Konichiwa!

Oh Japan. I have never really had the urge to travel to an Asian country. I'm not really sure why, it had just never interested me. But, out of all the Asian countries Japan was top on the list. It was amazing. I think now that I've been there, I would travel to any Asian country if given the chance.

My flight over wasn't as horrible as expected. There was nobody next to me, so that was nice. I met Maggie and Allie in the Tokyo airport. We then took a long bus ride to get to our hotel.

Allie had her work conference the first 3 days or so, so Maggie and I were off on our own. I thought it would be a little more difficult not knowing the language, but everyone was very friendly and I am quite good at pointing at what I want to eat. Tokyo is a very visual city; if there was space on a building, there was some sort of sign filling it. One of my favorite things was seeing Tommy Lee Jones posted on almost all of the outdoor vending machines.

My two most favorite things that we did were attending part of a sumo wrestling tournament and going to the Tsukiji Fish Market. First up, sumo. Let me discuss about Maggie and I going to get the tickets. [She'll probably hate me for this.] We had a concierge at the hotel and we asked her how to go about getting tickets for sumo. She told us we had to go to a convenience store and then she filled out a post-it with kanji and told us to give it to someone there. So, Maggie spots the convenience store and we go to the check out counter and hand the post-it to the young kid. He nods his head and then we eventually get through it. He just had to know how many tickets and then we paid him. After we leave, Maggie turns to tell me, "I feel like we've succeeded." I just started laughing and said, "Congratulations on handing over a post-it. For all you know we could have been sticking up the store." I do admit, it was a relief that it wasn't a big ordeal, and I couldn't have made it without Maggie's mad hand-off skills.

Anyway, sumo was extremely amazing — the tradition of the whole event — the huge guys that you don't think should be able to move like that, or hike their leg up that high. I wasn't sure what to expect of the crowd. I've just associated the Japanese culture as pretty reserved and quiet, man I was wrong. Towards the end of the day, when it was getting closer to the grand champion match, they were going crazy. It was pretty exciting.





The fish market was incredible too. Since it's not built really for tourists you were pretty much sacrificing yourself while jumping between motorized carts to get to the main area. They seriously never slowed down. But, I guess, who can blame them — we're getting in the way of there work — well we were trying not to.



Maggie and I did a walking tour with two locals. That was pretty cool. We went to two temples. At one of them they tried to teach us the ritual of what to do before you go in. First, you wave the incense over you. [I got that part down.] Second, you are supposed to clean your hands and mouth. I botched that up every way possible. I just watched what you were supposed to do, and didn't pay attention to what areas I was supposed to get the water from. Maggie's cracking up at this point. I think I was going to wash my hands and drink dirty water. At least my mistakes would have only affected me and not the masses. I mean, it's not like I spit in the clean water the people would drink. I do have some class. :)

Most of our time was spent in Tokyo, but we did venture out on a group tour to Nikko, which had an elaborate Buddhist/Shinto shrine. It was nice to get out of the city and the architecture of this place was amazing. We were on a bus for a while and I had to use the restroom when I got there, so Allie and I headed off to the restroom. When we are waiting, we see these old ladies coming out of the back stall with their pants rolled up to their knees. Disgusting. Of course I have to go into one of those. I open the door and can't believe that there's a 'squatty potty.' Basically, it's a hole in the ground. Anyway, the floor is entirely wet, so I'm concerned I won't be able to squat down and hit the hole. With my luck I'd either pee all over myself [which would not be great for the other people I'm on the tour with] or I would fall over into the nastiness. So instead, I decided I'd just hold it and wait in the stall and act like I'm going, and then leave. So the whole trip was a waste. I come out and tell Allie I couldn't do it — and she was like, 'do what?' She had a normal toilet. Grrrr. [The toilets in the city were something else though. They had an arm on one side with a bunch of buttons. You could play music to cover up not so flattering human noises. You could push a button for a bidet like experience. There were others, but I can't remember what they were. Oh and most of the toilet seats were heated, which to me, seems a bit gross, like it was a warm breeding ground for germs. Yuck!]

The other highlight from our trip was the fact that I got attacked by a wild monkey. Not even kidding. After our trip to the shrine we went to a waterfall. On the bus, the lady warned us about the wild monkeys and that we should be careful. Easy. I understand it, but a couple morons thought it was a tough concept to grasp on to. As we are walking to the waterfall there were a group of tourists gathered together taking pictures. They see a female monkey and a baby. I try to get out of the way because the situation had the potential to get ugly. The guy in front of me gets entirely too close and the male monkey comes out of nowhere and spots me first. I'm just standing still thinking please attack the dumb ass in front of me. At least he deserved it — ha. The monkey bared it's teeth and was staring at me. Then it jumps on the rail and grabs my arm. I'm thinking, "Please don't jump on my back, please don't jump on my back." I wouldn't know what to do if he did that. I can guarantee no one would help me though, they would all probably by vying for the next youtube hit. I figured I would have a much better chance if it jumped on my front. At least I would have total use of forward punching motions. Luckily, I didn't have to resort to anything because it let go and started to terrorize some other idiot. The tour guide was like, "I told you to not bother them." It wasn't even me! I asked Maggie or Allie if they got any pictures and they didn't :( Maggie did happen to tell me that she would have punched it in the face for me, and I told her she wouldn't punch shit in the face for me. [feb. 25, 09 — I would like to make an amendment, because if I don't, someone will use my face as their punching bag. I hereby state that Maggie has punched people — maybe not in the face — for me. I do appreciate all of her efforts and would like to go on record and retract the last statement I made about her. And, that is all I can do because I ran out of all the legal jargon I know.]



