Tokyo City Tour

Been to many places in Tokyo, ah, new Japan, a big city filled with concrete buildings, much much shopping to do if you got lots of Japanese Yen to burn. Am actually quite sick of the city till I got to Harajuku today. A place where people indulging in cosplay gather. There is also a Meiji-shrine where Japanese weddings are held. This shrine is massive and comes with a garden.

Tomorrow, we are going back to nature, getting near to Mount Fuji. We will try to trek up Mount Fuji if the conditions permit. Well, it's a good break from the hustle and bustle of the huge city.

Marco

Osaka day 3

Still in Osaka, woke up late today, visit a couple of Shrines today, have been pouring today, and we are stuck in the Shinnoen-jo, This is a big shrine with many small temples around.Its 445pm and the rain feels like it will go on for a long time.

Terrain pool, memorials, graveyards and huge Buddhist statues. The shrines are more modest compared to the golden temples that the Chinese built in Mount Ermei. The Chinese tend to construct and paint their statues gold while the Japanese have their statues carved out of stone.

Japan has longer days and it is still bright at 8pm. Comparatively, Japan time is one hour faster than in Singapore.

Language

To me, the Japanese government has done a good job in granting foreigners' Visas, the only minor twitch is that there is a huge language barrier. Japanese only speak their language and they do not bother to pick up another language. There is a huge number of tourist in the city here and businesses may be missed because of a miscommunication.

Considering the many countries, many tourist attractions will put up notices and explanation boards in 3 main languages namely Chinese, English and Japanese. They are pampering the Japanese and putting them in their comfort zone.

Nevertheless, we had a Japanese, a Kyoto native, who speaks English coming up to us and speak to us. That was because Stuart was holding his 'trusty' Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook. Now, this is one of the few Japanese that could speak good English. He had stayed in a few english-speaking countries before. His view was that Japanese are shy and afraid to converse or take up another language.

We met fellow travelers who have differing views, some had picked up Japanese and are looking forward to learning mandarin. Well, I say picking up any other language will be useful.

Signed off
Marco

Second day of Osaka

The first day of Osaka was sent mostly on orientation and settling down. It was a hungry day as we walked around comparing prices of food and lots of moving around by foot.

Second day of Osaka

Osaksa is a port city, and Shinsaibashi in the Minami area is a fantastic place and you could do people watching for the whole day. This is comparable to the Orchard Road in Singapore. Umeda is in the Kita area of Osaka and its is the CBD area of Osaka.


Commuting

You will be commuting with countless of Japanese man in full business suits. On the streets will be business suit-clad men and high-heel ladies cycling on the pavements. Their bicycles have a distinctive basket at the front. Parking of the bicycles will be outside their office buildings. There will be rows of bicycles on the sides of the pavements but you will see much order in the parking.

Food

In the morning, we visited the Hanshin Shopping area in the Umeda Station. Its like a huge takashimaya with 16 times more food. Food in Japan is not cheap, its about 20% more in Singapore, but I must totally compliment the pride that the Japanese put in serving and preparing their food.

It is in the shopping center's supermarket that we met with the SGD200+ rock melon. Ok, the skin of the melon is exceptionally beautiful, like those you would see on the delicate egg shell carving. We had big big apples that cost about SGD2 each and extremely sweet strawberries. Benny never like strawberry until he tried the Japanese version. Well, May is a good time to visit if you like strawberries as it is in season now.

At night, we went to have sushi buffet, but its actually quite disappointing as the variety of the sushi was not much and the quality is poor going by the Japan's standard. Nevertheless, it was a fine meal as the soup was good and there had like 5 versions of puddings. It was really good.

Trip update

We have refunded our tickets for our Beijing bound train. Will be staying in Chengdu for possibly the next 2-3 days until we can get trains/flights out of here. All northwards bound train from Chengdu have stopped indefinitely.

There's very bad damage to the nearby provinces, Bei Chuan and Wen Chuan. Around 7k-9k confirmed dead so far, many thousands injured and several roads closed from landslides and rocks collapsing. Rescue workers had to run into towns as transport could not access many areas. Dujiangyan was badly hit and a schoold collapsed with many children killed. We are fortunate to have escaped any injuries and still have the basic comforts in our area.

Things in Chengdu main city are still pretty orderly and many shops are still open for business and water, food and electricity are still available. Most residents have gone back to their homes.