In Yatta We Trust

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Hello world.

As you may have noticed, i don't post here very often anymore. what a shame ^^
I'm planning a new version for this website, so while waiting for it, you can follow me on twitter.

Tokyo fashion map

A very colorful website made by Uniqlo, a streetwear brand. It is made out of several videos where people are trying one clothes on passing on to each others. You can locate the different clothes styles by area with the tokyo map beneath.
Makes me want to go back to japan ^^

Check out this awesome website !

Oshi desu!

Here is a little serie on japanese food to make you hungry! Oishi desu!

Tokyo

Tokyo...at last! Finally, we arrive in the crazy mega huge Tokyo :) and we ll be there for a week of pure awesomeness! program : walk, walk and walk again :D

Tokyo night view from City Hall>

We stayed all the week in Tokyo in Kimi Ryokan in Ikebukuro (north west), a traditional japanese hostel. It was not that expansive, but the rooms were small, no private jakusi ^^. But this was a good starting point to visit tokyo, and it was located near one of the biggest train station in the city.
Speaking of subway and train, it was not easy to understand how it works at first. In tokyo, there are several companies which runs different train and subway so you cannot get anywhere with the same ticket. But after a few days, you kinda understand the whole thing, if they can do it, we could do it :D

Because we were big nerds, we made our first stop at Akihabara, the electric town. The place to be for all geeks, nerds, Hikikomori, and strange creatures :D This is the area where you can find all the electronics, computer shops but also manga, video games and toys. Basically each tower is a shop with 4 to 10 floors of stuff. For example you got the action figures shops, each floor is a theme. There is the mecha figurine floor, the final fantasy figurine floor, the big boobies figurine floor ("figurines à gros seins"), a floor for cars and train toys and another one for US figurines (marvel heroes and stuff like that). It's huge! and there are dozens of towers like that. Even though i couldnt find a Goldorak (Grendizer) figure, its too old fashion there :D

Akihabara, geek paradise

Shibuya

Shibuya is a cool place too, very young and trendy! Lots of fashion shops, game center and clubs. Have a look at the video of this famous crossing, where thousands of people cross the street here every 3 minutes.

Let's cross Shibuya!

On sunday, we went to the Yoyogi park, famous for its weekend animation. There we went to a japanese wedding photograph session. Don't they all look pretty ? :)

Beside the park is the Harajuku bridge where every weekend, teenagers gather here and dress up like manga characters or visual key stars. They come with their suitcase and put on their weird funny clothes. You got different categories : the dark rocker ones, the gothic lolitas, the one dressed like dolls... They pose proudly for photos, Grom made a friend there. A cool place to go!

Again in Yoyogi park we met these rockabilly addict, who danse on classic rockn roll all day here. That was so funny, these guys are true rockers ^^ they got like 2Kg of wax in their hair and are wearing all the badboys leather stuff. They danse and take pose like Elvis. Whatch the video below!

Some crazy dude and The Beatles!

Ahhhh Ghibli Museum. We had to do it, with that famous photo that everyone takes when they go travelling to Japan. The museum wasn't that great, the building itself is funny, cauz its like a big cartoon mansion, but there were not that much infos on the films and the shop was crappy. Better get your Tottoro stuff in akiba, there is more choice!

We did so much stuff i can't remember. One day we ate the biggest ramen in the world, we were kinda hungry so we took the large 800Y bowl of ramen. There was probably 2Kg of noodles in there. So yummy but so BIG, we managed to finish it. Some dude was sweating and fighting for surviving beside us while eating. That was sport! Going out of the place, i was dying, i couldn't walk. I think i never ate that much in my life. That restaurant was near the Sensoji temple.

We went to the sumo stadium, unfortunately it was not during sumo season. But i managed to snap a photo of a big one here!

At the end of the week we tried the capsule hotel. Here you pay for a night in a capsule, you sleep there in your honeycomb beside japanese business man snoring. You got all the modern confort, a little case to put your clothes. Then you put on their pink sexy pijamas (a pitty i didnt kept it). You go to your capsule, there is a TV inside and a radio. It's 2m long (maybe less because my feet were touching the end of the capsule), 60cm wide.
The thing is that you can't sleep in this place. First because people are snoring or making strange scary noises (there was a porn channel, with blurred film on the TV :), that would explain a lot), and then because everybody sets up their alarm clock at different times. So begining at 5.30am there is some dude waking up, and so on every ten minutes :D
In the morning you take the elevator in your little pink pijamas to go to the bathroom, and there you take your shower japanese style : on a little pink stool beside other guys. A little gayness was not going to scare us away! You can even take a very hot bath in a swimming pool, like we did in Hakone.

On our last day, we were homeless with our big backpack. We spend the night in a manga cafe, a place where you can stay all night long reading manga or playing ps2 games. With free ice cream and free drinks! Lots of people stay there waiting for the first subway in the morning. We didn't sleep that night, and went straight to the Tsukuji fish market at 6am in the morning.
Tsukuji market is the biggest fish market in Tokyo, and probably in Japan. Every morning, tons of fishes are braught here to be dispatched in tokyo restaurants and shops. We managed to survive here, it's quite dangerous to walk around, because there are lots of electric chariot going around crazy fast. We've seen some big red tunas, octopuss or squid and some other stuff we dont know what it was!

