Louistrations

Hashizumemon Tsuzuki Yagura Turret, Kanazawa Castle. Like the majority of historical buildings in Japan, Kanazawa Castle has a long history of repeatedly burning down. Matsumoto Castle was the only exception that I noticed for not burning down. What you see here is a faithful reconstruction that was completed in 2001.

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Torii gate and red maple leaves.

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Lake Kawaguchi next to Fujiyama.

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In total I took over 800 photographs - far less than Peter and Barry - but a large amount nonetheless. To spare you all, I have siphoned my photographs down to my favourite 60. I won't be reposting any of the photographs that have appeared previously on the website, but if you go back to the original posts you'll find that you are now able to click the images to view a larger size.

Peter took some really incredible photographs, they really put mine to shame! If you get the chance you should go visit his deviantART page where he has started posting some of his best ones.

Some of the text accompanying the photographs was written on location which didn't get the opportunity to be posted, so apologies if the tense jumps around a bit.

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Tea is everywhere in Japan. From the many teas houses and shops to the vending machines, tea plays a big part in Japanese culture.

I read in a guide book that green tea is customary provided free of charge in restaurants. I thought this was too good to be true, but in my experience it appears to be accurate! I've even managed to order green tea even though it wasn't on the menu.

Even though green tea is the most common, it's still very easy to find black (or red) tea in cafes and restaurants. The most prominent blends seem to be English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Darjeeling. Great as this is, finding milk proves to be a lot more difficult. You usually end up having to use cream which is just plain wrong. Also, beware of Chiffon or Royal Milk Tea. Usually if the name has 'milk' in it, it also contains about ten spoons of sugar.

While we were in Kanazawa we visited a Gold-leaf store, Kanazawa is famous for it's Gold-leaf crafts. Upon entering we were handed cups of tea with bits of Gold-leaf floating in it. Now, drinking tea with gold in it seems a little too eccentric to even me. That doesn't mean that I didn't drink it. Even Barry who hates teas somehow managed to drink it.

So far I've had the following green tea flavoured confectionery: Ice-cream, cheesecake, KitKat, cake, Pocky, candy and bread. I'm sure there's a lot more out there, but you get the idea.

Greetings from Kyoto, the temple capital of the world. There seems to be a shrine for every street, and at least half a dozen vending machines dispensing iced tea for every shrine.

Kyoto is a beautiful city. A really beautiful city, and very different to Tokyo. While here we've visited the Kyoto Imperial Palace and Nijo Castle. Sadly photographs weren't allowed so I can't show you any. Nijo Castle even went a step further and prohibited sketching as well.

I was in a music store looking for a couple of music CDs I've been looking for, and I was surprised to see two women dressed to full geisha attire (except without painted faces) browsing the J-pop section. Nothing's quite how you'll expect it. Except for tea flavoured ice-cream, I expected that to be awesome and it totally was.

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The Studio Ghibli Museum. This place was fantastic, it was the one place that I really wanted to visit while here. It was a shame that I couldn't read the majority of the writings on the walls, but seeing the original storyboards and concept artwork for the movies was fascinating.

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We spent today in Tokyo's electronics district, Akihabara; A series of tightly located electronic stores and hobby shops. There were several floors dedicated to retro video games, manga, mech and anime figures. The variety and expanse of the items was unbelievable. It's easy to understand why Akihabara is known as a geek's paradise. I'm surprised I spent as little as I did, there were a lot of things that I wanted to buy, but I managed to constrain myself. I left with just 3 manga books, a copy of Dengeki Daioh, a Yotsubato figure and a mug. (The tea cups provided in the hotel room were far too small!) I could have spent a whole lot more, if not my entire savings!

In the evening, Barry and I found a quaint little ramen bar down next to Aoyama station. Oolong tea is apparently served cold.

Hey! This post is brought to you by generic internet cafe near Mount Fuiji!

I never really went into any detail in my last post. I'm here with two friends, Peter and Barry. I was invited along hence the suddenness of the trip.

The flight was particularly terrible, roughly about 10 hours in duration from London. I only managed to sleep for three minutes or so, although not consecutively. There was an annoying little child that insisted on playing with electric cars in the aisle next to me.

Our first day was basically 2 days long in length, although it helped adjust to the time difference quickly.

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Excuse me for not having a more imaginative title, but it is five in the morning so go easy on me. I leave for Japan in just over an hour, and I'll be there for just a little over 3 weeks. It still doesn't feel like I'm going, it all happened relatively quickly.

I'm going to try and post to my blog while I'm away, but I can't guarantee anything. It all depends on whether or not I have the correct means to charge my portables and the availability of Wi-Fi internet. Supposedly Wi-Fi flows like wine in Japan. But, wine's not free, is it? Unless it's communal wine or buy one get one free.

My very basic knowledge of Japanese has never been used other than reading manga, web-sites and playing through the odd imported video-game. I've never actually had to speak anything. So that should be fun, I think!

On a semi-related note, I've received my application back from SOAS. I'm a candidate for this year's Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December, albeit just the newbie level(4)! I'm not quite sure how badly I'll do, but as long as there are lots of questions concerning memes on 2channel, then I should be fine!