Alright, so just a little post to break the silence but I wanted to give you all an update on life and the blog. Some of you know that I’m back home now and am in the process of transferring all my files to a new computer. As they get transferred and edited I will be updating the blog with the remainder of my trip, including Spain, France, Germany, and Switzerland. So stay tuned for updates over the next couple weeks!

Scotland: land of stunning vistas; kilts; and the water of life, whiskey. Also home to some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. There was very little I didn’t love about Scotland (mainly the temperature, which was decidedly chilly) and with a whole bunch of new friends there was a big part of me that simply never wanted to leave.

I started out in Edinburgh, the grand medieval capital of Scotland. I was in love from the moment I arrived; ‘Old Town’ is really that, old. Built on the hill leading up to the beautiful Edinburgh castle, the city is a veritable labyrinth of back alleys and staircases winding their way between the medieval stone buildings. One of the easiest and most enjoyable cities to get lost in, and when you decided to get un-lost just head for the castle looming above the city. ‘New Town’ is only new in relation to the medieval old town and is a gorgeous Georgian area with wide boulevards on a logical grid system that’s in sharp contrast with the maze of the old city. The two are divided by the train tracks that cut through the center of Edinburgh.

My first day was spent exploring the massive Edinburgh Castle and wandering down the Royal Mile to the home of the Scottish Parliament, a hyper-modern building that, while neat, feels very out of place on this side of the tracks. The building was designed to resemble the Scottish Thistle when viewed from above (a feat possible by climbing one of the many paths up the small extinct volcano that is now Holyrood Park), and it actually kinda does if you apply a small dose of imagination. After my wanderings I spent the evening ensconced at a corner table in the back room of the Elephant House café, scribbling parts of my novel on the rather generously-sized paper napkins. And for those of you who don’t know, the back room of the Elephant House is where J.K. Rowling first penned Harry Potter on the rather generously-sized paper napkins.  Here’s to hoping that it’s the napkins that are lucky.

The next day I took a bus out to the coast to visit St. Andrew’s and the ruins there. The ruins were beautiful and plentiful, the coastline was majestic, and the town was quaint. And the weather was miserable. It couldn’t make up it’s mind whether it wanted to rain or snow, so it spent most of the day doing both, throwing in a good strong wind just for kicks. It was a good exercise in attempting to keep my camera dry and the water spots off my lens (even so a good chunk of my shots from that day have lovely spots on them). But it was still a good day and I’m glad I got to go, the ruins were worth it and the weather did add a certain atmosphere.

Saturday found the weather cool and partly cloudy, perfect weather for a nice hike up to Arthur’s Seat, the crater of the volcano. Well, due to not feeling great I didn’t make it up that far but it was still a nice hike and offered some pretty fantastic views of the city, the hills beyond and the harbor. Hung out on a little outcrop for nearly an hour just enjoying the view before heading  back down to the Royal Mile for the ever-wonderful institution of afternoon tea, complete with fresh scones with clotted cream and jam.

Feeling warmer and revitalized I took my camera for a walk and got delightfully lost in the winding back alleys of Edinburgh. Some day I want to take a model with me and get lost there; the possibilities for awesome shoots are everywhere, every corner holds something new and interesting. Finally it started to get dark and I managed to get myself un-lost and make my way back to my hostel to get ready for a night out. Went to a neat little club held once a month in the basement of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- themed pub and had my first real experience with just how much fun Scots can be. Everyone was just chill; they were just there to have a good time and they wanted to make sure everyone else had a good time too. Great fun.

Sunday was a not-so-early train to Glasgow (I got back from the club around 4:30, early was not going to happen) despite the part of me that simply wanted to stay in Edinburgh. That part of me was grumbling loudly when I showed up in Glasgow and it was raining and I didn’t know where I was going to stay (having been the brilliant person I am and not having booked a place in advance). Luckily the lovely lady in the tourist information center was able to call around to find me a bed and then gave me directions on how to get there.

The hostel was in the West End district of the city at the top edge of Kelvingrove Park, about a 10 minute bus ride from the city center. Luckily the rain stopped briefly after the bus dropped me off and I followed the signs for the hostel for a good trek up a hill and around to the far side of the neighborhood. Got all checked in and then told that my room was on the third floor, meaning I got to haul my luggage up four flights of stairs. It was worth every friggin step. The room was located on the top floor with a big window overlooking the park and the city beyond and a windowsill more than wide enough to sit on with a blanket, my laptop and a pot of tea on the chair next to me. Which is exactly how I spent my first evening after venturing down to the city for dinner and watching one of the most spectacular sunsets from the park.

Monday took me to the eastern side of the city to the grand old Glasgow Cathedral and sprawling Victorian Necropolis. The Cathedral was quite nice, especially the old crypt underneath where the body of a saint is supposedly buried and they have a little museum giving some of the history of the cathedral. The Necropolis is situated on a hill overlooking the city (there are a lot of things situated on hills overlooking cities in Scotland, they’re rather fond of their hills) and it is massive. I spent nearly three hours there and didn’t manage to see all of it. The gravestones and monuments are beautiful and many of them are covered in carved Celtic knotwork. And in keeping with what I learned is the typical Glasgow weather pattern, as the afternoon wore on the clouds began to break, letting through shafts of sunlight and creating a beautiful sky.

Nessie was the word of the day on Tuesday as I took a one-day tour from Glasgow all the way up to Loch Ness in search of the ‘monster’. It was nearly 12 hours in a van made more than bearable by the fact that we were travelling through some of the most spectacular landscapes I’ve ever seen. The Highlands of Scotland are truly awe-inspiring. Our first stop of the day was on the bonnie, bonnie shores of Loch Lomond, immortalized in a famous Scottish song “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road”.

We made a few other brief stops along the way, including Glencoe, famous for the massacre of the MacDonald Clan, before arriving at Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness. We had a short (and I mean short, like 20 minutes kind-of short) time to explore the castle and I’m glad I skipped the 10-minute video about Nessie since I barely got to see everything as it was. Then it was onto a boat for a cruise on Loch Ness ‘in search of the monster’, or at least a nice view of the loch and the castle.

