Is it lame to write a blog post about a place you don’t recommend? I went to the Transportation Museum in Omiya, about 30 minutes north of Ueno, because several Japanese people recommended it to me. To be honest, though, I see so many trains every day in Japan that it just wasn’t very interesting. The other thing was that all the displays seemed to be about the trains themselves rather than the people they carried, the workers, or how they affected society.
There were a lot of excited-looking kids there, but unless you’re a real testu-kichi (railroad geek), I’d give this place a miss.

The museum started off  well with this jinsha, a human operated railway car. The first one was built in 1895, and they operated until 1930.

This beautiful old railway car reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago. I saw a poster for a ride on a steam locomotive and thought it might be interesting. When I got there, though, it was only the locomotive that was old-fashioned. The rest of the cars, which had conveniently been obscured by smoke in the poster, were just regular JR train cars, so I basically just rode on a regular train for an hour.

Japan’s first steam locomotive.

They blow the train’s whistle and rotate it around on an old turntable every day at noon.

The museum is really crowded, far from Tokyo, and expensive (1,000 yen for admission plus 630 yen train　fare from Ueno).

The museum’s English homepage is at: http://www.railway-museum.jp/en/index.html

At the Air Force show in Iruma City last week I managed to get these shots of two of the contestants for the annual Miss Air Force competition. They are not actual members of the Japanese Air Force, rather local students selected for their academic achievements as well as their beauty. I kind of like the first girl, but I think the second girl won. How often do you get to see beautiful women in kimono be driven in camouflage jeep? Not very often I assume.

Yesterday I went for a long walk with a good friend, Kotomi, around a big park in southern Saitama prefecture. It was a perfect day, sweet autumn sun, warm winds and just the right seasonal chill. On the way back we came across a little shop selling these very traditional Japanese sweets called Dango. Kotomi tried a skewer of andango while I went for a variety I have never seen before, the kurumimisodango (hazelnut-miso-dango). Fantastic! I am a huge fan of all kinds of dango, and there’s nothing better than finding the local speciality dango and try it while traveling around Japan.

Interestingly, the dango that my friend had is made from the same azuki beans that were used for the Pepsi I wrote about earlier this week. Have a look! Mochi (the mashed rice part of the dango) is used is so many traditional sweets in Japan. One of my favorite being the ichigodaifuku (strawberry and azuki bean paste covered in sugared mochi) and also the coffedaifuku (a local speciality of Nerima Ward in Tokyo, with a coffee flavored bean paste instead of the strawberry). What’s your favrite dango or daifuku?

If you want to see popular music concerts in Japan, coming in fall is a great time. Many universities have something like their school festivals around this time, and they often have fairly big name (Japanese) acts playing at the schools. Some singers hit five or more schools and the tickets are pretty cheap, and because some of the schools are pretty small, you can get rather close to the band. We went to see a triple bill of Dohzi-T (童子-T), BENI and YU-A at Rissho University in Saitama. They played for only an hour and a half, and each singer got maybe four or five songs. It was inside the school auditorium, so it was not very fancy, but because there were barely 500 people there, you could be very close to the action!  There was only a single DJ and then the singers; no other live musicians or anything.

Unfortunately no pictures of the bands, but I think it is a great (and slightly different) way to experience the bands in Japan. Check the artist websites for links. To buy the tickets for this specific concert, I had to email someone at the University who was organizing the tickets, and then pay at a bank by bank transfer (振込み). If you don’t have your own bank account at a Japanese bank, you have to go to a branch of the bank used by the University to pay. E.g. the destination account was with Resona bank, so I had to go to a Resona bank branch to pay.

Earlier this week I visited the air force base closest to Tokyo, in Iruma city up in Saitama prefecture. Once a year the base throws on a big air show and this years sunny but cold weather drew about 220 000 people. It’s free and just 30 mins by train from Tokyo so I was very surprised to not see more than a handful of obviously foreign people there. The main event of the air show is obviously the Japanese Air Acrobatic team, the Blue Impulse and their Kawasaki T-4 Trainers. They performed a stunning air show complete with sky writing of fearsome precision. I did my best to keep up with them but shooting planes moving at over 800km/h with a slow Sigma 50-500mm lens into the sun is not the easiest of photographic tasks. I was blinded so bad by the glare my eyes are still smarting. Still, to get even this sort of focus surprised me. I hope you enjoy them! Obviously my favorite is the first of the images, isn’t that an amazing formation? Half way through a huge loop coming straight at us. If you look hard enough you can even see the two pilots (and the one guy flying solo, plane number 2).

I will post more pictures from the Air Show later next week, I have a busy weekend in front of me, so please enjoy these Friday Fun photos! I’ll make sure that I can visit the Air Show next year again. The best fun for free you can have in early November!

Tokyo’s Samba Carnival in Asakusa and the Awaodori Festival in Koenji are amazing spectacles, but they’re also horribly crowded. If you don’t want to be straining to peer over people’s heads, you have to be there at least an hour before things start.
If you don’t mind seeing things on a slightly smaller scale, you can see pretty much the same thing  a few weeks before in a setting where the crowds are much, much thinner.
During the Nagashi Odori part of the festival, which is based on part of the Awaodori Festival, you can pretty much walk around wherever you want. The event gets a little more crowded when the samba dancers come, but it’s nothing compared to the big Tokyo festivals.

I was a little worried the grannies were going to strip off their yukata to reveal sexy samba outfits. Luckily, there seems to be no overlap between the participants in the two events.

