Onsen!

So last weekend I went to Yunishikawa Onsen (湯西川温泉) in Tochigi Prefecture (栃木県) which is about 160 or so kilometers north (北) of Tokyo. I went with 6 other people, all Japanese, (all are people that went to Canada in the past. I know them through Asako)

Onsen's (hot springs) are WONDERFULLY AMAZING! I think I'm in love. It was extremely fun. This time (as opposed to previous hang-outs with these people), I was able to understand and converse with the other people MUCH more (due to my Japanese skill being much better) and therefore I had a tonne of fun. It went down to -12 or so I think at night... so that made it even better in the outside Onsens. There's nothing like bathing naked outside in the open air under the starry night sky when it's -12 outside haha (oh ya, in Japan, in an Onsen, you do not wear clothes).

Most certainly a new experience. It takes 4 and a bit hours to get from my house to where we went. There was snow, a good deal of it (yay!), so I was quite satisfied. The Ryokan (Traditional Japanese Inn, a must-do for people visiting Japan) that we stayed in... was neat first of all... The dinner and breakfast provided by them was wonderful as well... but a really neat thing is that some of the wood that makes up the building is 800 YEARS OLD. Crazy...

Real Onsen like that one are much better than Hot Tubs... MUCH better... they smell a bit... (due to various minerals in the water, such as sulfer) but you get used to that quickly. They say the BEST Onsen can heal anything except love sickness. I believe them... My back, which had a NASTY knot in it for the past few days, was extrememly sore... However, the INSTANT (no joke) I went in the water, my back felt just fine... Very interesting in deed...

A quick update

Hello everyone again. Just thought I'd update on whats going on here... which currently isn't too much.

However, I did have a job interview as a part time English Teacher at a Childrens school. I had that interview today. However, I have declined the offer as the details of the job did not suit my needs... *sigh * So my search continues for a job.

Next weekend, I and 6 other friends will be heading south from Tokyo on a 2 day relaxation trip... So I'll have a blog for that when that happens as well.

Well that's all really... Not much to talk about when you're job searching...

New Years!

Well, New Years has come and gone, and it was fun here.
First off, I've uploaded more pictures on to my site in the Chiba section, and one in the Tokyo section.

The Chiba pictures that are new are of the first sunrise of the year. We stayed up on the 31st of December until 2AM of course... and then went to sleep... and then woke up at 5AM to go out to see the first sunrise of the year on top of a mountain in Chiba. It was very crowded there... several hundred people. It's apparently very popular for people here to do this. So the pictures were taken from my phone... as I forgot my good camera... So the ground which looks like it's black in those pictures was actually lit... It was cityscape and farm land, with the ocean in the background.

After that, we went back home, and had one of the most wonderful breakfasts ever with Asako's family (Grandpa included this time). It is their tradition to have a special breakfast on New Years.

Later in the day... we went off to Mitaka to spend the night there (Asako's Grandpa's house in case you forgot). The next day, we had a party with Asako's family and cousin/uncle/aunt. That was lots of fun. Had a wonderfully large lunch and drank a decent amount. Lots of fun.

Later Asako and I headed off to a temple in Harajuku. A very large one.... It was RIDICULOUSLY busy. It was busy because it is also tradition to head off to a temple in the New Year to pray for best wishes for the upcoming year, and pray for your family, etc... Even people with no religion do this.

Once the holidays are officially over (the 7th/8th), then I'll be starting a job search extravaganza.

I hope everybody's New Years was good as well and lots of fun!

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 :)

MC!!!

Thats right! I'm back and MCed!
MCed?
Moved and Cell Phoned!
That's right! I've moved finally in to an apartment. It's a small one (like all places in Japan), but quite perfect for just me. I actually moved here Monday... (5 days ago), but didn't get internet to blog about anything until today.
Also!
I got my cell phone! It's very neat... like all phones here... It can play TV for free, play music, but of course in order to use the music feature you need windows... go figure, not even MacOSX support, how stupid. Oh well, it could only play wma files... which is stupid too, not even mp3.... *sigh * oh well. It can surf the web, use email, all that jazz, has a gagillion other features...
here, the feature page for it. http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/904i/f904i/

Tomorrow I'm going to Shizuoka by Shinkansen (bullet train), which means I'll be going about 280 kilometers an hour :D I'll also be passing by Mt. Fuji on the way there! So I'll grab many pics if the weather is good...

I'll make a more detailed post on that afterwords... I'll also upload pictures of my place and Shizuoka when I get back... Right now it's 12:36 AM and I should sleep as I have an early start tomorrow.

Some Time!

Aha! I have some free time while firing emails about renting an apartment back and forth.

So, first off, I have found a seemingly nice place that I will go see tomorrow (probably) in Chiba, kind of half way in between where I am now and Tokyo, for 55,000 yen a month, which includes everything, including internet! 55,000 yen is about 520-530 bucks. That's very cheap around here :).

Anyways, I haven't really had a chance to blog a large one in quite a while, so once again, I'll use pictures to show where I've been, and then I'll explain a couple things about Japan in general at the request of specific peoples.



That was the view from Tateyama, at the very bottom of Chiba Prefecture. It was VERY nice there. Just a little bit inland it was like walking back in time. Everyone had a farm of some sort, and was collecting from it with those baskets on their back, as if it was out of a movie. It was very neat, all the buildings were old, the scenery was beautiful. However, I thought I was going to be going back to where I came from in a similar kind of area... so I didn't take pictures >.<. Nope, instead... I decided to walk TWENTY EIGHT KILOMETERS that day. Yup! My legs were sore after that :)
The ocean down there was WARM. Now, I don't usually go swimming in lakes or oceans... I'm very sensitive to water temperature, so even decently warm water feels cold to me; very cold. However, if I had a bathing suit.... I would have swam in this water... in November... It was so warm.... And just 100 kilometers north, at the Ocean where I live now... the water is freezing. Very interesting in my opinion.

