How to Lose Your Camera

It looks like there has been a serious wrench in the gears as far as getting further pictures posted: My camera went missing yesterday. I'm not sure where or how exactly; it just noticed it wasn't around my neck anymore when I arrived on the ferry near Hiroshima. I immediately went back across on the ferry and walked backward along the path we took to the last place I remembered taking a picture. The ferry staff also checked the exact boat I'd been on and said it wasn't there. I thought I might have taken it off in a restaurant (eel on rice, was pretty good otherwise...) but the staff couldn't find it at the table. None of the shops I'd been in seemed to have it either.

I tried to leave a message at the police box, but the officer was on patrol, so I left a message at the information desk for the ferry instead. The lady there said she would call the hotel if they found anything. I don't have very high hopes for this, however, so it looks like I won't be photographing anything else.

This is now Sunday morning. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to figure out how to get to any of the Hiroshima branches, so it looks like we can't make church today. There do seem to be some branches in this area, but they're in rather distant prefectures, and I couldn't see any sane way of getting there by public transport. We're going to head to the site of the peace park (where the atom bomb was dropped some 62-odd years ago) and look around. Yesterday we went to Miyajima, which has been a shrine for about 1,200 years. There's a very nice torii gate built far out on the beach, and at high tide the gate and the shrine look like they are floating. We also took a cable car up to a station on the mountains, and I hiked to the peak. It was a bit hazy, but there was still a good view of the ocean on all sides. I believe that if you can make it on a clear day (which would probably mean that it would be a cold day), you can see a goodly dozen other islands poking out of the surrounding seas.

I bought some traditional maple-leaf sweet buns for a souvenir, and was having good fun until I discovered the lost camera. That pretty much ruined the day, but I'll get over it.

Shinkansen does not mean "Bullet Train"

Bullet trains are a nickname given to the shinkansen by the English-speaking world. In fact, shinkansen means "new trunk line," since it is the new "backbone" line for getting across Japan. They do look kind of bullet shaped, though, and they go fast. I took a few videos from my camera looking through the train window; things close to the track whiz by in a blur and are impossible to make out, while the background rushes along at a frenetic pace. Unfortunately, the video clips are very large (50 MB for 30 seconds), and I don't have the programs with me for re-encoding them, and I don't want the hotel to get furious at me for uploading 50 megabytes, so you'll have to remind me to show these to you when I get home. Actually, the picture uploading isn't working from here either, so I'll have to show you my pictures from a different connection too.

We did finally manage to do some laundry before leaving. There was a laundromat (called a "coin laundry" in Japan) near Tokyo station, and we went there. It was sweltering hot out, and even sweltering hotter inside the laundry, but our luggage is now loaded with enough clothing to last out the rest of the trip. While we were there, a fellow from upstairs was wondering around looking for four foreigners who had a reservation at his restaurant. They never showed up, but we went up to take a look. It was on the third floor of an apartment building, and it was something like a tempura bar. We got a lot of tempura seafood with rice, miso soup, and a couple of other sides. It was really good. He had a box of tomatoes there and told us they were going to try doing them tempura style to see what would happen. Although, as he said, "pretty much anything you tempura is going to taste good." He then walked us for a few blocks until he was sure we knew where the train station was, and practiced his English on us, which was good fun.

We're out of Tokyo now, and in a much nicer hotel. The old hotel was in a good location, but it was small and the bathroom was a bit unpleasant. This hotel feels positively decadent, and although it cost a bit more I think it's definitely worth it. The bathroom sparkles, the room is reasonably spacious (with room to put the luggage somewhere AND sit down), and the restaurants look very good. We had Chinese food for dinner, of all things, and it was kind of like Chinese food done Japanese style, which is really interesting.

Oh, in all the restaurants in Japan, they hand you a hot, wet face cloth before you eat. It shows up steaming in a wooden dish, and it's for cleaning your hands. If it's a really cheap road-side type place, they'll give you a wet cloth in a little plastic bag and it won't be hot, but it's nearly always there. Since the weather is hot and humid right now, and you tend to get "train hands" from riding on the public transport, this is an awesome tradition. I think we should steal it.