Then back on the bus for a brief drive through the city of Inverness (there’s not much to drive through) before turning south and heading for home. We made one more stop in Pitlochry, a little Victorian-style village that had a heavy flavor of tourist trap but it was fine to grab some snacks for the bus ride back to Glasgow. We passed though more stunning landscapes and drove past Stirling Castle and the William Wallace Monument, our guide, a young Scotsman named Colin, continuing his monologue of history and stories about the areas we passed through, interjected with carefully selected music (as in we listened to the song about Loch Lomond as we passed it and various songs about the Highlands, etc.). All in all a very good day, though sadly no sightings of Nessie to report. The mystery lives on.

Wednesday was the day for the ‘water of life’; whiskey. The name comes from the Gallic word ‘Uisge Beatha’ meaning water of life and it is the national drink of Scotland. You don’t just order a whiskey here, some bars have over three hundred different varieties to choose from. So to further my whiskey education I made the journey to Glengoyne Distillery, the southern-most of the Highland distilleries, for a tasting tour. They started us off with a dram of 10-year while we watched a short video on the history of whiskey and the distillery itself before taking us through the different areas and explaining each step of the whiskey-making process. My tour then continued to the club house to sample a 12-year and a 21-year while learning how to properly ‘taste’ a whiskey. Things ended with a dram of 17-year single cask that was simply amazing (and of course very expensive).  A fabulous end to what I thought was my last day in Scotland.

I was supposed to fly to Barcelona on the 29^th to see VNV Nation in concert on the 30^th but due to three of the four members of the band being ill the show was postponed. Until September. Needless to say, I will not be able to attend. But the one lucky thing is that I learned about the cancelation Wednesday night while I was still able to change my plane ticket. I had two options, go to Barcelona anyway and continue with the original plan simply sans concert or spend an extra week in Scotland. I chose the latter, which I’m thoroughly convinced was the right choice.

Thursday was spent reworking my itinerary and deciding where I wanted to go with my extra week. I decided to head up to Glencoe to spend a few days hiking in the Highlands and then back to Edinburgh for a few nights. New plan in hand I spent Friday wandering the city and visiting a few of the museums on the University campus, including the Mackintosh House, which was a very nice collection of works by Charles Mackintosh, an Art Nuevo architect/artist from Glasgow. The day ended with me playing around with the macro filters for my lens and the myriads of flowers in Kelvingrove Park.

Saturday a fabulous day followed by an equally fabulous night. Things started off with meeting up with Jon, one of the Glasgow Steampunks, who was involved with a Chopin piano recital at the beautiful , if dilapidated, Britannia Panoptica music hall. The hall was once part of a Victorian entertainment venue that housed a zoo in the basement, a bar on the ground floor, performance space/music hall on the first floor, and a freak show on the second floor. One ticket got you into all of them and there were a whole range of events that occurred in the music hall. In the current day and age, a casino occupies the ground floor but they still host concerts and various other performances in the music hall.

After the recital Jon and I went for a cup of coffee (or hot chocolate in my case) to, well, get to know each other. He’s a thoroughly delightful chap and we passed the afternoon by him giving me a tour of all the best charity shops for acquiring steampunk gear (and if there had been room in my suitcase, I would have walked away with a few smashing new pieces. Alas they remained hanging in their respective stores). We parted ways and I headed off to the Glasgow version of the club I attended in Edinburgh. Met some amazing people and an awesome night.

I was supposed to go up to Glencoe on Sunday but I found out (luckily before I left Glasgow) that all of the hostels in Glencoe were full that night. So plans got rearranged, again, and I took the bus up on Monday instead. The three days were an experience. The area is absolutely spectacular, though sadly I didn’t make it down to Rannoch Moor like planned, and for the most part the weather cooperated. I got two good hikes in despite the food poisoning and simply the trip there and back made everything worth it. Definitely made me even more interested in doing the West Highland Way, a 95-mile walk from Glasgow to Ft. Williams through the Highlands.

Returned to Glasgow on Thursday in time to head to the University for the weekly meeting of the Glasgow University Steampunk Society, where we watched Wild Wild West and had cake to celebrate the birthday of one of the members. Then it was off to the student bar to continue the party and watch the result of the election come in.

Sadly Friday meant it was time to leave Scotland and move onto the next stop, Barcelona. The two weeks I spent in Scotland were amazing. The scenery is breathtaking, the whiskey is plentiful, and the people are fantastic. To all my new friends, thanks for everything and I’ll be back soon. Cheers!

The blog is back! I apologize for the rather distinct lack of posts, internet was a hard thing to come by in Africa (and quite frankly, so was free time to write). But I’m in Europe now, sitting on the train to Edinburgh as I write this and posts should hopefully become more frequent.

Since it’s been a while since the last post and a lot has happened since then this post is going to be kinda an overview of the last two months rather than a detailed post like previous ones (because it would never get finished if I tried to cover everything and I really would like to get caught up and back on track). As usual though this will be a picture heavy post (are you surprised? No? Good ) And with that why don’t we pick up where I left you in Thailand?

The remaining weeks of the TEFL course were fun and very busy. We had a ton of homework because of all the lessons plans we had to write but we still always found time to go out and have a relaxing dinner, usually on the beach (really, why would you eat anywhere else?). Our classes went well, the Thai students really are wonderful and most of them are actually interested in being there and learning, wish more students in the States were like that.

When I wasn’t studying or writing lesson plans I started planning my itinerary for the week after the course. My plan was to fly to Chiang Mai and then work my way back down to Bangkok by train and bus, seeing the sights along the way, similar to what my sister did when she spent ten days in Thailand and I was able to copy parts of her itinerary, which made planning much easier. I was excited and Sophia decided that she’d come along with one of her friends, whom she was meeting in Chiang Mai.

So with rough itinerary in place my attention focused back on finishing the course. It was fairly uneventful, we all passed and received our certificates in addition to fairly nice, fairly large backpacks (like, proper backpacking bags, not school bags), which was a nice unexpected surprise. I had yet to realize how much of a pain in the ass that bag was going to be to haul around the world (and to ship home, what a nightmare).

The one nifty thing that did happen during the last week of the course was that JB got in contact with a monk who did traditional Thai tattoos (like with the big needles and everything, no machines here) and went to get a piece done. It was stunning, the level of detail that can be achieved is mind-boggling, everything was so clean and precise. Well JB decided that one wasn’t enough and went back to get another. This time me and my camera got to tag along. It was amazing to simply be there, much less be able to photograph it and I came away with my first serious photo essay. A pretty cool experience all around (and JB got three beautiful pieces of ink to remember Thailand by).

