Ya... so I suck at keeping blogs up to date... But, this time I DO have an excuse...
When you wake up at 8:21 AM, leave for work at 8:40, travel on trains until 9:45, walk until 10:00, work until 7:00 PM (or sometimes until 8 or later), walk until 7:15 (of course, this depends on how late I work), train until 8:10 usually, hang out with girlfriend until 9:40ish, train back home at about 10:15 PM, find a place to eat (usually Ramen, or some sort of Don, or curry), then go home and get home at about 11:00ish, maybe a little bit earlier... AND then repeat the next day :).... well, you don't really feel like writing a blog :D haha.
But! It's the weekend, and I'm not doing a whole bunch this weekend... so here you go.
First of all, pictures!!! Lots of em! Go look in the Tokyo folder, and you'll find many new pics of Sakura Tree's blossoming (お花見, or ohanami). Next of all, Gunma! Yes! I went to Gunma a few weeks ago with my 2 good Japanese guy friends... or rather, I met them there... since that's there home place. Then we have Chiba, two new panoramic pics from my phone there. And then I've added a folder for Kanagawa prefecture. Which is just south of Tokyo, with Yokohama (and Ichigao, my work place ), along with many other beautiful places. Two pictures were added there.
So! お花見！ ohanami. A time when millions and millions and millions of Japanese and 外国人 (gaikokujin, or foriengers) come and see the Cherry Blossoms (Sakura, 桜) bloom. It was a very nice and beautiful thing :). Everyone goes to big parks usually with their companies or friends for a 飲み会 (nomikai, which directly translates as Drinking Meeting, but really means drinking party.) Yes, you are allowed to drink in public anywhere in Japan. So that was fun :). We had some other foriegners from Holland join us. They were just visiting Japan.
In gunma, I was basically just showed around Gunma a bunch from Kohei and Kenta, my two best Japanese male friends. We went to an Onsen though! ahhhh, those are always wonderful. No pictures of the onsen.... which might be good... haha, but there are lots of pics from elsewhere. :)
My job is going very well. I am enjoying it very much and can see myself staying there and trying to advance myself a long way inside of it. I quite look forward to the future now :).
Showing posts with label Chiba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chiba. Show all posts
2008/04/12
2008/02/25
I did it!
I did it! I uploaded ALL the pictures individually! So here is the blog post for them.
Skiing!
Yes, Asako and I hopped over to Nagano (you know, where the 1998 winter olympics were) and went skiing at a little ski hill there. She snowboards, I ski. Before that, I hadn't skiied for 4 years I think. However, I quickly releared everything... except (moagles, mogels?), which the mountain didn't have... Oh well. It tool 5-6 hours to get there from Chiba... LONG time. We took a bus. Long trip... However, the trip back was only 4-5 hours... which was still long. BUT it's fine. Not like it was boring. Always better when a friend is around than by yourself. No pictures, sorry. I didn't want my camera to get killed if I wiped out bad.
Tochigi pics!
Remember when I went to Yunishigawa Onsen? http://nipponcanadian.blogspot.com/2008/01/onsen.html. Well, pics are up for it now. 25 of them. Check em out here.
Birthday and Christmas pics, along with the LONG PROMISED pics of Asako's Family, or my homestay family for the first few months I was here. Check out the Chiba album again. :)
Ok, the day after skiing, one of our Japanese friends here had a go-away party (going to Canada) in Tokyo. We went on to a boat for dinner. Like, a boat in the style that you might see in movies about the Chinese or something... We made our own dinners, with the instructions of the staff on the boat. It was lots of fun. We also had 3 Aussies tag along with us. They were just visiting for a few weeks in Japan... And one of our Japanese friends (Miyako) invited them along (She works at the hotel that they were staying at). After that... which was 2 hours, we walked over to Ginza... to go do some karaoke! So now I've finally done Japanese karaoke (COMPLETELY different than anywhere else in the world btw). The Japanese have entire skyscrapers dedicated to karaoke. Very popular. Pics are in the Tokyo album.
I'm still looking for work, and now another place to live, as the contract for my current place finishes next month on the 15th. I have an interview with an English teaching company on the 4th of March though (30-50 bucks an hour, part time).
Just this recent weekend, on Saturday, Asako and her family and I drove down to the bottom of Chiba (remember Tateyama? My 26 or whatever km walk?) We drove along the coast the whole way. It was a nice day. Very windy though...
Anyways, there you guys go :) Pics for you to enjoy! Have fun :)
Skiing!