Here are more pictures: here.

I did take two more videos, one of which is too large to put up on the web, and the other.... FOR SOME reason youtube isn't letting it work. It says 'failed', with no reason... retarded. So ya... annoying... cause it was a really neat video.


So! As for a few things on life here in Japan! First of all, to answer a certain someones question on the makeup of the wards of cities here in Japan.

In Japan, you have a Prefecture, exactly like our provinces. Some Prefectures are subdivided in to sub-prefectures (shichou). I say some, because not all of them have sub-prefectures. Sub-prefectures are more used to help govern large areas in which there are no major cities, such as in remote areas of Japan. Sub-prefectures are usually not included in addresses.

There are also 'Designated Cities' (seirei-shitei-toshi). These are major cities with a population of over 500,000 or have a significant impact on industrial work in Japan. They govern everything that is inside of their area. Inside of that area, there can be more cities, villages, towns, etc... Quite often, a city like this can cover MASSIVE amounts of area. Usually a good 100 kilometers. Tokyo does not have any of these cities (I'll explain later).

There are also then districts (gun) that have almost no governing authority. However, they are used for mailing addresses. A district is similar to United States, Counties.

Moving down in to the municipal level, we have 'core' cities (chuokaku-shi), 'special' cities (tokurei-shi), and cities (shi). The 'core' cities are the 'downtowns' of Canada. Downtown Vancouver would be Vancouver-chuo. The chuo suffix denoting that it is a core city. The rest of Vancouver might be just Vancouver-shi (City of Vancouver)

Inside of those cities, we have wards (ku), towns (chou and machi), and villages (son and mura). Note that these can also be directly from a prefecture itself instead of inside a larger city, similar to in Canada. A ward can be thought of as something like West Quesnel. While its all still Quesnel, us Quesnelians almost consider it a completely different area. Although wards have full governing over themselves and their smaller parts, such as chou and machi. So yes, wards, or cities, have towns and villages inside of them. Towns and villages should be more thought of as neighbourhoods. For example, the place I live in now, has this exact address (ken is the suffix for prefecture).
Japan, Chiba-ken, Chiba-shi, Midori-ku, Ochi-chou, and then the numbered address.

So, that means, in the Country of Japan, inside the prefecture of Chiba, inside the city of Chiba (Chiba city is very large, and I THINK is a core city, although the suffixes are the same for core cities and regular cities), inside of the ward called Midori (We consider Midori as a city itself here), inside the 'town' of Ochi (Ochi is more of a neighbourhood).

Tokyo Prefecture is a unique prefecture. It is the only prefecture to have the suffix 'to' (Toukyou-to) (oh ya, by the way, It's not Tokyo, its Toukyou). 'to' means Metropolis. So yes, ALL of Tokyo Prefecture is actually a city. A super massive couple hundred kilometer city. The city is divided in to wards (ku). In Tokyo though.. the wards have the same amount of government power as regular cities. In fact, the wards are larger than most of the cities in Toukyou-to. The wards are near the center of what the imaginary 'tokyo city' would be, while the cities (shi) are near the outer reaches of Toukyou-to.

I hope that clears things a bit :)

Uh, now what else...
Oh yes, food. I've been specifically told by my Mom to say that I eat apples with a fork in Japan, not with my fingers. We cut them and use little forks... I don't find it that crazy... but my Mom does... so whatever :).

Everyone sits on the floor here, even though there is a couch... The floor is just comfy here. (We do use the couch though sometimes :) ).

Family is HUGE here, therefore, unlike what my brother does all the time and just sits downstairs... :)... we are always sitting around in our little living room, drinking tea, watching TV, and talking with eachother all the time. Most Japanese families do this. And since around Tokyo, you're gone to work from 8 to 8, you don't have lots of time to socialize with your family, so you use the time you have very well.

Yes, I have not really used a fork in a month, ohashi (お箸) all the way (chopsticks).

It's freezing in these houses. Why? Yes, I know the temperature isn't that cold outside (10-17 degrees still), however, there is no insulation in the house, and no heaters :). This means that inside the house goes down to 10 degrees :P. So we like our heated room (the living room and kitchen) which has a 'portable' heater in it that plugs in to the wall. We also like our tea and coffee :).

Contrary to popular belief, Tokyo is actually a pretty cheap place to eat. You can buy VERY good and VERY good quality Udon, Soba, Ramen, Sushi, and other various meals for under 8 dollars. Yes, 8, a full dinner, 8 bucks, in downtown Tokyo. :) And you'll be full after that dinner, and its really good.
Of course... you COULD go the expensive root for some REALLY good food (which I have done a few times).

I think thats all for now! I should be in my new place next time I blog. I'll have pics and stuff of course :)

A Little Break

So I probably won't be able to do another major blog post for at least a week or so... as I will be VERY busy finding a new place to live!

The family I'm staying with right now's father (90 years old) must move in here, and therefore I must find another place.

This is fine with me, obviously as the elderly's well being is most certainly more important than me :) Also it's fine as it adds spice to things once again here in Japan.

So tomorrow I'm heading out to Tokyo to start searching for a place!

I DID upload new pictures to the picasa albums site, under Mitake. I will explain that trip later, when I once again have time, and probably will be inside my new house.