Well, the course ended and Sophia and I flew up to Chiang Mai to start our little adventure. The city is beautiful and, after a little trouble finding her friend, we headed out to explore the city. We ended up at an infamous little club/bar called 2am and danced the night away (literally, we got back to room a little before seven). I got up a few hours later to explore on my own and set up my jungle trek for the next day. It was a good day that ended with Chiang Mai’s famous Sunday Market (one of the coolest markets I’ve seen, there was a little bit of everything). Sophia and her friend decided that they were going to stay in the north and explore the area around Chiang Mai rather than heading south with me so after my trek (waterfalls, elephants, and rafting; all spectacular if you ignore the fact that I had a nasty case of food poisoning) I head off on my own.

It was a week full of adventures. Everything from missed/wrong buses to spectacular ruins to beautiful temples to communication problems to wonderful people. Saw pretty much everything I wanted to see, took a ton of pictures (most of which are still being edited, my apologies), and got to enjoy the Thailand that I had pictured before I arrived in Ban Phe (northern Thailand is very different from the southern regions). My last stop was Bangkok, my 36-hour trip to civilization before heading off to Africa. It felt nice to be back in a city and, despite having strep throat (not a great week in the health world for me, eh?), I acquired Mister Donut (after having been eluded and taunted by them since my arrival in Chiang Mai), Starbucks and, much to my great delight, Alice in Wonderland. In English. In iMax 3D. I was giddy to say the least. The movie combines many of my favorite things in film (Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Helena Boham-Carter, Alice in Wonderland) and I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was going to miss seeing it in theaters. After all, what was the likelihood that it would be released in Thailand the same day it was released in the US? Pretty good apparently

My brief stint in civilization was nice but soon it was time to leave Thailand and head off to the wilds of Africa. After almost missing my flight from Bangkok, it was a short hop to Kuala Lumpur then on to Johannesburg. The flight was uneventful till we landed and one of my bags failed to show up at baggage claim. Normally wouldn’t be a big deal but my sick-adled brain had packed all of my electronics chargers in that bag rather than carrying them on like a smart person. Needless to say I was less than thrilled but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do beside file a report and hope that it would show up soon. So I sat at the gate for my flight to Richard’s Bay, ate donuts and people-watched, trying to figure out who else there was also on the African Impact program. I guessed one right (his lowpro backpack gave him away ).

We arrived and were met by Andrew, who runs the African Impact St. Lucia programs and waited for the luggage to come through. My day was made when both of my bags showed up, unharmed and most importantly, there, in my hands. The rest of the group seemed nice as we all loaded our luggage into the van and headed off to St. Lucia, about an hour away from the airport. I slept for the majority of the drive.

St. Lucia is a tiny little town (again, one main road, though much, much nicer than Ban Phe) situated at the southern end of the iSimangilisio Wetland Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Beautiful location with good access to the park, the estuary and the beach. The volunteer house ( a spectacular house with huge living room, two story tiki deck with bbq pit, and a swimming pool) was about a 10-min walk from town (longer at night because you had to skirt around the little grassy area because of the hippos that hang out there). My roomies were Leslie and Alison, two lovely Scottish girls from Glasgow (Kelly, from Australia, was in our room for two nights before she decided to abandon us in favor of a bottom bunk in another room. What nerve ;P).

The first week was mostly devoted to our little photography intro course taught by the fabulous Emil von Maltitz, a South African photographer. All of us learned something (there were six of us from all levels) and had quite a good time (despite the moaning about getting up at 4:30 on two of the mornings to shoot the sunrise ). We had photo critiques each night which were useful and a popular photo of the day vote, where everyone in the house (not just the photographers) voted on their favorite photos.

The rest of the month was a crazy mix of game drives, bush walks, Conservation Club at the local high school, volunteering at the Crocodile Center, photo editing, and a bunch of other things. Obviously the game drives were one of the highlights, we got to see some pretty amazing things, including a juvenile Martial Eagle, Africa’s largest eagles, in flight. Working at the Croc Center was one of my favorite parts, we did everything from catch and move juveniles (about 3ft long) to help baby crocodiles hatch (they’re sooo cute!). Our last week we helped release an adult croc who’d been injured and rehabilitated and got to spend a day slogging through a swamp forest to track and tag wild crocs. We all stank by the end of the day but it was really, really neat. I mean seriously, how many people can say they’ve trekked through a swamp forest hunting wild crocodiles?

Even though the project was only Monday-Friday, our weekends were always busy. The first weekend a big group of us went up to Mozambique to snorkel with dolphins (amazing!), stopping on the way there to watch turtles hatch at Kosi Bay and hitting Thembe Elephant Park on the way back to see elephants (which f course we didn’t see, but it was still a nice drive, the park is quite beautiful). Other weekend activities included surf lessons at Cape Vidal (I managed to stand up on my third wave!) and game drives to Hluhluwe-iMfolozie park. The game drives are what I did that last two weekends I was there and they were the best drives I did all month (along with our first drive to iMfolozie, which was also amazing). I got to see cheetah two weeks in a row (there are only around thirty of them in the whole park, which is about 9000 hectres) and on my last day in Africa I got to see a pride of lions hunting warthog and the day ended with our jeep getting charged by a bull elephant. One of the most amazing days of my life.

But then, sadly, it was time to leave Africa. Originally I was supposed to return to the States after my program ended but I’ve been bitten hard by the travel bug and decided that I wasn’t ready to go home yet. So instead I hopped on a plane to London to start a two-month tour of Europe. I only spent a day and a half in London before heading up to Liverpool to stay with a friend of mine, meeting her at Warwick Castle for the day before we headed to her home in Liverpool. I spent a week there, exploring the city (which is a very nice, eclectic place) and starting to catch up on all the life stuff that had fallen by the wayside in Thailand and Africa.

With a tentative itinerary in hand I headed back to London for a week to explore and do the tourist thing. I went to the British Museum, saw the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament,  took a bus out to Stonehenge and watched the changing of the guard. I also got to wander around Camden (my kind of place, lots of quirky stores and fantastically dressed people, like the Harajuku of London with less colour) and visited an old Victorian operating theatre. Another busy but fabulous week; London is a really cool city with a lot going on, I would have loved to spent more time there but there are other places I want to see and only so much time and money to go around (and London was not easy on the wallet.)

So here I am, sitting on a train to Edinburgh for a week in Scotland before catching a flight to Barcelona to see VNV Nation in concert and explore the city before heading off to Paris. From there I’ll make my way to Leipzig for the massive Wave Gottik Treffen music festival and end my trip with a week in Berlin and dinner with friends in Switzerland. So stay tuned for adventures on a brand new continent!

Yup, that’s right folks, Happy New Year! Chinese New Year that is, which is the one they celebrate in the lovely country of Thailand. So I got to start this year twice, double the resolutions and double the luck right?

Well, so far it’s been a pretty good year if I do say so myself. Those of you that have been following this blog got to read all about my amazing adventures in Japan and now we’re continuing the journey in Thailand.

So let’s start from the beginning shall we? This leg of the trip started with a flight into Bangkok and a brief (like 4-hour kind of brief) stay in one of the airport hotels before catching a cab to the bus station. Figuring out which bus to take was almost too much for my sleep deprived brain and I kept trying to speak Japanese to the poor woman at the information desk. But finally we figured it out and got me on a bus to the little beachside town of Ban Phe. The bus ride was about three hours and came complete with an onboard movie: The Fast and the Furious- Tokyo Drift in Thai. Talk about a somewhat surreal experience. I was just in most of the places where the movie was filmed, some of them less than 24 hours ago. The fact that it was entirely in Thai made it even more interesting because well, I don’t speak a word of Thai and it was so out of context with the movie. But it was good and at some point I’d like to see it again in English.

The scenery on the ride was pretty benign and after the movie was over I slept for a little while, waking up when we stopped and everyone got off. I got off the bus and got my first sight, and smell, of Ban Phe. First thing you notice are the prevailing scents of squid and fish, followed by the rows of shops selling squid in every state imaginable, from squid chips to jerky to squid powder and even sugared squid. Seriously, who comes up with sugared squid?

After a few minutes of taking in my first sight of the place where I’d be spending the next month, I started off with my luggage to find the school where I’d be spending the next month. I only had a rough idea of where the school was but the town only has one main road so I picked the direction I thought I was supposed to be going and started walking. I was sweating within about two minutes, my body trying to figure out what to do with hot weather again. It was a good twenty walk from the bus station and I was getting worried that I was going to run out of town before I found the school but a nice local gave me directions and I found it. Got myself checked in and spent a few minutes filling out various pieces of paperwork before getting to my room and passing out.

Luckily I’d remembered to set my alarm for I passed out and I had time to ’shower’ (there is no hot water here so showers are quick and involve as little time in the water as possible) and make it downstairs to the classroom for our little introduction session. Turns out there are ten students from all over the world, there are a couple Americans, two Brits, an Aussie, someone from Holland, someone from Belgium, and someone from India. Quite a diverse group but all really cool and we hit it off from the start, which was nice since we were going to be living with each other for the next four weeks.

After some basic introduction exercises and a course overview from our teacher Dave, we all went out for dinner, my first experience with Thai food in Thailand. It was good and the waitress directed me to the less-spicy items on the menu (I’m not the biggest fan of spicy food). It was nice to sit by the ocean and get to know my fellow students.

9 am the next morning was our first class and we all arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, more-or-less. Textbooks and work books got handed out, syllabi were gone over, and course expectations were laid out. It was a pretty long day but another dinner on the beach was a good way to end it. It was nice but I was having a hard time with the switch from Tokyo life to the small, run-down beach-town of Ban Phe. It was pretty serious culture shock and it didn’t help that this part of Thailand was nothing like what I expected, in my mind Thailand was green and mountainous with thick jungles and bright architecture. Ban Phe is dusty and flat with drab concrete buildings and lots of wood/bamboo huts. But I was determined to give the place a chance; at least my classmates were a good group and who can complain about eating dinner on the beach every night?

The first week of classes went well and I slipped pretty easily back into the school mindset. The school had arranged a couple of after-class activities for us, including dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant (which was like no Korean BBQ I’ve ever had and quite an interesting experience) and a trip to the night market in the next city over.

The Rayong night market was a blast. There were a ton of little food stalls and fruit dealers. Most of the stuff I didn’t recognize but Abhi, one of my fellow students, had been to Thailand before and was able to explain most of the stuff to us. Probably the weirdest thing there was the fried bug cart, piled high with a variety of different bugs all fried to a crispy golden brown. So of course Pete, a 29-year old from Miami, had to try one. He said it tasted pretty much like you’d expect a bug to taste like.

The rest of us acquired slightly more normal food and continued wandering around the market before heading over to Tesco, the big grocery store that was more Wal-mart than Safeway, to attempt to acquire dress clothes that were appropriate to teach in (I brought nothing beyond shorts and t-shirts). Basic clothes were acquired along with two 6-liter jugs of water each (much easier to buy it here where we had a car than haul it back from the Tesco in Ban Phe on foot) and some other odds and ends.

Thursday was our first interaction with Thai students and everyone was grinning ear to ear by the time we finished. We did basic one-on-one interviews aimed at finding out basic information about our student (name, age, family, hobbies, etc.) and the students were amazing. We got to work with the same students on Friday to continue the interview and to get a better feel for their grasp of English. It was an amazing way to get started in a classroom setting and we were all looking forward to our first actual teaching experience the next week.

The weekend was spent relaxing and exploring Ban Phe (there’s not a whole lot to explore). I did get a massage on Sunday which was amazing and cheap (roughly $6 for an hour) and I got back to the school very relaxed to hang out with some of my fellow students before calling it an early night.

Now, that Sunday was the Superbowl back home, so what does a non-sports fan in Thailand do? Gets up at 5:30 am to attend a Superbowl party at one of the ex-pat bars in town. Why not? It was fun and since you can’t have a Superbowl party without food there was ribs, lamb BBQ and fresh pita bread, all homemade and all amazing, though my stomach was a little confused as to why we were having BBQ at six thirty in the morning. I didn’t get to stay for the whole game because I had to go to class but I’m glad I went and I can now say that I watched the Superbowl in Thailand (though it was missing the best part, we didn’t get to see any of the commercials).

Week two started out with two full days of everyone’s favorite subject: Grammar. Seriously, who can pay attention through two 8-hour days of nothing but grammar? My brain shut down about halfway through day one and I’m just glad that most of it’s in the textbook so that I can reference it again later. Tuesday afternoon I decided to take my camera down to the beach to relax and see the scenery a little bit. The sunset that night was spectacular.

