Moving.

As I posted earlier, I'm moving soon. That means currently a lot of my spare time is filled with packing and cleaning, and soon my spare time will be filled with unpacking. Because of that, be patient with me. I have a lot to say as always, I'm just too busy to say it.

If you have time, check out my documentary film making site here. It's school related, so it takes precedence over this.

Thanks for reading and thanks for being patient. I'll try to get something fun up soon.

The first day of my train trip in pictues (Mitaka to Osaka)

I wanted to show some more pictures of my trip.  This was the longest single day of train riding in my life, and you know what, I wasn't bored at all.  I had an amazing time, and would do it again if I got the chance.

I wrote a bit of a narrative with pictures here, so I won't tell the story again but I thought I'd show some pictures.

For starters, here's Mitaka.

That's the intersection I see daily with the train station in the background.  This was when I stepped away from the familiar into the unknown.

These pictures are between Shinagawa and Numazu

And here's my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean on this trip.

 

 And there's the tip of Mt. Fuji on the right:

 

Here's a bit more from the front of the train:

Here's some more ocean.  You can see I'm not the only one taking pictures.

 

Here is lovely Numazu. 

Numazu was a pretty sleepy town, I guess.  I was only there for a little while to get a break from riding a train and to see my traveling companion's friend who gave us some delicious hand made pastries.

The bird poop covered stone dog seemed a bit odd.  If it was clean, was it supposed to be a bench? 

  

Next to that was a fountain proclaming that Numazu apparently had Japan's best water.

 

I can't tell you if that's true, because as my travel partner pointed out, it isn't working right now. 

Next to that fountain was a statue of naked people.  Japan has plenty of nude statues, I've noticed.

 

And next to that was a giant old train wheel and front.

 

It clearly came from an old steam train (more on that later).  I guess it's an homage to the trains that helped build Japan to the industrial giant it is today.

And here's the shiny new Numazu staion. 

Back on the rails for a bit:

And then we stopped at Shimizu.

 As I said before, Shimizu is the home of Chibi Maruko Chan in the comics and TV show.  It's also supposed to be famous for it's tea, which was quite delightful.

 We had a while to kill until the next train, so we got some tea and the lovely lady at the tea shop told us that there was a Chibi Maruko Chan museum and shop near by but we had to take a bus, which didn't come for a while, so we just walked around while we were waiting.  I didn't take a picture but there was a NOVA with a 'now hiring' sign.  For those who don't know, NOVA was the most popular English school in Japan and they went bankrupt last year.  Now another company bought them and opened a few schools and is running them under the old name, but they're kind of rare.  It's sort of like seeing a Sinclair station or Bob's Big Boy in America.

Also, NOVA was known for hiring any native English speaker that had a pulse, and while some good people got NOVA jobs, many people who shouldn't have ended up working for them too.

Enough about NOVA.  How about some coffee? 

While wandering, I noticed an outdoor rock climbing wall on the other side of the tracks.  It looked pretty fun.

We rode a fairly old and ghetto bus to this shopping center that had the Chibi Maruk Chan "museum".   It was the first, and I think last bus of the whole trip (minus the return ride, of course).

The 'museum' was just a place inside a shopping center.  There was a room you could pay to go in, but I couldn't imagine what could be inside to make it worth my money to see, so we didn't go in.  The shopping center and surrounding harbor was lovely, though.

My only regret is that I didn't eat any sushi.  Apparently, sushi in this town was incredible.  I just wasn't hungry.

Anyways, it was time to get back on a train. 

I have no idea what this was, but it looked lovely.  Maybe a test driving track?

Around sunset, we met these two people who were traveling from Tokyo to Osaka.  They were also using local trains only because it was cheaper, and as one of them said "It's slower, so more relaxing."  I agreed.  Fast is efficient, but sometimes it's good to take the long way.

 

Here's a picture from Ogaki station.

This town looked a lot like Tachikawa, Omiya, Machida, or many of the other towns that lie just outside Tokyo.  It was kind of a bit run down and odd, I felt.

 

 I liked the USA spaceship though.

I also thought it was funny that in Tokyo, there's a chain of department stores called "Marui" (written 0101), but out here there was a department store called "Maruei"

 My opinion drastically changed after dinner.  We were told that this town was famous for inari-zushi (rice in a sweet fried tofu pouch) so found this tiny shop.  Apparently we were told bad information, but we got inari-zushi anyways and it was the best I've ever had.  The shop had an old woman and an old man (husband and wife?) that I'm pretty sure live upstairs.  The woman was quite funny and enjoyable and the man hardly ever spoke and just made sushi.  They were incredibly friendly and it was one of the best sushi experiences of my life, and only for 700 yen! (less than $8)  I couldn't believe it! I was worried we were going to have to spend a lot of money, but it was SO cheap, and WONDERFUL!  If I ended up in that neighborhood, I'd LOVE to go back.

After dinner it was too dark to take any good pictures, but I noticed I had this picture that I didn't put up.  This was after leaving Ogaki

And after a LONG day of travel, I MADE IT!!!  OSAKA!!!