Yes, Asako and I hopped over to Nagano (you know, where the 1998 winter olympics were) and went skiing at a little ski hill there. She snowboards, I ski. Before that, I hadn't skiied for 4 years I think. However, I quickly releared everything... except (moagles, mogels?), which the mountain didn't have... Oh well. It tool 5-6 hours to get there from Chiba... LONG time. We took a bus. Long trip... However, the trip back was only 4-5 hours... which was still long. BUT it's fine. Not like it was boring. Always better when a friend is around than by yourself. No pictures, sorry. I didn't want my camera to get killed if I wiped out bad.
Tochigi pics!
Remember when I went to Yunishigawa Onsen? http://nipponcanadian.blogspot.com/2008/01/onsen.html. Well, pics are up for it now. 25 of them. Check em out here.
Birthday and Christmas pics, along with the LONG PROMISED pics of Asako's Family, or my homestay family for the first few months I was here. Check out the Chiba album again. :)
Ok, the day after skiing, one of our Japanese friends here had a go-away party (going to Canada) in Tokyo. We went on to a boat for dinner. Like, a boat in the style that you might see in movies about the Chinese or something... We made our own dinners, with the instructions of the staff on the boat. It was lots of fun. We also had 3 Aussies tag along with us. They were just visiting for a few weeks in Japan... And one of our Japanese friends (Miyako) invited them along (She works at the hotel that they were staying at). After that... which was 2 hours, we walked over to Ginza... to go do some karaoke! So now I've finally done Japanese karaoke (COMPLETELY different than anywhere else in the world btw). The Japanese have entire skyscrapers dedicated to karaoke. Very popular. Pics are in the Tokyo album.
I'm still looking for work, and now another place to live, as the contract for my current place finishes next month on the 15th. I have an interview with an English teaching company on the 4th of March though (30-50 bucks an hour, part time).
Just this recent weekend, on Saturday, Asako and her family and I drove down to the bottom of Chiba (remember Tateyama? My 26 or whatever km walk?) We drove along the coast the whole way. It was a nice day. Very windy though...
Anyways, there you guys go :) Pics for you to enjoy! Have fun :)
2008/02/10
Woken Up This Morning...
Ya, this morning... at 9:37 AM, I was awoken by a new thing...
An earthquake! Magnitude 2-3.
My first earthquake :).
At first, since I was like, sleeping... I thought I was shaking (like, my muscles were moving)... but I soon figured thats not right...
Now, mag 2-3 isn't much. But this is how it felt...
It felt like someone was at the end of my bed moving it back and forth lightly at a rate of maybe 2 shakes per second. Apparently, thats very fast. This earthquake actually originated waaay down off the south coast of Chiba... as a mag 5 earthquake. Glad I wasn't there :). For your info... that is over 100 kilometers away... and we could (and Tokyo too) still feel it easily :). It's AMAZING to think that over 200 kilometers north, south, west, and east of that quake, ALL the ground plus kilometers below the ground, plus ALL the water in the ocean there, is shaking and moving all at once. MANY MANY quadrillions of tonnes of stuff moving... it's kinda rediculous...
Also, to continue with the unnatural natural events of today :)... I could see Mt Fuji VERY VERY clearly from my house today... Thats like... 140 kilometers away... even more crazy, and I've never even seen this from TOKYO, is that you could see the stretch of land that shoots out from Japan south-east of Mt. Fuji. Those mountains are even further away... All this, and it was at Sundown :) I'm kinda annoyed I didn't look earlier in the day when I REALLY could have seen everything.
An earthquake! Magnitude 2-3.
My first earthquake :).
At first, since I was like, sleeping... I thought I was shaking (like, my muscles were moving)... but I soon figured thats not right...
Now, mag 2-3 isn't much. But this is how it felt...
It felt like someone was at the end of my bed moving it back and forth lightly at a rate of maybe 2 shakes per second. Apparently, thats very fast. This earthquake actually originated waaay down off the south coast of Chiba... as a mag 5 earthquake. Glad I wasn't there :). For your info... that is over 100 kilometers away... and we could (and Tokyo too) still feel it easily :). It's AMAZING to think that over 200 kilometers north, south, west, and east of that quake, ALL the ground plus kilometers below the ground, plus ALL the water in the ocean there, is shaking and moving all at once. MANY MANY quadrillions of tonnes of stuff moving... it's kinda rediculous...
Also, to continue with the unnatural natural events of today :)... I could see Mt Fuji VERY VERY clearly from my house today... Thats like... 140 kilometers away... even more crazy, and I've never even seen this from TOKYO, is that you could see the stretch of land that shoots out from Japan south-east of Mt. Fuji. Those mountains are even further away... All this, and it was at Sundown :) I'm kinda annoyed I didn't look earlier in the day when I REALLY could have seen everything.
2008/02/04
Update on Life
Well, nothing interesting to comment on in terms of travel, but I thought I'd update the blog for the people that watch it :)
So, lately, I've been uh... not busy :) Looking for jobs, however, I've applied to ALL of them... When new ones come out, I apply to them too... so I'm just being patient and waiting to hear back from any of them. It's unfortunate, because Nova, Japan's used to be largest English teacher supplier went bottoms up the week that I arrived in Japan. This means there are litteraly about 5000 teachers looking for English teaching jobs right now :) They all have experience too... which makes it harder.
Therefore! I've also been applying to long-term, career focused computer jobs in programming (my thing) and the occational junior server administrator (my 2nd want to be thing). However, BY FAR most of them require fluency in Japanese and English, and I don't have fluency in Japanese yet :) (Sometimes I wonder about English too...)
しかし！ (shikashi: but!)
Today I was emailed about a job that I did not expect to get a call back from... Saora, looking for programmers and a couple other things, in the Linux department (PERFECT!). I have an interview with them waaaay over in Yokohama, 2 hours away from here.... on Wednesday (it's Monday night now) at 6 o clock. How nice :D
If I get a job like that... I would not be going back to Canada to live... (just visits) and Japan would be my new home for at LEAST a couple of years. But I don't mind :) I like Japan.
We (Chiba) also had snow!!! 5 inches of it!!! Maybe 8 inches fell... but it was melting at the same time as falling so it never looked like more than 5 inches. That happened yesterday... I have a picture... Which I'll upload soon... Look for it in the Chiba area. It should be there when you guys read this.
So, lately, I've been uh... not busy :) Looking for jobs, however, I've applied to ALL of them... When new ones come out, I apply to them too... so I'm just being patient and waiting to hear back from any of them. It's unfortunate, because Nova, Japan's used to be largest English teacher supplier went bottoms up the week that I arrived in Japan. This means there are litteraly about 5000 teachers looking for English teaching jobs right now :) They all have experience too... which makes it harder.
Therefore! I've also been applying to long-term, career focused computer jobs in programming (my thing) and the occational junior server administrator (my 2nd want to be thing). However, BY FAR most of them require fluency in Japanese and English, and I don't have fluency in Japanese yet :) (Sometimes I wonder about English too...)
しかし！ (shikashi: but!)
Today I was emailed about a job that I did not expect to get a call back from... Saora, looking for programmers and a couple other things, in the Linux department (PERFECT!). I have an interview with them waaaay over in Yokohama, 2 hours away from here.... on Wednesday (it's Monday night now) at 6 o clock. How nice :D
If I get a job like that... I would not be going back to Canada to live... (just visits) and Japan would be my new home for at LEAST a couple of years. But I don't mind :) I like Japan.
We (Chiba) also had snow!!! 5 inches of it!!! Maybe 8 inches fell... but it was melting at the same time as falling so it never looked like more than 5 inches. That happened yesterday... I have a picture... Which I'll upload soon... Look for it in the Chiba area. It should be there when you guys read this.
2007/12/26
Shizuoka and Christmas!
Well, a few days ago I went to Shizuoka! Shizuoka is about 180 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.
We went by Shinkansen (the bullet train). Let me tell you... the trip took 1 hour and 30 minutes... with several stops.... so about 1 hour of travel time... 180 kilometers an hour.
It was pretty neat :) It takes longer to get from Chiba to Tokyo on a regular train....
Anyways, Shizuoka is just south west of world famous Mt. Fuji! Therefore, the train runs right beside Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is 3770 meters high. It's interesting because the city beside Mt. Fuji, Shin-Fuji, is at sea level. So yes, there are NO mountains or even hills in front of a 3770 meter high mountain and the ocean, which makes Mt. Fuji look HUGE. HOWEVER! As I seem to not have any sort of luck with seeing Mt. Fuji (still haven't seen it from Tokyo... which apparently is rare), it was raining when traveling to Shizuoka. So I did not see anything except a VERY faint outline of it's bottom third.
When we arrived in Shizuoka, we were greeted by cloudy weather, luckily not rain... We headed off to a place called 日本平 (Japan Flat). It's a little mountain in the middle of Shizuoka City that was supposed to have a wonderful view of Mt. Fuji, and in summer, have many pretty plants, flowers, tea farms, mandarin orange farms, rose flowers, and more. Of course, it was very cloudy, 6 degrees with a brutal wind from the ocean that made it seem pretty close to freezing or colder. So we couldn't see Mt. Fuji... cept a few short moments where we saw a faint outline of the lower parts of it. We had a great view of Shizuoka though, and a great view of the Ocean, so not all hope was lost :).
After just wandering around for a while longer, we headed back to Shizuoka Station (静岡駅) (btw, if any of you ever go to Japan... for no matter how long, a VERY useful kanji to know is 'station': 駅。 おぼえて (Remember it) :) ). We went to somewhere in the station... oddly enough I don't remember where... ah! Wait, we went to a bagel cafe! Very good teriyaki chicken on a blueberry bagel there...
After that, we decided there was nothing left to do as it was too late, so we headed to our hotel. It was POURING. Luckily, I happen to have a wonderful jacket that is water proof :) Just my feet got wet. We arrived at our hotel and slept until 9 the next morning.
We got up, had a small breakfast, left, and found another cafe to have more breakfast in. We also read the 'what to do in shizuoka' booklet we got while there. We ended up wanting to go to a park that used to be the site of an ancient castle that has since been destroyed. The park is still there though.
The park was nice, and the day was WONDERFUL. The weather was great, 18 degrees or more I would guess. Perfectly clear, and sunny. After the park we headed off to a buddhist temple. The temple was not the reason for going there though. The temple is built at the base of a mountain. (this is still in the middle of Shizuoka City). However, there are paths heading up the mountain that lead to a shrine eventually. There is a wonderful view of Shizuoka and the surrounding area there. I got many pictures, that can be viewed here .
Sadly, there were clouds starting to come in from the north, that hid Mt. Fuji for my pictures... Luckily, at least I was able to see Mt. Fuji a few times that day.
We decided to take an experimental way down the mountain down a side trail off the back of the mountain. It took quite some time to get back to the station.... (2 or so hours) hehe. Oh well, 'twas a nice walk. We grabbed a couple of bento boxes and hit the Shinkansen back for Tokyo once again.
Christmas has also come and gone now for me. I spent the day in Tokyo, mostly looking for new headphones and a case for my new ipod nano video (green) that I got from my parents ;). I did find some stuff, and got it. Had dinner with Asako at a realllly neat restaurant (looked very ancient-like), and went home. Not too much happened other than that :P I did go to Asako's parents place on the 24th and had a very nice evening there though. I FINALLY got pictures of them there... but not on my camera, so I'm just waiting for them to send me the pictures, and they will be here :).
I've also added two extra pictures to the Chiba album:
A christmas one
A funny one
Merry Christmas all :)
We went by Shinkansen (the bullet train). Let me tell you... the trip took 1 hour and 30 minutes... with several stops.... so about 1 hour of travel time... 180 kilometers an hour.
It was pretty neat :) It takes longer to get from Chiba to Tokyo on a regular train....
Anyways, Shizuoka is just south west of world famous Mt. Fuji! Therefore, the train runs right beside Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is 3770 meters high. It's interesting because the city beside Mt. Fuji, Shin-Fuji, is at sea level. So yes, there are NO mountains or even hills in front of a 3770 meter high mountain and the ocean, which makes Mt. Fuji look HUGE. HOWEVER! As I seem to not have any sort of luck with seeing Mt. Fuji (still haven't seen it from Tokyo... which apparently is rare), it was raining when traveling to Shizuoka. So I did not see anything except a VERY faint outline of it's bottom third.
When we arrived in Shizuoka, we were greeted by cloudy weather, luckily not rain... We headed off to a place called 日本平 (Japan Flat). It's a little mountain in the middle of Shizuoka City that was supposed to have a wonderful view of Mt. Fuji, and in summer, have many pretty plants, flowers, tea farms, mandarin orange farms, rose flowers, and more. Of course, it was very cloudy, 6 degrees with a brutal wind from the ocean that made it seem pretty close to freezing or colder. So we couldn't see Mt. Fuji... cept a few short moments where we saw a faint outline of the lower parts of it. We had a great view of Shizuoka though, and a great view of the Ocean, so not all hope was lost :).
After just wandering around for a while longer, we headed back to Shizuoka Station (静岡駅) (btw, if any of you ever go to Japan... for no matter how long, a VERY useful kanji to know is 'station': 駅。 おぼえて (Remember it) :) ). We went to somewhere in the station... oddly enough I don't remember where... ah! Wait, we went to a bagel cafe! Very good teriyaki chicken on a blueberry bagel there...
After that, we decided there was nothing left to do as it was too late, so we headed to our hotel. It was POURING. Luckily, I happen to have a wonderful jacket that is water proof :) Just my feet got wet. We arrived at our hotel and slept until 9 the next morning.
We got up, had a small breakfast, left, and found another cafe to have more breakfast in. We also read the 'what to do in shizuoka' booklet we got while there. We ended up wanting to go to a park that used to be the site of an ancient castle that has since been destroyed. The park is still there though.