Wednesday was spent observing a class and preparing our lesson plans and materials for our first teaching experience the next day. I was in the first group to teach on Thursday and all I can say is wow, what a rush. The feeling I get from teaching is like nothing I’ve ever felt before, it’s amazing to see the student’s faces light up at they participate and use the target language. Totally worth the long hours of prep the night before. After my class I observed three other classes before we headed back to our school to begin our preparations for Friday’s classes. The next day was just as amazing, even though I didn’t feel that my lesson went quite as well as yesterday. I really love being in front of the class and watching the students engage with the lesson. The students here want to learn, they want to be here and it makes all the difference in the world.

Originally the plan for the weekend involved as visa run to Cambodia (which is about two hours away by bus) but we learned that if we did it this weekend we would only get a fifteen-day visa, which isn’t enough to get us through our stay here. So that got put off till next weekend when it would actually do us some good. That left me with only tentative plans for the weekend and so I decided at about 2:30 that I was going to go to Khao Yai National Park. Now, the park is about three hours northeast of Bangkok and the directions on how to get there in my Lonely Planet were less than clear. I managed to get tentative directions from one of my classmates and some of the locals and hopped a songtheaw (a pick-up truck with seats in the back) to Rayong, where I could theoretically catch a bus to Khao Yai. During the 45-minute songtheaw ride common sense started to sneak in and by the time I got to the bus station in Rayong I was pretty determined that my plan was crazy and that I should go back to Ban Phe before I got myself totally lost in Thailand. Still I tried to find out which bus I was supposed to take and when I never got a clear answer about how to get where I was trying to go and had a little breakdown in the Rayong bus station, I grabbed a songtheaw back to Ban Phe. Common sense prevails!

And boy am I glad it did. Friday night was closing night for Oliver’s bar, which had become our after-class hang-out joint since it was right on the water and the owner, a crazy frenchman named Oliver, was awesome. They threw a big party with food and music and pretty much our entire group, including most of the ex-pats who work at the school showed up to close the bar down right. It was a blast and when I finally made my weary way home t around 5am the party was still going. From what I heard from those who managed to stay till the end, things finally began to wind down around 8am. A right proper send off. Oliver’s still around and there’s talk of opening a little BYOB joint near the school as a place for the students and employees to hang out after class but I’m not sure of all the details.

Saturday saw me finally managing to get out of bed around two and I lounged around for a little while, had lunch and then headed into town with Jelena, another one of my classmates, for a massage. We get to the massage parlour to find that they’re closing up early and heading to Ko Samet, the island just off the coast, for the big party that night to celebrate Chinese New Year. We start walking back to the school but I’m still jonsing for a massage and the place I went to last weekend was still open so I said goodbye to Jelena at an internet cafe and went off to get a traditional Thai massage. Wow was that intense, and rather painful. She found muscles knots that I didn’t even know I had and that did not want to come out. I had to keep reminding myself that this was supposed to be relaxing and afterwards I did feel somewhat more relaxed, which was good.

Sunday, which was the true Chinese New Year, Pete, Sophia, Katherine, JB, and I got invited by some of the locals to go with them to Ko Samet for the day. So we all piled into two little fishing boats launched from the beach and sailed across to the island. It felt so good to be out on the ocean again in a small boat and where the water wasn’t freezing. Instead of going to the touristy area we ended up in this tiny little cove with a private beach and plenty of shade. True paradise. It was amazing.  The water was crystal clear and warm (I wish water that temperature would come out of my shower) and we wiled away the afternoon playing in the sea and lounging on the beach. The Thais we came with were amazing and we all managed to communicate despite the language barrier, picking someone up and throwing them in the water is the same in any language.

One of the locals enlisted JB’s help to collect clams and crabs, which got cooked on a little charcoal grill and served right out of the shell. Best crab I’ve ever had. I mean, I watched him take it out of the water, crack it’s shell, put it on the grill, and hand it to me. About as fresh as you can get.

On the way back to Ban Phe we stopped a ways off shore so one of the guys could go fishing for stingrays and the rest of us took advantage of the stop to get in some more swimming. He caught a ray and we all loaded back into the boats and returned to land in time for a drink while watching the sunset. Days don’t get a whole lot better.

But monday morning was a return to the real world, all of us nursing sunburns and Pete limping from the sea urchin spines he managed to get embedded in his foot. Luckily it was a pretty easy day of class and we didn’t have any homework so we all called it an early night to recover from the weekend. Today was another day of class observation and prep work for our own lessons tomorrow. I’m mostly done, just need to do another run through of everything before packing up and going to bed so I’m going to leave this here for now. Look for another post this weekend!

Wow, sorry about the silence, my final week in Japan was packed and I managed to get a little behind on working on my photos. But they’re done now and I’ll warn you up front that this is going to be a very long and picture-heavy post.

So let’s pick up where we left off: Abashiri on Friday morning. It was a beautiful morning, bright and sunny after the storm yesterday and I got up early and made my way to the docks to catch the first drift ice boat. Of course, I get there and they tell me that there’s no ice, it’s too early in the season. The boat was still going out but would be doing a sightseeing tour instead. Since I didn’t have any other plans for the morning and it would be cool to see some of the coast I signed up and got on board with all the Japanese tourists. We headed out and I went up on the top deck to watch the scenery and take some pictures (the windows down below were really dirty). The boat was underway for about ten minutes when we saw drift ice on the horizon! The storm the night before had blown it in and we changed course. It was really cool to see the ship cutting through the white mass, leaving a trail of blue water in its wake. The ice itself was in fairly small chunks but was like no ice I’ve seen before. Its long exposure to the ocean had left it smooth and opaque.

I managed to stay up on deck for the whole duration of the cruise but I was pretty much a walking icicle by the end of it. It wasn’t exactly a warm day to start with and the wind out on the water was brutal. So when we disembarked I hung out in the port building to warm up while I finished my breakfast. Then it was off to see the swans at a lake just outside the city.

Took me a little while to find the lake since it was a good ten-minute walk from the train station where I got off and things weren’t marked real well but I found it eventually had fun watching the swans and the seagulls (some of the biggest seagulls I’ve ever seen, they were huge!). Of course, me being me, I managed to lose track of time while taking pictures and ended up running to try to catch the train since if I missed it I was going to be stuck there till the next one came three hours later. I made thankfully and managed not to slip and hurt myself on the skating rink sidewalks as I made my headlong dash for the station. Safely on the train I put my camera away and focused on warming up a little before I headed off for an afternoon of museum exploration.