Oh, I just thought of something else. For Maggie's birthday we went to a place with a sushi conveyor belt. It was good fun. I loved walking into the restaurants and then again when we walked out because they always yelled at us. Good things, I hope. But, even if they were yelling 'stupid Americans, two o'clock,' it still would have made me feel good. Anyway the sushi was quite good. Next, we ventured off to the Absolut Ice Bar. Before we went in they gave us parkas and gloves. Everything was made out of ice; the bar, the glasses, and the tables. It was a bit chilly. The bartender said they're only allowed to work for an hour and then they switch out. And, the guy who stayed there the longest stayed about six hours. Brrr.







It was an amazing time and I would recommend Tokyo to everyone.

Photos, photos everywhere

Well after two big trips, I have a ton of photos. I do want to try and post them all online for everyone to see, but it's going to take some time. I'll see what I can do :) In the meantime, enjoy the following.

The Loch Ard Gorge

Great Barrier Reef

Kristine

Great Barrier Reef

Australia Zoo [Steve Irwin Zoo]

[I had no idea that koalas have two thumbs and three fingers . . . ridiculous.]

mmmm . . . fish and chips

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

We all knew that was coming, being that it's the only Japanese I know. And why am I singing vintage Styx songs? I leave for Tokyo tomorrow morning! I am pretty excited, but super bummed that I am not experiencing the heaven that is business class. I'll try to manage. Anyway, I meet up with Maggie and Allie in Tokyo and we're there until the 19th of January. I'm getting geared up for some sake, karaoke and sumo wrestling.

I also wanted to inform you about the random shenanigans that pursued since I had last written.

My cousin flew into Sydney and we stayed there for two days. Sydney was nice, but it felt like Chicago. We went to all of the normal touristy sites, the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. Two days were definitely enough. Especially when our last night in Sydney ended like this . . .

Kristine and I were in a 4 person mixed room at a hostel in Sydney. The other two who shared our room flew in from Denmark that day and asked us to be quiet when we got up. [We had to get up at four in the morning in order to catch a flight.] We agreed and then went to bed. In the middle of the night we heard the girl come in half popped — it took her a while to quiet down, but she finally did. Then for some reason I got up at 2 a.m. to find this girl feeling around our bunk bed. [I was on the bottom.] She turns around to look at me and I said 'excuse me?' She turns back around and then back to me and then she drops trou and proceeds to squat in the direction of my face. It was definitely another 'why me?' experience. At this point I figure she's sleep walking and I'm nervous to wake her up. So all I could think of to say was, "I'm not the bathroom!" She turns around to look at me again and then pulls up her pants and goes into the corner of the room. All the while I'm thinking that we only have two hours left in this room and she better not shit in the corner. At this point she's yelling she needs to go the train station and she's ripping stuff off of the walls. She finally finds the door and runs out into the hallway. It was pretty crazy. At least out of all of the hostels I stayed in that was the only problem I had.

After that craziness, we got on a plane and headed to Cairnes for a few days. It was a definite change in weather and it was a gorgeous place. We went on a two day boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef. It was amazing. I was a little nervous on the boat trip out because I wasn't feeling too good. There were quite a few people puking. Luckily, I kept myself together. Anyway, since we aren't divers, we snorkeled a lot. The first boat we were on made it a little tough because we went out with the day trippers and there were tons of people, so it got a little crowded snorkeling. Then later in the day we were transferred to the overnight boat. That was nicer because fewer people and most of them scuba dove, so we weren't running into people when snorkeling.

There were 18 guests and 19 employees. It was great because if you wanted to, you could stay on the boat and be a hostie, which means working in exchange for room and board and getting to dive as much as you wanted to. We were asked if we wanted to stay, but we didn't. First of all, we didn't know it was even an option and second, we had a flight the next day. Maybe if I was a diver it would have been cool, but I think there's only so much snorkeling a person can do.

After Cairnes we flew to Brisbane to pick up another car and drive down to Sydney. The first thing we did when we went to Brisbane was drive to the Australia [Steve Irwin] Zoo. It was pretty amazing. We were able to pet koalas and feed kangaroo and elephants. It was great. Then from there we did a bridge climb that night on Story Bridge in Brisbane.

The next day we left and drove down the coast taking our time, stopping when we wanted. There were tons of gorgeous beaches, friendly people and good food. We drove about three days and then we were back in Sydney in order to make our flight back to LA. This time we had a better night stay. We stayed in the train station and we got to sleep in a rail car. It was neat because we were right next to the real track. When we woke up that next morning there was a steam engine parked right outside our window with people dressed up in flapper dresses and pin striped suits. It was funny because Kristine and I were looking out at the train and then everyone else was looking in, waving at us because they were surprised to see us in the rail car.

We made it back to LA where I stayed for about a week hanging out with family. I can't believe how fast the two months went. It doesn't feel like I even went at all. I think that's why I took so many pictures, just to be sure I won't ever forget. I'll be sure to add a few photos when I return from Japan.