Tokyo Disney Resort

We have to get up kind of early, so unfortunately this post will be very short.

1. We're going to ride a shinkansen [train] tomorrow. Hooray! They go about 200 miles an hour, which is fricken awesome.

2. It's a little hard to find a laundromat in Tokyo. We need one.

3. Tokyo Disney Resort was fun. For some reason, Stitch has completely supplanted Mickey as the mascot here -- yeah, the little blue alien from Lilo & Stitch. He is stupid popular. There's piles and piles of Stitch merchandise, and the sign at the entrance reads "Tokyo Disney Resort/
Find Stitch!" There's a Stitch on every ride, I think, and a bunch of other places as well. Sure he's cute, but ... really? He even has his own dedicated parade, complete with some kind of 'Aloha' song.

4. Tapioca in a mango juice drink? Weird but ... kinda gooey. Fun.

5. I ate a Disney churro. It was pretty good.

6. "It's a Small World" as a song still sticks in your head, even if it's in Japanese.

Tomorrow will probably be comparatively boring, so maybe I'll have time to upload photos tomorrow. Maybe.

Yokohama ni Yokoso

We're going to Disneyland Tokyo tomorrow, which means I need to try and get enough sleep tonight, which means the post will probably be short. I'm sure you'll all manage.

We spent the morning in our hotel room, largely because I had a bad sore throat and needed to vegetate for a while. The sore throat hasn't gone away, but it has faded over the course of the day, so I do hope it doesn't erupt into anything worse. I've discovered that hot, humid weather is actually fairly pleasant when you're not feeling well!

We went to Yokohama (the post title means 'welcome to Yokohama'). This is the second time we've taken a field trip there. This time we went to Chinatown with my sister. It is possible to tell the difference between Japantown (i.e. everything) and Chinatown, but it admittedly takes a trained eye. I'm told the main trick is that in Chinatown, everything is red, that being a lucky color in China, and of course Chinese text looks a little bit different (but you sort of have to know Japanese to notice this). Yokohama's Chinatown is the largest in Japan, and for this reason Yokohama has great Chinese food. We didn't avail ourselves of this, however--no, we had something else in mind.

The idea was to take my sister's host family out to dinner at a shabu shabu restaurant, but apparently Nathan didn't hang onto the check tightly enough and the dad stole it from us when he wasn't looking. So, in fact, we were treated to dinner by said host family (on the understanding that we'd return the favor if they were ever in the U.S. ... which we would). Shabu shabu is a 'boil it yourself' buffet. You have a divided pot with water on one side and something like soy milk on the other, both of them boiling. You have very thinly sliced bits of pork and beef, which you pick up with your chopsticks and dump in the boiling water. I think "shabu shabu" is the sloshing sound from rolling meat around in the water. The meat only takes a few seconds to cook, so you can stuff yourself pretty effectively. There's also a wide selection of vegetables and noodles available for boiling, and it was really delicious. The hardest bit is trying to figure out how to get the grated carrot back out using nothing but chopsticks!

Although we were defeated on the bill-paying front, we managed to sneak in a box of See's candy which I brought along. I also had some packets of American money for Rin & Ren, the two kids. I have some photos with the family now, which I'll show off to anyone who asks--but probably not on the blog. Unfortunately, I think the family still wins on the hospitality front, because they then decided to drive us all the way back to Akihabara, which was terribly convenient for us and a longish drive for them. Thus defeated in the hospitality game, we plot revenge if they ever visit the states--maybe we can rent a limmo? ;-)

Tomorrow: Disneyland!

The ABC Song

Today was "hang out with Eve and Rissy" day. We slept in pretty late, so didn't get all that much done this morning. Probably the biggest thing we're trying to solve is the problem of doing laundry in Japan. It turns out this is really difficult -- laundromats do exist, but there aren't any nearby. Taking a taxi would probably work, but of course we'd rather not (taxis are about $20 each way I'm guessing). For those of you who think I have a lot of money, I'd like to point out that part of the reason for this is that I hate spending it stupidly, and taking a taxi to the laundromat is pretty high on my stupid list.

