget-like or to have anything to do with anime, to shop for my kids. As always, the store lights are stunning.
With so little space, a tiny shop is expanded by going up – some of the stores have seven floors of retail area. I would have liked to have gone back to Shibuya to see it all lit up, but by the time I finished having dinner with my friend Kellie (who I’ve known for about seven years through LiveJournal but never met in person before) in Shinjuku, I was too tired to make the extra stop before going back to the hotel. It had been yet another nine hour day of walking around.
A few things I learned about traveling in and around the Tokyo area by train: if you go onto google maps before you head out, you can find out how many stops it is between you and your destination, how many minutes it will take, whether or not you’ll have to transfer from one line to another, and best of all, google maps actually tells you how much it will cost, which is essential information for using the ticket machines. Also, inside the trains there are screens to tell you where the next stop will be with numbers beside the names. I assumed they were stop numbers, but I soon figured out (when they kept changing) that it was the time to the next stop. Very handy in a packed train car when one needs to plan an escape route around all the other passengers. If you visit Japan, you’ll thank me for this.
I left Kamakura with a measure of sadness. I’d grown to love the little town and having never been to Tokyo before, I didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with the area in which I chose to stay.
Odaiba is a quiet part of Tokyo compared to the other places I eventually visited. It’s off to the east of the city and a great place to stay if you’re planning to go to Disneyland, though I didn’t get close to the place. I stayed at the Sunroute Ariake Hotel.
Under $100Cdn/night, it was very clean and there’s a Lawson (convenience store) right in the hotel, so I didn’t have to go out to get something to eat, nor did I have to eat in the restaurant, which was a little pricey to be dining in at every meal. It was also only a two minute walk from the Kokusai-tenjijou (I always find the longest named-place to have to locate) train station, and it was easy to find! so I didn’t have to lug my cases far. The reason I stayed there was the proximity of the venue in which Buck-Tick was playing – I wanted to be able to walk back to my hotel after the concert. It turned out to be a nice 15 minute stroll.
The morning after I arrived I walked over to Zepp Tokyo to see how best to get there. The one thing google maps is not always good for is guiding one in the right direction for walking. It was hard to tell from the map whether or not they were sending me on a stroll down the train tracks. As it turned out, the fastest way there was a humongous foot bridge.
No cars – bonus
When I arrived there the crews were working on emptying trucks of equipment.
The trucks were at the back, which is where the street is
I was surprised to see dozens of girls wandering around pulling small suitcases. With not a hotel in sight I wondered what they could have been doing. I found out later.
I went for breakfast and decided to head in the direction of Diver City Mall. Then I saw this guy.
Here’s a rare selfie of me beside his foot. He’s pretty tall.
I wasn’t really sad – the sun was in my eyes
I walked around the mall for an hour or two – there was a band appearing live outside for a small concert and meet-and-greet and thousands of rabid fangirls screaming their heads off to wade through when I came out. But I was heading out to meet Susie, the lovely lady whose Etsy shop is NOW OPEN! (click here) and who was kind enough to buy my concert ticket.
While we had a quick chat, I found out what the deal was with all the young ladies and their suitcases. Not a bag was left to be found but instead, hundreds of heavily made up costumed cosplayers, just there to get together and walk around. The area, being Palette Town which is apparently famous, has apart from Zepp Tokyo this,
Giant Wheel
and this,
Mega Web – lotsa cars
as two of its main attractions.
By the time Susie and I said goodbye I was good and tired, so I headed back to the hotel. The next day was dedicated to getting ready for the concert.
It wasn’t the perfect weather to go to the beach, but for me, living where the nearest large body of water is Lake Ontario, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit the Pacific Ocean. So off to the beach I went.
I wrote this about the day:
I could have spent much more than the two hours I was there had I been able to sit. The weather was cool but quite comfortable in my winter jacket. A group of adults were there with their children, one of which–a two year old boy–was completely naked. Not something you’d see in Canada.
Soft, deep sand and gentle waves… Again I was warned about the hawks, but the crows were in abundance. The highlights of what they were eating were a stingray and a small (2-2.5 ft. long?) shark.
The conch shells were many – giant clam shells and starfish as well.
The next day it rained, but nothing was going to keep me indoors. I walked with my umbrella to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, where there was a wedding going on. I didn’t get any pictures of the bride, but I did spend 500Yen to make a wish and write it on a wooden board. It’s probably still hanging there.
Some pictures:
Near the front gate
Autumn colours in December
A reflective pond
I wrote:
I want to go shopping in Yokohama, but I’m reluctant to leave the quiet of here. Five days in Tokyo will be busy enough.
Note: The following is something I posted yesterday as a Guest on HarsH ReaLiTy. Apologies if you’re seeing this in duplicate.
I went to Japan for five minutes and thirty-six seconds. I’m not talking about a virtual trip on the internet. I’m not talking about astral projection. I’m talking about an eleven day trip which included 25 hours of flying time from Toronto to Tokyo and back for the sake of a five minute and thirty-six second long song.
I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. It moved me to tears and I knew deep inside that I HAD to hear it and see it performed live. I was that passionate about it, about the man who wrote it and sings it – about the deep meaning in the lyrics and just the way he sings it and how utterly beautiful it is… So I made it happen. I couldn’t not.
Before you write me off as insane, please consider…
Merriam-Webster’s definition of Passion, ganked off the internet:
pas·sion
noun \ˈpa-shən\
: a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something
: a strong feeling (such as anger) that causes you to act in a dangerous way
: a strong sexual or romantic feeling for someone
Passion is something we humans share. It’s responsible for much of the world’s most beautiful art in all its forms; it is the cause of some of the most heinous crimes. It gives us the ability to love deeply and to hate with seemingly every fibre of our being. It’s something that our children have also. And how scary can that potentially be?
You can say to a ten-year-old, “Son, there are things you will be passionate about when you grow older. You may feel like killing someone one day. Don’t,” but what’s the use? Because in the heat of passion we lose all reason. Logic goes off into the stratosphere and all that is left inside of us is pure emotion.
Passion is one of the things I believe we can only teach our children by example. For instance, if we talk about killing the guy in the car that cut us off, they will learn that passion can turn us against one another. If we follow our passion and turn it into a career, we will teach our children to follow their dreams.
And so I come back to my adventure – my trip to Japan. Aside from personally needing to make the trip, I feel in doing so I showed my children that if they want something badly enough, they can make it happen, no matter how unlikely. And no matter how insignificant it might seem to someone else and no matter how they may be judged for going for it; just do it.
The song? It doesn’t really matter. But here’s another one by the same band. It is appropriately called “Passion.”
The lyrics, in English, can be found by clicking here. But if you read them, don’t do the stuff he sings about – just sayin’ 😉
If you’d like to read about the absolutely incredible experience I had at the concert, click here. The post includes a picture of me, taken by the lead guitarist of the band from the stage during the concert!
From Yokohama Station I hopped on another train which took me to the little seaside town of Kamakura. I’d done my research online before I went – it’s a place with lots of Temples, a little shopping street (by little I mean narrow, not short) and had what I thought would be a nice, inexpensive place to stay. In a word, it was beautiful.
Villa Sacra in Kamakura is a little inn with several uniquely decorated rooms. A very old, traditional Japanese house, the floors creak, the ceilings are low, and the hospitality is fabulous.
The room, however, was quite small. I spent most of my time out wandering the shopping street, eating at Mister Donut – hey, it was cheap and free refills on the coffee! – and walking. Oh boy did I walk. I’d estimate about 4-6 hours a day, rain or shine.
I was in my room for the only earthquake I felt. At first I thought it was someone leaning against the wall behind me. The walls were thin enough that I could feel the people in the next room, but the rumbling sound and the extensive swaying of the entire room led me to believe otherwise. When I looked it up on the internet (I had excellent WiFi), sure enough I was on the outskirts of a quake. It wasn’t nearly as frightening as I thought it might have been, probably because if the house had been standing that long already, it wasn’t likely to fall down while I was there, right? Right.
Besides, I had other things to worry about. I wrote this in my notebook over coffee:
December 9th, 2014 – Mister Donut, Kamakura
I’ve been sitting by the window for about 20 minutes on this lovely bright sunny day and so far only one person has walked by in sunglasses. Okay, now it’s two. But that’s among hundreds. This must be a nation of people with eyesight issues.
Not that that’s the biggest danger here – every 3rd hydro pole has a sign that says “Be careful of tsunamis,” stating that here we are just a little more than 5 meters above sea level. Be careful – as though if you see one, just step around it.
I think I’ve been bitten by a mosquito. In December. Life is good.
After that I took a day trip to Enoshima. It is, apparently, the honeymoon capital of Japan. In a way this seems appropriate, like if you can handle the uphill climb here, you can handle being married.
December 9th, 2014, Enoshima (Island)
An island carved in rock and surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, yet not too far from land that one can’t walk here across a bridge, it is populated by shrines and hawks. I’ve now seen my very first “Beware of the Hawks” sign.
I tried to get a few pictures of the hawks but they’re fast fliers.
I managed to nab this one in a tree.
The weather was gorgeous – in the tens to low teens, celsius the entire time I was in Kamakura. The food was fantastic and very inexpensive – I managed to eat for between 500-1000 yen ($5 to $10 Cdn.) most days. Lots of seafood, as you can well imagine.
I was going to write about my entire time in Kamakura in one shot, but there’s still so much to tell. I’ll try to write again soon!
Right on the heels of my trip to Japan, I’ve already started planning my next adventure. No, not London, or Paris, or even Beijing. I’m going to beautiful Kingston, Ontario. Less than an hour’s drive away. In July.
Call me crazy, but I wanted to make sure I get a good, cheap room close enough to downtown that I’ll be able to walk to where all the action is – to the Busker’s Festival and on my annual pilgrimage to the setting of my novel, The Great Dagmaru. This will be my third year in a row if you count the hospital-ridden disaster last year was. Which brings me to my next point.
Booking.com. I decided to try them out last year, taking them at their word that if I booked a hotel with them I could cancel any time. Well, last year I had to cancel. At the very last second. And it didn’t cost me a cent for the hotel. So I thought great – I’ll take a chance and book with them again for my trip to Tokyo. Again, smooth as silk. All my bookings were exactly as planned, no upfront fees.
And that’s why I already have a B & B booked for July 9th at $140/night and two nights at the Queen’s University campus in a two bedroom suite for $99/night.
What kills me? The most I paid in one of the biggest cities in the world – Tokyo – was less than $90/night. The cheapest, and it was a nice hotel, came to $66 for the night.
Canada is damned expensive. Even if you book half a year in advance.
Just a short jot today. One of my youngest son’s favourite past times, for reasons known only to him, is riding on the city bus. And so almost weekly we go on a rather useless trip in the car to the bus station, board a bus and for $8.40 take a return trip to the mall – a trip that if I were to drive my car would cost around 1/10th of that. But whatever. It occasionally gives me ideas for my “Second Seat on the Right” series (which you can find on my fiction blog), it amuses Alex, and once in a while I get an interesting picture.
I wrote a while back about the politeness of the people in my town and that even the graffiti is “nice.” Here’s the latest:
lindaghill.com 