Week 1 - Japan

Tokyo is the London of the East - an absolutely perfect city and incredibly easy for foreigners. I heard from people that Japan would be difficult and hard to get by on w/o speaking Japanese - hahahahahaha.....Most Japanese we have met speak a bit of English - they are required to take this in school for about 7 years. The metro is the best of Ive seen; for example, incredible cold air conditioning...imagine this you who live in London, looking forward to getting on the tube to cool off; next its all simple and colour coded with numbers made for someone with any language to understand and the names are all written and announced in English....then the Japanese are super people; any where you need help its around; on top of this the average person will go out of his/her way to show you where you are going. I have seemed to forget that in the east, westerners are well looked after.

Food - WOW!! Japanese food is far better than I expected. Ive had the noodles, sushi, and sashimi... well that's just the tip of the iceberg. One great simple lunch time dish is Raman noodles; you may be thinking, this is what I ate at collage/uni and it would be like 50 cents, what kind of budget is dan and marina on.... This raman is cheap, not that cheap and it is purchased outside the restaurant through a vending machine and then you bring the receipt inside. Several minutes later you receive a delicious bowl of the best asian noodles you will have ever eaten with fresh pork/fish, etc. Japanese raman is not in the same league as the western type - kind of like comparing orange kool-aid to freshly squeezed orange juice.

Lots of you were asking if we would take the bullet trains. These are pretty cool, firstly they are very simple to use, extremely spacious (more than 3 feet in front of your chair), and as you know, they are fast. \so while going about 100mph (160kph), you all of the sudden hear this noise, kind of like the sound of Michael J fox`s hoverboard in Back to the Future. Then the train just speaks up to about 160-180mph.

So what have we been doing...

In Tokyo on Wednesday we had a pretty cool time out with Takeshi from MessageLabs and sampled some excellent food with lots of beers.

On Thursday we pulled an all nighter and bar hopped seeing some very interesting characters. The Japanese standing bar was insane - this is literally a bar where you can`t use chairs. At about 3am we headed over to the Tsuiji fish auction. This is the world`s largest tuna auction and some fish go for 10,000`s of thousands of dollars.

Friday was dedicated to Japanese baseball - Marina and I went to see the Tokyo Swallows take on the Osaka Tigers. The first and most important thing to know about Japanese baseball si the beer. Not the type or quality, its all good - mainly Asahi, Sapporo and Kirin but its who is serving the beer. I`m still lucky to be married as there was a bit of rubber necking. what I mean is the girls who serve the beer are all cute Japanese girls in essentially cheerleading outfits. They come by with a keg of beer on their backs and you never wait more than 30 seconds to get one. The game was very cool; a bit like triple A (one below the majors) and the atmosphere was phenomenal - the opposing fans have the whole 3rd base side of the stadium and fans can only cheer when their team is batting - then its a bit like mardi gras in a sense of the musical instruments and cheering. So in the 9th inning it happened... a foul ball was hit over my head. I rushed out to the stairs as these things have a tendency to follow gravity and it bounced right to me. With one grab I had the best souvenir from the night!!!

Sunday was for FUJI - Mount Fuji that is, Japan`s tallest mountain (approx 3800 meters or 10,000 feet). We had an early start about 6am and eventually made it to the fifth station by about 8:30 by bus. The actual climb up to the top from there was a brutal one. I was joking before this as there were old ladies and young children so it would be a breeze - I was wrong!

This was seriously tough and very dangerous - not like you would fall off and die,but more like a broken ankle, twisted knee, or falling and hitting your head, arm, etc.... we were on a bit of a tight schedule so we were hell bent for leather up the mountain. Now I have some serious respect for the old ladies doing this. Marina met a 77 year old Japanese lady. I also have a lot of respect for Marina who was like Speedy Gonzalez. We went up faster than about 99.5% of the people - about 4 hours. At the top it was amazing and knowing we had to catch the 520pm bus, we tore down the mountain with not so great of agility. Or down time was 2 hours and 45 min which is also about 99.5% faster than the others. The old ladies tried to keep up, but just could`nt ;D

Monday (today) was for Sumo! The bus we needed to catch was to Nagoya where the grand sumo championship is being held. Now I wasn`t sure what to expect, but this was wicked. We must have seen about 75 matches with the last 15 being the professional matches. To learn about the traditions and history of sumo was fascinating. For example, the dance they do before wresting is for various reason; show the hands to prove no weapons are being held, clap the hands on the leg to ward off evil spirits and was surprising to see quite a few europeans competing. I asked if there were any English and the Japanese people laughed at me.. sorry lads.

So this could very well be our last post.......

Tomorrow we will be trying Fugu. To you non-Japanese speakers, this is pufferfish....so fingers crossed they cook this right.

Now we are in Osaka and are planning on seeing Kobe, Nara, Kyoto, and a few small towns over the next week, speak to you then.

Siyanara!

Dan and Marina