So, Hang Out Day started off with a boat ride. Tokyo is a waterfront city with a bay to the south, and there is a company that offers "Tokyo Bay Cruises." These are not quite as luxurious as the name makes it sound--there's no tour guide, and the boat clips along at power boat speeds, and you end up somewhere different than where you started--so it's really more of a ferry with a decorative passenger compartment. There weren't very many passengers, so we were able to sit out in the open on the back of the ship, which was fun. Tokyo is a massive city, kind of like an extended version of Manhattan. The cruise must have traveled a good 10-15 miles and it was high rise buildings the whole way. The photo I've included here was taken from the boat, and shows part of a forest of particularly tall high rise apartments on the shore.

Whimsically enough, we ended up on the boat to the Asakusa shrine, which was a convenient way of checking two sites off the to-do list in one trip. Asakusa is very different from the Meiji shrine. Instead of a huge forest of trees, it's surrounded by avenues of tourist-vampire shops. The shrine itself is taller and more impressive than the Meiji shrine, and done in red, black, white, and gold. It lacks the quiet gravity of the Meiji shrine, but it's a lot more energetic. There is a nice garden off to one side, and the picture I've included is a pair of wooden miniature shrines from the garden. I actually have no idea what they are or what they're for, but they look cool. You can see part of the massive main shrine towering over the trees in the background. Honestly, the company was more fun than the actual shrine, but the shrine was good too.

After Asakusa, Eve set off on her self-selected mission to acquire ... um, I don't remember what. Possibly little rectangular brownie-like candies. We might also have been pursuing handkerchiefs. Whatever the case, our newly acquired mission led us to the nearest 100-yen shop. The shop is several stories of aisles packed with goods that all cost (you guessed it): 105 yen. I acquired some sugary snacks (Japan has better gummy candies) and some pottery. Then we went to dinner and ate food. I ate raw fish, Clarissa had a cook-at-your-table sukiyaki plate (that's meat and vegetables boiled in a nummy broth), Eve got a fried then boiled (yeah, weird) pork cutlet which she says was wonderful, and Nathan discovered that yes, they really do expect you to cut up your meatloaf with chopsticks.

At some point, Clarissa decided she needed to acquire some figurines. The stores near the hotel had closed, but Yodobashi Akiba (near the train station) was still open, so we headed that way. Yodobashi has an entire floor of action figures. Eve particularly enjoyed the entire aisle dedicated to Ultraman figures--a show so stupid that it's awesome. If you're curious about the show, you can give Youtube a browse, but be warned: Your eyes may never forgive you, if they can survive your brain oozing out of your ears. After that little nugget of entertainment, we headed back to our hotel.

The title of the post is because Eve sung us the alphabet song, which was really cute. If you've never heard Eve sing before, you should browbeat her into doing so, because it's awesome. Then the girls headed home (for some reason they have to get up in the morning) and that brings you up to now, at which point, dear reader, I have no idea what happens next. I'm probably going to go downstairs and buy a drink. Maybe I'll get one of the sodas with gummy candies in it.

Visit to the Meiji Shrine

We visited the Meiji shrine today. Before I get into that, I'll mention that I'm acquainted with one of the priests who works at the shrine, but we didn't see him today. It's a pity, because he's devilishly hard to get hold of. We've tried telephone (to the shrine; we don't have a home number) and email, and we don't have any other contact information. I don't have any ideas left for getting hold of him.

The shrine and grounds are impressive. The first picture is the Torii gate (rhymes with story) near the entrance to the shrine. There are two of these, both about the same size. The huge posts are each cut from a single Japanese cypress, which the sign tells us were 1,500 years old. The walk to the shrine stretches over about a kilometer of wide, graveled walkway (you can get a feel for how wide the path is from the picture). The walkway is surrounded by trees, and there was an old man with a wide broom walking his way along, sweeping up all the leaves that fell onto the path. This struck me as a sisyphean task, especially when autumn comes around, but the walkway is remarkably well groomed, so I have to hand it to the old guy with the broom.

The shrine itself is a huge stone courtyard with two spots for trees. On the right is a single tree surrounded by racks of votive tablets. Apparently, what you do is buy a wooden tablet for 500 yen (about 3 or 4 dollars) and then write a prayer on it. You then hang this around the divine tree, and the priests will offer up the prayers at some point. I'm not sure what that involves -- burning them or something, perhaps -- but the practice seems very popular. There were several thousand of the tablets hanging there in rows and columns and stacks, completely surrounding the tree. The tablets were written in a variety of languages, so this seems to be a popular practice. The handful I noticed mostly seemed to be things like "that my family may be happy and prosperous" or "I want my boyfriend to find his way back to me."

Further into the shrine is the area where you go to offer prayers. They have rows of tables with wooden slats instead of a surface. The idea is that you chuck a few coins into the slats and they fall through into a collection box of some kind underneath. You then clap your hands a few times (to make the gods of the shrine pay attention, I think) and then bow to the enshrined gods while offering up any prayers you have. I took a miss on this bit (something about the second commandment), but it still made me think.

One of the things that "you have to be there" to notice is that the prayer room of the Meiji shrine really does have a certain feel to it. It was very much a spiritual feeling--like a good home, or like a temple. It crossed my mind that while the gods of that temple may be a little hard of hearing, I think those prayers are still being heard. I suppose the visitors won't all get the things they're asking for, but I think that's all right. Getting what you want is not really the purpose of prayer anyway.

The outer part of the shrine has a large garden that has been cultivated for several centuries. The garden is spectacularly well groomed. Of course, there's something kind of funny about the way they do it. The garden is supposed to give you a kind of 'back to nature' feel, so everything is arranged in a flowing, organic way. By comparison, English style gardens are a lot more geometrically arranged.

The picture here is from the iris garden. You can't see it, but every single one of those irises has a little wooden tablet with several kanji characters on it posted next to the plant. I can't read very well still but I think they might have been family names. Perhaps you can donate to the shrine and get an iris planted?

You might also notice the fence along the side of the walkway. The fence is made entirely of woven bamboo strips poked into the ground, woven into an interlocking pattern. And in a wonderful "you're in Japan" moment, as soon as we walked past that wooden canopy, there was a rest area filled with vending machines. I got a milky white drink with little chewy cubes in it, and it tasted great.

We also went to Harajuku and looked at all the costumed teenagers wandering about. I ate some sukiyaki, and we found the Apple store in Shibuya (after much asking around--most of the people we asked had never even heard of the company, which made things dead difficult). Oh, and it's gotten late, so I think I'll have to wrap it up now.

Yokohama Church

So, for some reason, I didn't take a picture of the church building in Yokohama, so you'll have to settle for this highly attractive Catholic church instead.

So, we went to church in Yokohama, largely because Clarissa persuaded us to do so. It was a lot of fun -- there was a nice fellow who translated sacrament meeting for us, and then taught Sunday school in English (there was a special "English only" class for us foreign types). There are a lot of foreigners in the ward (many Chinese?) so it has a cosmopolitan feel to it.

After church, we got invited to some kind of "family home evening" activity, where a Chinese guy was making noodles for everyone who showed up. It seems to have been aimed at the single adults, in which category both Nathan and I are abundantly qualified. The food was a cold noodle dish with a salty broth, chewy noodles, cucumber, ham, tomato, and omelet strips. It was really good. This was preceded by an amusing brief message about reverence from one of the bishopric.

After that, Clarissa's homestay family invited us over. They really do have a very nice house. We ended up eating dinner there (we were told that the mom had just done yakisoba noodles for 600 kids at a school function, and that doing dinner for five people was hardly any work at all by comparison). We also got lots of advice on stuff to do in Tokyo, and the dad drew various maps of places we could go. The conversations were built out of an amusing English/Japanese pidgin, since everyone spoke just a little of the other's language. The kids, Rin and Ren, are absurdly cute, and I totally spaced taking any pictures. We got invited back for Wednesday, so I'll have to take care of that then. I have some gifts to give them anyway, so being invited back is fortunate, cause I didn't bring them this time around.