A lot more photos about Tokyo here in my flickr gallery and here!

Hakone

We were supposed to see Mt Fuji in Hakone but it was raining pretty bad all the time there!

So instead we went to the Onsen, the Tenzan Tohji-kyô. There are thousands of hot springs in Japan. The onsens are public bath which uses hot spring to heat up the water. Some can be really hot! There are onsens for men, other for women, very few for both.

We had to go there, take a shower on a small stool between naked japanese guys and then you go in the different hot spring baths, each with its specific temperature. from freezing cold, to upper mega hot :D You just have a small "cache-bite" and that's all! freestyle! Anyway it was very relaxing!! and all that in the middle of nature! It was worth it!
Sorry for the fans, but we couldn't take pictures inside the onsen ^^

Kyoto

Kyoto! The former imperial capital of Japan, the city with 2000 temples! Don't you worry we didn't see them all! We kept some time for drinking and playing that stupid UFO game!

So what did we do in Kyoto? We visited tons of temples, that i can't even remember the names! We saw the Sanjūsangen-dō 1000 buddhas statues! We went to the imperial castle gardens. We ate yakitoris and drank sake all nite in a japanese rocknroll Jacques Dutronc fans pub! Even tough we had hard time findings bars. In Japan they are all on high rise buildings on different floors, so you can onlys see the signs when you are in the street, you don't know if they are good or dodgy.

So we spent our money in UFO catcher once again!

Another day, it was bike time! So my poor destroyed knee and feet could have a rest for a while! (don"t ever bring Converse shoes as your main shoes for a 3 weeks japan trip! or you ll die 3 times just like i did!)

We went to see the golden pavillon, awesome view! It's a temple cover with gold layer! it's real gold you know! and there is plenty of it!

At night we went to the pub ... again. No japanese people to be seen... oh it's Tuesday nite! :)

On the following day we headed to Fushimi Inari-taisha to see thousands of red toris aligned to form a path in the mountain. It's very... orange :) There is a strange feeling inside, like hypnotic, a very impressive place. A scene from Lost in Translation took place here.

We went to the Nishiki market, in the centre of Kyoto, a very colourful market with fresh fruits, vegs, fishes... We bought japanese kitchen knife there, the best in the world they say! They were even customized with our name on it!

At night we tested most of the bars that were in the Lonely Planet guide but they were empty most of the time, where are the japanese during the week!? :)

We went paparazzi style in Gion, the old geisha area of Kyoto, to try and spot geishas! We managed to see 2 or 3 but they were walking very fast and passing by small street to avoid the public. The ones we saw were probably just maikos, apprentice geishas. There are less than 100 geishas in Kyoto!

A lot more photos about Kyoto here and here!

Kobe

After we gave up on the monk lifestyle, we took the shinkansen with our JR pass to get to Kobe fot the night!

Kobe is an harbor , not too big, a busy international city. There is even an old european quarter in the hill above the city, with very kitsch french and english shops and buildings!

We ate the world famous Kobe beef in a classy restaurant with a chef who was cooking only for us in front of our eyes! That was the best meal ever in Japan! The meat is so tender! It's crazy, it just melts in your mouth :)
The Kobe beef is fed with sake and beer and given a hand massage every day! It's very expensive but it was worse it! Oishi desu!

More photos about Kobe here and here!

Kōya-san

Kōya-san is a complex of buddhist temples located at the top of a mountain in south kansaï.

We slept in a temple with monks! They wake us up with a giant bell at 6 am for the morning buddhist ceremony. The ceremony is very mystic: monks singing with their deep guttural voices, smoke of encent, symbals... it puts you in a morning transe. But at 6 am, at the top of the mountain in a big empty temple, its 5°C in the room, its not easy to be a monk!

The day after we went to visit a big buddhist cemetary, Okunoin Cemetery, with nice tombstones, statues... in an old cedar forest, that was a very nice walk.
We then visited a couple of other temple, one had a classical japanese garden, Banryutei rock garden, with rocks and small white stones, the largest in Japan!

To get to Mount Koya, it takes 2 or 3 trains that only locals take and a scary cable car to finish climbing the mountain. On the way back we walked down the mountain 40 min with our warrior bags! :)

...and we nearly get killed by a giant snake!

More photos about Kōya-san here and here!

Nara

Nara was the first capital of Japan. There are loads of georgous temples here...with their terrible guardians :

The Tōdai-ji is one of the oldest buddhist temple of the city and is the largest wooden building in the world!

Inside it there is a huge 15 meters high and 500 tonnes bronze buddha statue, massive! Funny fact: There is a hole inside one of the wood columns of the temple, its meant to be good luck if you manage to squeeze and to crawl all the way to the other side of the hole :)

Kasuga Taisha Shrine

We played with deer again, they were hungry for biscuits! and they follow you as a group everywhere:) Run fools!

We had Shabu-Shabu, its a japanese fondue with beef and vegetable. It's so good, you cook your meet and veggies in hot water and here you go! We were looked at by old grannies in the restaurant, waiting for us to make a mistake :D that was really funny. But we managed to look not so stupid! Oishi Desu!

We stayed in a classic japanese Ryokan (Matsumae)

Horyuji Temple

More photos about Nara here and here!