The Tatara Matsuri is held on the first weekend in August. The dancing is on Saturday, and then there is a fireworks display on Sunday night. The nagashi-odori starts at 5:00 and the samba is from 6:10. The fireworks on Sunday are from 7:45 to 8:30. The dancing is within walking distance from Kawaguchi Station, but the fireworks are held at the Kawaguchi Autoracing Track. There’s a free shuttle bus. Check out the festival’s website at: http://www.cablenet.ne.jp/~tatara/index.html
(Japanese only) for more information.

Whoa, blogs two days in a row? No way.

Anyway…
Today I went on a field trip through Waseda’s International Community Center to Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture. Originally, I wasn’t picked to go when I applied, but there was a cancellation so I got to go. Sweet deal.

Today is the day Waseda was founded 127 years ago, so we have today off…and for some reason the school is closed tomorrow too. Probably because we had class on the last national holiday. Anyway…instead of sleeping in (and going to Disney with everyone else) I had to wake up at 6:30 to leave for Saitama at 7:45. Sadly, everyone else on my floor didn’t bother sleeping until at least 2am keeping me awake, but I digress…

There were a lot of different people on the trip, which was a nice change from the SILS people I see everyday. There were a lot of grad students, and surprisingly, my friend and I were the only Canadians and another friend the only American. There are usually a lot of Americans wherever I go. But anyway…

We made a quick pitstop on the way to Saitama. I wanted to take pics of the place, but I realized I forgot to put my batteries back into my camera after I finished charging them. Thankfully, I was able to buy batteries at the resting station…which I discovered don’t come in size names like AA, AAA, etc. I think I had to get size +3 or something like that. After that, we made our way to a farm to make soba! The farm we were at had other things like a strawberry house, grapevinces, mochi making and mushrooms, but pretty much everything was closed except for the soba making stuff for us. It was really cool, but I can appreciate handmade soba that much more after making it myself (well not exactly myself…we were in groups of 4, but still). At one point we lost our tray of soba, which was weird considering you can’t really lose a tray of soba. It turned out there was a mix up with the group next to us and we managed to find our soba. Oh man it was good. Really filling too.

Before

After

We had some free time to roam around the farm, which had some really nice scenery.

Grapes!

After the soba farm, we went for a 3km boatride along the Nagatoro Gorge. I wasn’t expecting to be in such a small boat…I guess I’m used to Toronto boat tours where you’re basically in a yacht haha. It was really cool though.

We came across a shooting for some TV show. Sadly, I didn’t recognize anyone

The water was really shallow, and we passed by big rocks at a really close distance.

After the boat ride, we got to walk around a little shop area. Lots of nice things…didn’t buy anything though. Okay I lie, I bought soft cream because it was cheap and I wanted ice cream.

On the way back, we watched most of Howl’s Moving Castle, which is so much more interesting when you know Japanese history (not to say that it isn’t already interesting).

And now I’m exhausted. But it was nice to get out of Tokyo. Disney would have been cool, but there’s no way I would go out to the inaka of Saitama on my own, so it was definitely worth it.

Na Primavera (em maio) em alguns parques do Japão, na província de Hokkaido e Saitama, florescem flores do tipo sakura (cerejeiras), formando um tapete rosa:

Chichibu Harp Bridge

Chichibu shrine (秩父神社)

Chichibu (秩父市, Chichibu-shi) is in the westernmost part of Saitama, Japan. Most of the area are mountains, and river. The clear upper reaches of the Arakawa, one of the large rivers pouring into Tokyo Bay, run through the valleys and mountains of the Chichibu area. The city was developed as a marketplace of the district as well as the town around Chichibu Shrine. Chichibu gets very hot in summer and very cold in winter, as is typical in inland areas. The area has a religious atmosphere, having 34 sacred places that are dedicated to Kannon, a Buddhist deity known as the Goddess of Mercy.

Attractions of the city include:

• Chichibu Muse Park
  

  Sunset on Mitsumine

• Chichibu Shrine
• Lake Chichibu Sakura
• Shibasakura (Beginining April – May)
• Thirty-Four Temples of Chichibu
• Chichibu matsuri (3^rd December)
• Kawase matsuri (19^th and 20^th July)
• Mountains For Hiking
• SL Train (Traditional Train)

View Larger Map
Além de ser uma super arena multi-uso (abriga de shows a lutas de vale-tudo) fica ali o John Lennon Museum

Japanese designer Kazutoyo Yamamoto of Dessence has created a beauty salon featuring hanging vines in Saitama, Japan. Called Garden By Be Area, the project aims to bring the outdoors in by separating booth-like spaces with suspended vines. A ceiling of foliage covers the hair-washing area, which features parquet flooring and wooden cabinets. The glass-fronted waiting room features two large trees and wooden furniture. The exterior of the salon is clad in a reflective, faceted surface.

Via & more: Dezeen

Cute but bites.

Not Tokyo, but Kawaguchi City, Saitama.

So, at the beginning of vacation, I spent some time with the host parents and visited Kawagoe, specifically the area known as Ko-edo, much of which still has intact buildings from the Edo period. There’s a delightful little streets full of candy stores, koi-filled canals, and assorted ephemera. While there, I had some chestnut soft-serve icecream, saw a slew of turtles, and bought some micro-brewed beer (I know! I can’t believe it either!!!).

Later, I stopped by the shopping street – Crea Mall.  Man, I did a lot of shopping back in the day.  And some karaoke…  you know the story.