Anyway, I'm trying not to stay up too late, which means not writing too terribly much. It's 11:30 already. Bye bye faithful reader! (I find it hard to believe there's much more than one).

A post from Japan

Well, I appear to be in Japan. Two days ago, I was getting a haircut, and I mentioned I was going to Japan, and the hairdresser said "Cool. Where's that?" So in order to avoid further stupid comments, I'll explain: Japan is a country. If you cross the ocean from California, you'll get there. It's very green and hot and muggy, at least in summer.

The first picture is some kind of twisty statue in Yokohama. This city is where my favorite youngest sister is staying. It is close to Tokyo, which is to say it takes about an hour on the train for us to get from our hotel to Yokohama. They have a kind of amusement park there with a ferris wheel, which we rode. I have a lot of photos taken from the ferris wheel, but I didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture of the ferris wheel itself. Interesting.

We left Utah Thursday morning and arrived in Japan on Friday afternoon. That might sound like it takes over 24 hours to get here, but it's mostly the time zone changes -- it really takes about 14 hours. My sister met us at the airport and I barely recognized her. She styled her hair to match the current Japanese fashion, and she was wearing a currently fashionable hat, which conspired to make her look different. Since she hasn't been posting pictures in her own blog, I'll stick one up for you.

The train ride from the airport to our hotel (in Akihabara, which is in central Tokyo) was really long--about 90 minutes, and the train was crowded enough that we had to stand the whole way. What made it seem twice as long is that we were carrying all our luggage with us. The luggage has this "neat" feature that it can roll in any direction, not just straight backward. This seems like a great idea until you realize it doesn't have any brakes! This means that on a train ride, it kind of wanders all over the place, and when there's people all around you it takes a lot of strenuous effort to keep it off of everyone's toes. On top of that, it doesn't roll too well when there's a lot of weight in it--Nathan's big luggage weighed a bit over 50 pounds, and the wheels completely gave out somewhere in the flight over. This makes it *very difficult* to move around, and we're busy making other plans for luggage.


For my final picture, I took a picture of a Japanese street scene. This was taken while hiking to the Square-Enix store to buy geeky products. The "differentness" of Japan really hits you when you're out on the streets. Simply wandering around the city, taking in all the sights and watching the people is a lot of the fun of being here. A lot of the buildings are a little dingy and grubby. Rather than focus on scrubbing the buildings till they sparkle (we'll call that the "Provo way"), they are instead covered from top to bottom with bright, cheesy advertising and signs. The entire city is covered in advertising of one sort or another, lots of bright colors, super-cute cartoon characters, and stylishly smug foreigners modeling exotic products. The Japanese love European-style sophistication, and most of their advertising uses Caucasians as models. The cacophony of advertising gives everything a noisy, cluttered feel, which is kind of fun but also kind of exhausting.

That's about all I have time for (and I probably won't be able to pump out a big post like this every day :P). I have church with my sister tomorrow, and need to go to bed to make it to the station in time.

Going camping!

There's a "Fathers & Sons" camp-out being held by the stake down at Utah Lake today. They're starting it out with a bike ride from Provo Canyon. We'll start at the Riverwoods, ride up the canyon to Vivian park, and then drive the breadth of Provo down to the Utah Lake state park. All told, it's probably an 8-10 mile ride.

I've heard grand plans to cook "the breakfast to end all breakfasts" the next morning. Some 10-15 odd years ago at another fathers & sons we took along a cheap frying pan and loads of bacon, onion, steak, potato, and butter. The whole thing was cooked over a campfire, and the result was a rather fascinating concoction of grease-loaded starch and protein. We've been looking for excuses to duplicate the success ever since, but lately the camp-outs have gotten in the habit of providing dinner for you. Since we've been foiled on the dinner front, we came up with amazing plans for breakfast. I guess we'll see how it goes soon enough.

I haven't forgotten about my promise to post some Zion pictures. I've merely procrastinated it repeatedly.