Osaka was a site for sore eyes and I was happy to be there.  I ate some okonomyaki from a street vendor coupled with a cheap beer.  The okonomyaki was the best my traveling partner ever had (and my second best).

But, there's just something about Osaka.  It's a really special place.

And more on that next time.

Whoops.

I went to go partition my hard drive on Friday and in the process, it messed up and nuked all my data. Well, the truth is, I probably could have recovered it, but I was thinking about reinstalling anyways, so I just went ahead and did that.

In the process I was dumb, and a combination of using the first version of Firefox 2 (I don't like Firefox 3), being lazy about installing an antivirus program, and installing a shady file that I shouldn't have, gave me a pretty nasty virus. I was stupid, but after not having a virus for years, I got cocky. I wasted way too much time trying to fix it yesterday and decided that I'm just going to re-reinstall.

On the plus side, before I partitioned I was smart and backed up everything except for a few processed pictures, which since I have the originals, it's not that big of a deal.

Anyways, my posts will be a bit slow as I need to reinstall a ton of programs to get back to normal. So, as always, thanks for reading and I hope you don't hate me for the delay.

First day of the trip.

I heard about 18 きっぷ (or 18 ticket), which gives unlimited usage of local JR trains for 5 days for a low fee of 11,500 (about $125 at today's rate).  I can use a ticket any day and ride as many trains as I wanted for essentially $25 a day.  I could have used this to see the sights around Tokyo and it would have saved me money if I traveled a lot and exited the stations often, but I wanted to do something else.  I wanted to go to Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Nagoya, and then back home.

Osaka was the first stop, as I thought it would be nice to go there and then leisurely head back and do the heavy traveling on the first day.  By airplane, a trip to Osaka is a little more than an hour.  By shinkansen (bullet train) it's about 2 and a half hours.  By local trains, it's 8 and a half hours.

Here is the route I took on the first day of my trip.  I think I'm missing some stops, because it was a  LONG day of traveling  Starting in Mitaka, I met my traveling companion around 8 AM and left.

It of course was a regular Tuesday morning rush hour for most people.

From there, we went to the always overcrowded Shinjuku station.  It doesn't look like it, but it was pretty crowded.  This platform was just after a train left.

 

We boarded ye olde Yamanote line...

Then we stopped for a fast breakfast in Shinagawa.

 

We boarded our first train that took us outside of the Tokyo area.

  

 And rode it until the end of the line which was Atami.

After a short stop, we went to Numanzu.

There was a stopover here, and not a whole lot to talk about, but a cute town.  I seemed to have missed taking a picture of the train.  Oh well.

Then came Shimizu.

Shimizu was not a required stop, but was the hometown of the popular comic book and TV Charcter Chibi Maruko-Chan.  It was also known for great tea, and we were getting a bit sick of riding trains, so a well timed break was in order.  Look forward to seeing pictures from that town later.

I was kind of disappointed at the trains I was riding.  Not that they were bad, but they were bland.  I was expecting some crazy trains.  They were all pretty normal.  When I went to the hippie festival I rode some crazy trains, and this was WAY further out than that.

Anyway, feeling refreshed, we got back onto yet another boring train.

 

We had to change yet again in Toyohashi.

And we boarded yet another boring train.  Although I'm complaining now they were boring, I should be grateful that they were all comfortable.

Here's a map. 

Then it was off to Ogaki.

And finally, an interesting train!  It was pretty comfortable too.

 After Ogaki, we had to change trains at Maibara.

 

 While waiting at Maibara, there was a guy on the pay phone shouting very loudly and angrily.  First off, I hardly ever see anyone using the pay phone, and when I do, it's only for a little while, rarely a conversation.  Also, this guy was MAD!  I'm not sure what, but it was starting to creep me and my travel companion out.  Apparently he shouted "So, I'm a homosexual pervert, SO WHAT?!?"  In Tokyo, I would have been a little worried, but out here, a family, including a kid that was about 12 were laughing at him and saying "He's drunk.  Hahaha."  It was then I really felt the cultural difference between Kansai and Kanto (Tokyo) people.

The train that finally came was a bit interesting too. 

 Thankfully, the loud drunk didn't get on our train, or was quiet when he did.  either way, it was the last train before...

OSAKA!!!!  After a LONG day of traveling, I was FINALLY THERE!

Okay, we had to get on another train to get to our hotel, but this was close enough.  I didn't take pictures of the last train and stop because I was tired and I kind of felt like the last stop didn't matter as much, because I was IN Osaka.  It was close to 10:30 at this point.  An 8 and a half hour trip became 14 and a half hours.  That's what happens when you take your time.  It was great, though.

So, that was the trip.  I'm pretty sure I left at least one stop off and I'm sure there are some factual errors, but whatever.  Later on, I'm going to post pictures from this day, but that's the route for day one.

In total, this trip would have cost almost 9,000 yen, but thanks to my ticket, it only cost me 11,500 for the whole 5 day pass.

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories.