Chinese Medicine and Mister Donut
I think I’m allergic to Japan. I’ve been getting worse since I got here. This morning I went to a pharmacy and between charades and a phrasebook was able to convey my symptoms. The pharmacist (well, at least he looked like a pharmacist) pulled six different medicines off the shelf and showed them all to me. All of them had five or six active ingredients which seemed a bit much, especially as I have no idea what those ingredients could have been—60mg this, 5mg of that. Who knows? He recommended something he called “Chinese Medicine.” There was 1075mg of the…
To Kyoto on a Bullet Train
Today I hopped on the Nozomi Shinkansen, affectionately called a “bullet train,” and headed to Kyoto. Traveling by train beats the heck out of flying, especially with lots of leg-room, no body-cavity searches at the airport, and really smooth welded rail. It does make me a bit nostalgic for the old days—the clickety clack of the rails, NOT the security check-points. I have not seen a lot of young children in Japan. When I have, they’ve always been with their mothers. This little guy was adorable. In Kyoto Station I found there’s a great tourist information office. Actually there are…
Kyoto Day 1 and a half
I got to Kyoto yesterday. I’ll write more tomorrow. It’s been tough to find Internet access. I had a good day walking the Philosopher’s walk, but I’m totally beat. I’ve uploaded some photos, I’ll link to them tomorrow.
Tokyo: Day Two
I spent today with another Australian, Naomi. She just finished Uni, studying GIS, and she’s spending five weeks in Japan and then going to Europe for two months. She’s been studying Japanese on and off since Grade 7, which made today easy. We went to Akihabara, which the tech-gadget capital of Tokyo, and maybe the world. Interestingly, in the US there is a radio company called Yaesu (Japanese name, must be good) which produced the VX-7R, the best radio ever. In Japan the company is called Standard (English name, must be good). Here it’s the VX-7. In addition to high-tech…
Expectations and Surprises
The vending machines here are great. They have hot drinks as well as cold. Bottles of hot tea are 130 yen (118 yen per USD). The machines are everywhere, but nobody seems to drink anything on the street. I saw one young punk drinking tea on the subway. He must have been some kind of radical. I also saw one Japanese girl eating ice cream while walking down the sidewalk. I have not figured out what side of the sidewalk to walk on. It’s either chaos or beyond my understanding. There’s less order than I expected. There’s also a lot…
Tokyo: Day One
Today I went to the National Museum, which is closed on Mondays, along with everything else. This is the same reason that I have almost no photos of the inside of anything in Hanoi. I met a couple of Australians, Brian and Prue, who also failed to read their guidebook carefully. We ended up spending most of the day bumming around Tokyo together. They’ve lived in Scotland for five years and are taking the long way home over a few months. More than half the tourists I’ve met have been Australians. I’ve not met any Americans. Prue was looking for…
What time is it?
I just wanted to drop a quick note that I made it safely. The flight wasn’t as bad as I expected. The 747-400 that I was on had trouble with its Betamax player at first, but we eventually watched some movies. They apparently still make Beta tapes just for the airlines. We flew over northern Canada and Alaska overnight, but we followed the sun so it was light out all the way to Japan. Can someone tell me if that was the Yukon River that I saw out of the starboard window soon after we crossed the Alaska/Canada border, or…
Japan or Bust
I’ve decided to blow all of my vacation time at once, and I’m headed to Japan for a month from late November to late December. I’ll manage to be home for both holidays, but gone for most of the time in between. I’m pretty stoked. It looks like I’ll be able to spend quite a bit of time in Kyoto, including a few days at the Tekishinjuku international Zendo. Through a friend mine, I may also be able to visit the Shokoku-ji Zen Monastery in Kyoto. It sounds like an intense and amazing place. I’ll also be doing a bunch…
What Hurricane?
It looks like we’re done with this storm. There’s been some rain and gusts but nothing serious. We closed up the shelter about ten this morning, twenty-four hours after opening them yesterday. I drove a truck down to another shelter and brought back the unused supplies and food. A couple dozen volunteers showed up today after a two-day trip from the mid-west, but there was little to do by the time they got here. Had it been a bad storm, we sure would have been glad to see them. I’d much rather have over-reacted to this sort of thing than…