The park was nice, and the day was WONDERFUL. The weather was great, 18 degrees or more I would guess. Perfectly clear, and sunny. After the park we headed off to a buddhist temple. The temple was not the reason for going there though. The temple is built at the base of a mountain. (this is still in the middle of Shizuoka City). However, there are paths heading up the mountain that lead to a shrine eventually. There is a wonderful view of Shizuoka and the surrounding area there. I got many pictures, that can be viewed here .
Sadly, there were clouds starting to come in from the north, that hid Mt. Fuji for my pictures... Luckily, at least I was able to see Mt. Fuji a few times that day.
We decided to take an experimental way down the mountain down a side trail off the back of the mountain. It took quite some time to get back to the station.... (2 or so hours) hehe. Oh well, 'twas a nice walk. We grabbed a couple of bento boxes and hit the Shinkansen back for Tokyo once again.
Christmas has also come and gone now for me. I spent the day in Tokyo, mostly looking for new headphones and a case for my new ipod nano video (green) that I got from my parents ;). I did find some stuff, and got it. Had dinner with Asako at a realllly neat restaurant (looked very ancient-like), and went home. Not too much happened other than that :P I did go to Asako's parents place on the 24th and had a very nice evening there though. I FINALLY got pictures of them there... but not on my camera, so I'm just waiting for them to send me the pictures, and they will be here :).
I've also added two extra pictures to the Chiba album:
A christmas one
A funny one
Merry Christmas all :)
2007/11/13
Welcome To Nippon!
Well, I have finally gotten sat down, uploaded all the pictures, videos, and comments, and am starting this blog! Here I will keep a little journal of what I do in Japan, explaining things about Japan, showing you pictures of everything and even some videos.
IMPORTANT!!!
Bookmark these two sites!
http://picasaweb.google.com/parrott.jason
http://ca.youtube.com/profile?user=Moncader
The first is my pictures album that will and does have ALL my pictures of Japan on it, you can view them in a slide show or just picture by picture. They are arranged by location. Every single picture has a comment explaining the picture. Therefore, I will not be posting all my pictures here on this blog. Instead, if this blog NEEDS to make a reference to a picture, I will point it to my album instead. (There will be a 'click here' kind of thing that you can click on to see it ).
The second is my YouTube homepage, it will have my videos on it. However, unlike pictures, I will probably make links or embed the video right inside this blog. But the above link will give you quick and easy access to a video in case you want to find it again at a later time.
This particular post will be very long... as it's already been 1 week 6 days since I arrived here... But I'll start now.
October 29, 2007 : ２００７年 １０月 ２９日
Today was the day I left Canada. My plane flight left from Vancouver to San Fransisco, transfer planes, and head off to Narita International Airport. Of course, my plane leaving Vancouver was delayed a bit... and I had 20 minutes to run from my arrival gate in San Fransisco to my departure (on the other side of the airport, which was a 13 or so minute walk anyways) gate for Japan. Of course, and obviously, I made it just fine :).
You can find a picture of what the sky looked like that day on my airplaneShots album here.
October 30, 2007 : ２００７年 １０月 ３０日
Since I crossed the international date line... I skipped a day :)
I must say, traveling for 19 hours with no real break sucks... Never done it before, and not looking forward to it again... Especially when the plane that you're on for 10 hours doesn't exactly have a lot of room... I also had a window seat, which I thought was great! However, I soon after takeoff from San Fransisco found out that the Pacific Ocean isn't much to look at ;). I also found out that you have to move 2 other people that just might be sleeping just to get up and stretch or go to washroom or access your backpack. *sigh * Oh well, it's all done now.
I arrived in Japan at 3:30 PM (Japan time now). Met with the people I am staying with (who are, btw, Asako and her sister and parents. Asako is the person I lived with in Burnaby, Canada for several months. Her parents graciously offered their home for me to stay in while I'm Japan. )
Along the drive back to my new home (it took about an hour), I was able to get the first glance of Japan, and the hundreds of differences. The first thing I noticed? The cars are small. Very small. Little things, I'd imagine they are similar in Europe... But later on I found out why they are so small.... They need to fit in to VERY small parking spaces... And they always reverse stall park. Therefore, the backs of the cars are always flat, and quite often, even in parking lots, there are little bars at the back of the stall so that you know when you are just far enough to put it in park (meaning you are supposed to back up IN to the bar :) )
The roads are very small, tight, cramped, and tiny as well. They're 2 lane roads are the same size as our one lane. It was quite scary at first, and for the first while. However, I'm much more at ease with that now.
Of course, everything is backwards as well... You drive on the left side of the road, that was REALLY messing me up when I sit in the front seat.
Of course, everything is in metric in Japan, which is good. An interesting thing is that where in Canada we have signs on the side of the road... quite often in Japan they have 'signs' or just text on the ground, on the pavement.
Traffic lights kinda suck here. They are all time based, not pressure or pedestrian based. This means long waiting times when no one is coming in the other direction.
We stopped at a grocery store to get some groceries first... That was even interesting as I was taller than many of the shelves... and there was no gaijin (foreigners ) anywhere. However, I was happy, as I got my bottled cold green tea. Yup, pop is not nearly as popular as bottled tea of cold coffee here :) You get them in vending machines everywhere (more on that later).
We got home, and I was introduced to my new room (picture here ). I live in Chiba-shi (a Prefecture, or Province), Midori-ku (the city of Midori), Ochi-cho (the 'neighbourhood' of Ochi). In Japanese, if you have Japanese fonts installed on your computer, it looks like this: 千葉市緑区越智著 (If all you see is ??? or a bunch of squares, then you don't have Japanese fonts installed on your computer). You can see all the pictures of Chiba (which is a VERY nice, green, luscious, peaceful and quite place) here. I'm probably the first ever Canadian to set my feet down in Ochi-cho :) Possibly the first ever gaijin (foreigner) to be here.
October 31, 2007 until November 12, 2007 : ２００７年 １０月 ３１日から ２００７年 １１月 １２日まで
Ok, since there has been too many days to remember when everything happened, I'm just going to say everything that happened by location instead of date up until today, which is November 12th, 2007.
Chiba-shi | 千葉市.
Chiba is a wonderful place. Very green, lots of plant life (Bamboo trees for the win!), HUGE bees and very large spiders, birds that sound like they're crying out in pain when they chirp (it's quite scary at first), rice fields everywhere, mountains, rivers, creeks, big fish, nice weather, Disney Land (of which I'm going to soon, on my birthday this Saturday :D ), ancient Buddhist Temples and Shrines.
Chiba is also the location of Narita, the main international airport for Japan, yes, its NOT in Tokyo like most people think.
Chiba is pretty difficult to describe through words actually... It's mostly scenery here, not so much activities that you can do, so head over to the Chiba pictures here. They are all commented and will explain things quite well. (I'm also lazy and I'm itching to do other things, so I'm moving things along quicker :P hehe). Sadly, for some odd reason... youtube won't allow my 2 chiba video's I had to upload. And it's not giving me a reason, just says 'failed'. Great help there. If I can get them to work later, I'll tell you.
Tokyo | 東京.
Tokyo is a very neat place. It's VERY big, VERY busy, and has a VERY efficient transportation system. I'll first point you to the pictures right here. I'd also like to point out right away that yes, while there IS English in Tokyo, especially near or on the train system, there actually aren't very many English speaking people there (at least not publicly). Japan is a Japanese (nihongo or 日本語. Nihon, or Nippon means Japan, adding the go means language, so Nihongo is Japan Language, or Japanese :) ) speaking country, not at all English like lots of people think.
The transportation system is excellent like I said. If you want to go somewhere, anywhere in Tokyo, you can be there with one train ride and either a 3 minute bus ride or 10-15 minute walk (I choose the walking... I like to walk... actually... I've WALKED around most of Tokyo......)
Tokyo is quite smoggy. It's not noticeable when IN Tokyo, but it is when you are flying around it, or up on the skyscrapers at viewing Tokyo from high, like in this video from on top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building:
Apparently, on a clear day, you can see Mount Fuji (藤山) quite well, but not that day :).
Here is a video of that building, but from the ground. It's really big, the videos nor pictures do it justice sadly... I need to find out how to make buildings look big in photos...
Tokyo is divided in to smaller cities or wards. Technically, there is no 'city' Tokyo, just a bunch of wards that make up Tokyo. Tokyo is also the name of the whole Prefecture (province). I've visited most of the wards near the main area of Tokyo, just two left and I'll see those in a day or two. Shibuya is rediculous, as shown in this video:
That was Asako (朝子) at the beginning :) and of course me at the end ;)
Tokyo is quite neat as well in that it's NOT at ALL just cityscape and grey. There are MANY parks, forests, temples, shrines, lakes and streams inside it. Take Mitaka City (once again, a ward of Tokyo) for example, Asako's Grandpa lives there, and we visit there once a week and stay over night on Wednesdays until Thursday. Here are links to some pictures: here, er, and I just realized that I have not taken enough photos of Mitaka... I'll come back and make a post about Mitaka when I go back there again in a few days...
Kamakura is not part of Tokyo, its quite far south of it. I went there with Yumi, who I originally met in Canada as well through Asako. Yumi and I went and saw the whole town (she was my tour guide). Saw several Buddhist Temples and Shrines, a nice beach to open ocean, and just nice scenery all around. There are several pics in the Tokyo album here.
Please look at the rest of the pictures on Tokyo for more explanations of what it's all about. This post is quite long already and I probably shouldn't explain more of whats already explained in the comments of the photos. However, I will point out one last picture...
This one.
Don't you think it looks either not real or from the future? I think so.... it was really neat. That tower belongs to DoCoMo, Japans largest Cell Phone company. Which btw, cell phones are insane here, I'll make another post on that later, when I have my own :) (I applied for alien registration today, and it takes a few weeks to process that, and THEN I can get my phone).
Hope you enjoyed this first post! I'll be posting more often now.... Every few days (I should anyways, now that I've finally started this thing).
IMPORTANT!!!
Bookmark these two sites!
http://picasaweb.google.com/parrott.jason
http://ca.youtube.com/profile?user=Moncader
The first is my pictures album that will and does have ALL my pictures of Japan on it, you can view them in a slide show or just picture by picture. They are arranged by location. Every single picture has a comment explaining the picture. Therefore, I will not be posting all my pictures here on this blog. Instead, if this blog NEEDS to make a reference to a picture, I will point it to my album instead. (There will be a 'click here' kind of thing that you can click on to see it ).
The second is my YouTube homepage, it will have my videos on it. However, unlike pictures, I will probably make links or embed the video right inside this blog. But the above link will give you quick and easy access to a video in case you want to find it again at a later time.
This particular post will be very long... as it's already been 1 week 6 days since I arrived here... But I'll start now.
October 29, 2007 : ２００７年 １０月 ２９日
Today was the day I left Canada. My plane flight left from Vancouver to San Fransisco, transfer planes, and head off to Narita International Airport. Of course, my plane leaving Vancouver was delayed a bit... and I had 20 minutes to run from my arrival gate in San Fransisco to my departure (on the other side of the airport, which was a 13 or so minute walk anyways) gate for Japan. Of course, and obviously, I made it just fine :).
You can find a picture of what the sky looked like that day on my airplaneShots album here.
October 30, 2007 : ２００７年 １０月 ３０日
Since I crossed the international date line... I skipped a day :)
I must say, traveling for 19 hours with no real break sucks... Never done it before, and not looking forward to it again... Especially when the plane that you're on for 10 hours doesn't exactly have a lot of room... I also had a window seat, which I thought was great! However, I soon after takeoff from San Fransisco found out that the Pacific Ocean isn't much to look at ;). I also found out that you have to move 2 other people that just might be sleeping just to get up and stretch or go to washroom or access your backpack. *sigh * Oh well, it's all done now.
I arrived in Japan at 3:30 PM (Japan time now). Met with the people I am staying with (who are, btw, Asako and her sister and parents. Asako is the person I lived with in Burnaby, Canada for several months. Her parents graciously offered their home for me to stay in while I'm Japan. )
Along the drive back to my new home (it took about an hour), I was able to get the first glance of Japan, and the hundreds of differences. The first thing I noticed? The cars are small. Very small. Little things, I'd imagine they are similar in Europe... But later on I found out why they are so small.... They need to fit in to VERY small parking spaces... And they always reverse stall park. Therefore, the backs of the cars are always flat, and quite often, even in parking lots, there are little bars at the back of the stall so that you know when you are just far enough to put it in park (meaning you are supposed to back up IN to the bar :) )
The roads are very small, tight, cramped, and tiny as well. They're 2 lane roads are the same size as our one lane. It was quite scary at first, and for the first while. However, I'm much more at ease with that now.
Of course, everything is backwards as well... You drive on the left side of the road, that was REALLY messing me up when I sit in the front seat.
Of course, everything is in metric in Japan, which is good. An interesting thing is that where in Canada we have signs on the side of the road... quite often in Japan they have 'signs' or just text on the ground, on the pavement.
Traffic lights kinda suck here. They are all time based, not pressure or pedestrian based. This means long waiting times when no one is coming in the other direction.
We stopped at a grocery store to get some groceries first... That was even interesting as I was taller than many of the shelves... and there was no gaijin (foreigners ) anywhere. However, I was happy, as I got my bottled cold green tea. Yup, pop is not nearly as popular as bottled tea of cold coffee here :) You get them in vending machines everywhere (more on that later).