First stop was the Abashiri Prison Museum. From what I gathered (the English signage was fairly limited), Abashiri Prison was something like the Japanese Alcatraz; one of the worst places you could be imprisoned. The museum is actually all of the original buildings that were simply relocated when they built the new prison complex. It was quite interesting despite the lack of signage. Perhaps the weirdest part was the wax figures that they used to demonstrate prison life. They were creepy. Especially when you turned the corner in a dim room and there was suddenly a guard right next to you.

Next stop was Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples. Very, very cool building but the museum itself was not really what I expected. I was expecting it to be mostly focused on the Ainu, the native people of Hokkaido but it turned out be a little overview of northern cultures from around the world with a fairly heavy emphasis on the Alaskan Indians. It was still interesting and it was neat to look at the displays of clothing and crafts where they had laid all the different cultures out side by side. The majority of the signage was in Japanese, which was a little disappointing, so it took me much less time than I thought it would and I was able to fit in the third museum that I wanted to see but hadn’t planned on making it to.

The Abashiri Drift Ice museum is located on an overlook that commands a spectacular view of Abashiri and the surrounding area. The museum itself was fairly small but housed a collection of drift ice in a refrigerated room that you could actually walk through and touch the ice. The pieces they had were huge and in some fairly cool formations and it was pretty nifty to be able to get up close and really see the effects of the ocean on the ice. The rest of the museum was fairly boring but I spent a good deal of time in the rooftop observatory taking pictures and watching the sunset (sunsets in Hokkaido are spectacular when it’s clear enough to see them).

The next morning was an early start as I caught the first train to Kawayu Onsen, a little hot spring resort town between two caldera lakes. My guidebook and the brochures I picked up in Sapporo all made it seem like Kawayu was a fairly touristy place so my plan was to drop my luggage off in a locker at the station and explore the two lakes and have a good soak in a hot spring. Or not. The train station was a little, unmanned hut with a few chairs and a map. From what I could gather from the map I was going to want to attempt to take a bus to the bus station and use that as my starting point. Luckily the bus that pulled up first was going to the station and I got on, figuring that there would probably be lockers I could use in the bus station (I had no desire to haul all my luggage around all day). And I proved to be wrong again. The bus station was only a little bit bigger than the train station and again lacked lockers. There was someone working there though; a very nice man who spoke absolutely no English and seemed very confused about why I was there. After about 40 minutes of me trying to explain what I wanted to do and him trying to explain the bus schedule to me I ended up getting on a bus, paying for what I assumed was a day pass for the buses (aka, one flat fee to use any of the buses in the area for the day) and heading off to one of the lakes. Turns out that I had managed to sign myself up for a sightseeing tour.

The drive to the first lake was pretty until the fog set in and made it hard to see much of anything beyond the bus windows. But the fog did lend a neat atmosphere to our first stop to see the swans at Lake Kussharo and it cleared up pretty soon after we started driving again so we were able to see the whole lake from the bus. It was a little disappointing that we didn’t really get to spend any time at the lake or get to go to the Ainu village on the southern shore but the drive (a little over an hour) was spectacular. Once the fog lifted it was crystal clear winter day and you could tell that it had snowed recently; everything was covered with a pristine coat of fluffy white powder.

We switched buses at Mashu (a few stations down from Kawayu and where I should have gotten off this morning) and head up to the second lake. This time we had an actual guide (the previous bus had been like a typical city bus, this one was a more typical sightseeing bus) who gave a very energetic spiel about the history of the lakes complete with colourful pictures. And of course the entire thing was in Japanese but she was nice enough to let me flip through the pictures after she was finished and I managed to gather a rough idea of what she’d said. The drive was as pretty as the last one and about as long but there was no fog this time. The lake was jaw-droppingly beautiful; sapphire blue water surrounded by a snow-capped crater ridge. Luckily we had a fair amount of time to wander around here and I happily spent the entire time taking pictures of the lake and the views of the areas around the two volcanoes.

Took the bus back to the train station to kill time until my train so I had lunch (ramen, mmm) and hung out at the station since I was still hauling my luggage and there wasn’t a whole lot in the vicinity. And the place is packed with children. Like, over a hundred kids and their families, all hanging out at the train station. It took me a long time to figure out what they were all doing there but it turns out that there is a steam train that runs a couple times a year through Akan National Park and these families were all here to ride the train. The train was a beautiful example of a steam engine and the steampunk in me got all giddy at getting to see a real working steam engine. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to ride it, by the time I figured out what the deal was the tickets were all sold out. So I watched it pull out and speed off into the wilderness, puffing smoke and whistling.

My train took me to Kushiro, passing through one of the wetland parks on the way. There were deer everywhere and they seemed completely unphased by the train except when the conductor sounded a whistle that was specifically designed to scare them so that they’d get off the tracks before they got hit. My adventure with the buses had meant that I ended up catching a much earlier train than I had planned and I got into Kushiro with time to wander around and explore. My wandering led me down the river to watch the sunset and see the four statues on the bridge over the river. The statues were done by a famous local artist and are representations of the four seasons as women. They’re quite beautiful but not particularly Japanese in flavor, they seemed like they’d be more at home on a bridge in France. They were however, not the oddest thing that I encountered. MOO and its companion building EGG still confuse me. In my city guide it describes MOO as a market and shopping area. Well, there was a market and a little shopping but it was all spread out through what reminded me heavily of an abandoned warehouse, with some parts being fairly well-lit and finished right next to dark walkways of unfinished concrete and exposed ducts. There was no order to anything; with a staircase that ended in a wall and an elevator that you could get on and go up but with no place to get off other than where you got on. And the random plastic display of human fetal development just hanging on a wall. And the greenhouse full of tropical plants in the auxiliary building EGG. Odd was the understatement f the year.

By the next morning I had recovered from the mind-frag that was MOO and stuck my luggage in a locker before catching a bus out to the Akan Crane Reserve to see Tanto, the Japanese red-crested cranes. In the 1960’s it was believed that the birds, which are the symbol for long-life in Japan, were extinct. But there were a handful left and a farmer started feeding them in the winter when they migrated to the area. Slowly their numbers grew and now they are doing quite well and still migrate to the same areas in the winter. The Crane Reserve is one of them and they still feed them twice a day in the winter to supplement what little they can scavenge through the snow.

I wandered through their little museum, which was interesting and gave a general overview of the history of the area and the life-cycle of the cranes, before heading out to the viewing area. I was hoping to see at least a couple cranes, snap some pictures and hop a bus back to Kushiro. I was not expecting the field covered with cranes and swans, doing everything from eating to sleeping to dancing (Japanese cranes are known for their ‘dancing’). So I pulled out my camera (which felt decidedly small and wimpy compared to the other photographers’ gear; some of their lenses were easily twice the size of mine and all mounted on big, heavy tripods) and started to shoot. I ended up being there for about four hours and was glad I got there early and grabbed my spot. There was a feeding at two o’clock and the viewing area was packed with photographers, assistants and gear.

The feeding itself was really nifty because some visitors showed up for the party. There were two red foxes that darted in and out trying to steal fish without getting pecked and a whole contingent of sea eagles and falcons circling above. Watching the eagles dive and steal fish was amazing and the show went on for a good forty-five minutes with cameras snapping the whole time. I definitely had serious lens envy for most of the time but the rather hefty walk back to the bus stop carrying the gear that I do have reminded me that there is no way I’d ever want to carry something that big while I was traveling; I thought my shoulders hated me now…they’d probably stage a revolt if I made them carry anything that big.

Monday was my day in Sapporo and I ended up spending most of it on wrong buses and walking to and from places that were closed. The snow festival was the next week and the city was in full-blown prep mode so a lot of things were closed. I did get to see the beginnings of some of the ice and snow sculptures, which was really cool (they’re huge!). Anyway, the day started out a little later than planned since I slept through my alarm (I was exhausted after my week of early mornings) but I made my way to the Sapporo fish market to explore and acquire breakfast. I was expecting something like Tsukiji in Tokyo but what I found was more akin to a supermarket than a fish market. Everything was neatly wrapped and displayed in pristine cases with wide walkways instead of the barely controlled chaos of Tsukiji. And the two restaurants I found were so far out of my price range it wasn’t even funny. So I ended up grabbing donuts and making my way to the park blocks in the center of the city for a stroll. The park was closed for festival preparations so I figured I’d go to one of the museums nearby. The museum was also closed; apparently it’s only open in the summer because it’s in the botanic gardens.

Next attempted activity: the Sapporo Beer Museum. I had directions on the back of the brochure so I felt pretty confident that I could get myself there, just take the number three bus and get off at the Sapporo Beer Museum stop. So I get on the bus and off we go. After about twenty minutes I start to get a little nervous, the ride was only supposed to be fifteen. A few minutes later the bus arrives at a terminal and everyone gets off. I asked the driver if this was the bus to the museum and he laughed at me. Turns out there are two number 3 buses that leave from the stop I started at and I had managed to get on the wrong one. Great. Now, to compound all this was the fact that I was on a pretty tight time schedule, my train back to Tokyo left at 1:19 and I had to be on it. By the time I caught the bus from the terminal I ended up at and got to the beer museum it was 12:30 and the next bus back to the train station was at 12:50. So I ducked into the museum, glanced around, bought a bottle of beer for later and headed back to the bus stop. I spent the entire 12-minute ride back glancing at my watch and wishing the bus would go faster. I pretty much ran through the station, grabbed my luggage and headed to the platform, thankfully having enough time to grab some pork buns and donuts on my way past. I made my train with a minute to spare.

Tokyo was delightfully warm compared to Hokkaido and while I still usually brought my coat with me, it remained in my backpack for the rest of my stay in Japan. I took advantage of the beautiful weather to spend a day out on Odaiba, the man-made island in Tokyo Bay. My first stop there was the Tokyo Big Sight, one of Tokyo’s biggest conventions centers and a rather interesting piece of architecture. There was actually a convention going on in one of the wings so I was able to go inside and look around a little bit which was pretty neat, the inside is about as odd as the outside. There are a lot of strange random little side buildings and stairs leading up to roofs and down to little seating areas and I managed to spend an hour just wandering around and thankfully managed not to get myself horribly lost.

Next stop was Venus Fort, a three-story shopping center themed like Ancient Rome. I felt like I was in Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas; there was even a gambling area. The shops were the typical totally random mix of things loosely organized into three levels. Top floor was outlet stores, middle floor was normal stores and the bottom level was primarily children’s clothes and pet accessories. Outside the main building is a Toyota show room and one of the world’s largest Ferris Wheels. I didn’t go on the Ferris Wheel simply because I couldn’t find the entrance (there was a fair amount of construction going on in the area so a lot of the walkways were closed), so instead I walked across the “dream bridge” that crosses the center of the island.

On the other side of the bridge was another themed shopping area named Decks, this once designed to look like and old-fashioned Californian boardwalk and it offered a spectacular view of the Tokyo skyline across the bay. The shops were pretty benign but I made my way to the food court for lunch and found myself in a miniature Hong Kong, complete with neon signs and recorded street sounds playing over the speakers. Most of the food was Chinese in keeping with the theme and I ate at a conveyor belt dumpling place (same idea as conveyor belt sushi). It was an experience even though the food wasn’t very good.

The next floor down from Hong Kong was Muscle Park, an amusement park devoted to the insanity that is Japanese game shows. Participants were put through activities pulled from popular game shows, everything from trivia to puzzle solving to obstacle courses. It was pretty funny to watch but I chose not to participate, my amusement park money was being saved for Sega’s Joypolis digital playground.

My wanderings took me out of Decks near sunset and down to the hyper-modern structure which is home to Fuji TV. I’ve nicknamed the place Space Station Earth, because, well, it looks like a space station; all steel and glass scaffolding topped with a 12,000-ton steel ball. Definitely one of the coolest buildings I’ve seen and the sunset light was amazing, warm and bright with great clouds.  Then the moon came out and the space station feeling got even cooler.

Before the sun totally set I made my way back over to Decks to take some pictures of the sunset over Tokyo. It was one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve seen; amazing clouds and colours over my favorite city in the world. I wanted the sun to never set so the moment could go on forever.