We got home, and I was introduced to my new room (picture here ). I live in Chiba-shi (a Prefecture, or Province), Midori-ku (the city of Midori), Ochi-cho (the 'neighbourhood' of Ochi). In Japanese, if you have Japanese fonts installed on your computer, it looks like this: 千葉市緑区越智著 (If all you see is ??? or a bunch of squares, then you don't have Japanese fonts installed on your computer). You can see all the pictures of Chiba (which is a VERY nice, green, luscious, peaceful and quite place) here. I'm probably the first ever Canadian to set my feet down in Ochi-cho :) Possibly the first ever gaijin (foreigner) to be here.
October 31, 2007 until November 12, 2007 : ２００７年 １０月 ３１日から ２００７年 １１月 １２日まで
Ok, since there has been too many days to remember when everything happened, I'm just going to say everything that happened by location instead of date up until today, which is November 12th, 2007.
Chiba-shi | 千葉市.
Chiba is a wonderful place. Very green, lots of plant life (Bamboo trees for the win!), HUGE bees and very large spiders, birds that sound like they're crying out in pain when they chirp (it's quite scary at first), rice fields everywhere, mountains, rivers, creeks, big fish, nice weather, Disney Land (of which I'm going to soon, on my birthday this Saturday :D ), ancient Buddhist Temples and Shrines.
Chiba is also the location of Narita, the main international airport for Japan, yes, its NOT in Tokyo like most people think.
Chiba is pretty difficult to describe through words actually... It's mostly scenery here, not so much activities that you can do, so head over to the Chiba pictures here. They are all commented and will explain things quite well. (I'm also lazy and I'm itching to do other things, so I'm moving things along quicker :P hehe). Sadly, for some odd reason... youtube won't allow my 2 chiba video's I had to upload. And it's not giving me a reason, just says 'failed'. Great help there. If I can get them to work later, I'll tell you.
Tokyo | 東京.
Tokyo is a very neat place. It's VERY big, VERY busy, and has a VERY efficient transportation system. I'll first point you to the pictures right here. I'd also like to point out right away that yes, while there IS English in Tokyo, especially near or on the train system, there actually aren't very many English speaking people there (at least not publicly). Japan is a Japanese (nihongo or 日本語. Nihon, or Nippon means Japan, adding the go means language, so Nihongo is Japan Language, or Japanese :) ) speaking country, not at all English like lots of people think.
The transportation system is excellent like I said. If you want to go somewhere, anywhere in Tokyo, you can be there with one train ride and either a 3 minute bus ride or 10-15 minute walk (I choose the walking... I like to walk... actually... I've WALKED around most of Tokyo......)
Tokyo is quite smoggy. It's not noticeable when IN Tokyo, but it is when you are flying around it, or up on the skyscrapers at viewing Tokyo from high, like in this video from on top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building:
Apparently, on a clear day, you can see Mount Fuji (藤山) quite well, but not that day :).
Here is a video of that building, but from the ground. It's really big, the videos nor pictures do it justice sadly... I need to find out how to make buildings look big in photos...
Tokyo is divided in to smaller cities or wards. Technically, there is no 'city' Tokyo, just a bunch of wards that make up Tokyo. Tokyo is also the name of the whole Prefecture (province). I've visited most of the wards near the main area of Tokyo, just two left and I'll see those in a day or two. Shibuya is rediculous, as shown in this video:
That was Asako (朝子) at the beginning :) and of course me at the end ;)
Tokyo is quite neat as well in that it's NOT at ALL just cityscape and grey. There are MANY parks, forests, temples, shrines, lakes and streams inside it. Take Mitaka City (once again, a ward of Tokyo) for example, Asako's Grandpa lives there, and we visit there once a week and stay over night on Wednesdays until Thursday. Here are links to some pictures: here, er, and I just realized that I have not taken enough photos of Mitaka... I'll come back and make a post about Mitaka when I go back there again in a few days...
Kamakura is not part of Tokyo, its quite far south of it. I went there with Yumi, who I originally met in Canada as well through Asako. Yumi and I went and saw the whole town (she was my tour guide). Saw several Buddhist Temples and Shrines, a nice beach to open ocean, and just nice scenery all around. There are several pics in the Tokyo album here.
Please look at the rest of the pictures on Tokyo for more explanations of what it's all about. This post is quite long already and I probably shouldn't explain more of whats already explained in the comments of the photos. However, I will point out one last picture...
This one.
Don't you think it looks either not real or from the future? I think so.... it was really neat. That tower belongs to DoCoMo, Japans largest Cell Phone company. Which btw, cell phones are insane here, I'll make another post on that later, when I have my own :) (I applied for alien registration today, and it takes a few weeks to process that, and THEN I can get my phone).
Hope you enjoyed this first post! I'll be posting more often now.... Every few days (I should anyways, now that I've finally started this thing).
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