But finally the sun set and after marveling at the Tokyo skyline lit up at night I went back inside Decks to experience Sega’s Joypolis. Now, I’m a fan of virtual reality rides and I’ve been on a fair number of them. I have never seen anything like this. The racing simulator puts you in a real car complete with manual transmission and you feel like you’re really driving because the screen fills the entire windshield and moves with the car. The futuristic bobsled race features ride vehicles that actually do 360’s when you manage to do on within the simulation (I managed to do four singles and one double, it was badass). Even the group simulators were amazing; the screens went almost all the way around you and on the white water rafting one you actually got wet! Did one called “The Room of Living Dolls” that scared the living daylights out of me. You walk down this pitch black hallway to a room lined with shelves holding porcelain dolls in various states of decay and sit down at this low table and put of a pair of headphones. Then everything goes dark and you hear voices in the headphones, very realistic voices with some of the best surround sound I’ve heard. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I got the gist and there came a point where I took the headphones off because I was so freaked out. One of those attractions that I can appreciate the level of skill that went into it but there is no way on earth that I would do it again.

There were also a couple of non-VR rides that were pretty awesome as well. One was the Spinbullet, an indoor rollercoaster where the cars spun freely. It was fun but I was by myself so the weight balance was a little off, it was really designed to have two people of similar weight in each car (most of the rides were designed for two people; it’s a very popular places for dates). And there was the Halfpipe Canyon, a snowboarding ride where you stand on a giant snowboard (the safety restraints are like a hang coaster but you are still putting weight on your feet) and you have to rock your feet back and forth at the appropriate times to get the board to go further up the sides of the pipes and to do tricks to get points. It was a blast! I rode it three times and got pretty good (based on my points I was a pro boarder, please ignore the fact that I’ve never been on a real snowboard).

It was almost 11 o’clock by the time I left and I was exhausted but very, very happy. Dinner was a quick stop at a 7-11 on the way home and I barely managed to eat before I passed out. So if you like VR rides and you’re in Tokyo I highly recommend taking a day trip out to Odaiba and doing Joypolis, it’s mind-blowing (and if you go after 5 pm its 1000 yen cheaper for unlimited rides).

The rest of my time in Tokyo was spent just wandering around the city, soaking up the feel of everything. Saw Akihabara, the electronics/anime district, which was quite the sensory overload and a grand testament to the Japanese obsession with technology. It’s also the main area for Maid Cafes, which are themed restaurants where the waitresses are dressed to suit the theme (it started out with just maids but now the themes range from cat girls to gothic to J-rock). The sidewalks are packed with girls handing out flyers to passer-bys and it was neat to just see the variety of their outfits.

I also revisited some of my favorite places like Harajuku and Shibuya to have crepes and Starbucks and people-watch. Seriously, I could spend all day sitting in a café and people-watching in this city. But sadly it was about time for me to leave. I ran a few last errands, packed some boxes with my winter clothes to get shipped back to the states, and said ‘see you later’ to Tokyo.

Next stop: Thailand.

My trip north started early Tuesday morning as I made my way to Tokyo station from Yokohama to catch the Shinkansen. I made it with plenty of time to spare and was getting settled in on the train when I had a surprise visitor. The woman at the JR counter who had helped me make my train reservations to and from Hokkaido had come looking for me to apologize that some of the information she had given me about my return trip was false. Originally we thought that I could return on an overnight train from Sapporo that arrived Tuesday morning in Tokyo, even though my JR pass expires at midnight on Monday. After I had left the reservation office she had checked to make sure that that was the case and it turns out it wasn’t so she got up early on Tuesday to make sure she could catch me on my train to apologize and let me know what I needed to do to get the reservation changed. And she gave me a present as an apology for the situation! She was so sweet and helpful. I’m still just flabbergasted by the courtesy; totally unexpected and a wonderful way to start the trip.

The train ride itself was fairly uneventful. I slept for a couple hours on the first train and spent the rest of the time watching the scenery go by. Very pretty scenery too. Lots of snow-covered rice paddies and old-fashioned houses before going through the Seikan Tunnel, which is the longest underwater tunnel in the world (~57km long under 240km of water and rock). Kinda freaky going through it when you stopped to think about but it’s something that I’m glad I got to do nonetheless. The southern part of Hokkaido looks much like the northern part of the main island with a few more hills and more snow. Sadly by the time the train left Sapporo to continue north it was dark and I spent a good chunk of that ride plotting out my week after having acquired a ton of brochures from the info desk in Sapporo station.

Wednesday morning I was planning to catch a ferry out to one of the islands off the northern coast to do some hiking but a rather sever miscommunication (my Japanese is pretty abysmal) lead me to arrive at the wrong port roughly an hour and a half after the ferry had left. A very nice gentleman who was working at the port I showed up at gave me a lift to right port since he couldn’t explain how to walk there. Can I mention how amazing the Japanese are? Got me to the right port in about a fifth the amount of time it would have taken me to walk there (though I never would have found it, very few signs were in English and I never did manage to find a map the I could read), and helped me find the person I needed to talk to. Finally figured out that the ferry only leaves twice a day and if I took the second ferry I wouldn’t be able to make it back till the next day.

So that plan got scratched and instead I spent the day wandering around Wakkanai. Very slowly, I might add; the sidewalks were covered with a layer of solid ice that was several inches thick in places and I left my ice skates back in the states (silly me, right?). I found a cool little temple up on the side of a hill (after dodging all the heavy machinery that was loading piles of snow into dumptrucks to make room for cars on the roads) and had fun watching the crows that were fighting over something on top of one of the snowdrifts.

 Also made my way down to the rather interesting breakwater dome and seawall. The dome is strange because, well, it’s short and seems to serve no purpose other than to be a strange end to the seawall. Oh well, it was about as strange as the seawall itself. From the land side it looks really normal but the other side is made up of huge concrete jacks (you know, the things that kids try to hit with marbles?). It looked like a group of giants had been playing a game and then just pushed all the pieces in a heap against the wall. Made a really neat sound when the waves hit it though because it echoed up through all the empty spaces and distorted from the normal ‘waves on concrete’ noise. Also found some starfish that had partied a little too hard last night. Remember kids, moderation is key.

For the afternoon I took a bus out to Cape Soya, the northernmost point of Japan. The bus ride along the coast was beautiful and I got to see a sea eagle pull a fish out of the waves and fly off with it. The cape itself was pretty but not all that interesting. If it had been warmer I probably would have stayed longer and explored a little more but as it was I had fun shooting as the wind pushed me across the ice (like a moving walkway, only slipperier). Definitely glad I made the trip out there and I got to go back to the hotel and thaw out with a hot bath and a sushi dinner.

Thursday was another early morning as I hopped a train from Wakkanai to Abashiri over on the eastern coast. The first leg of the trip was really neat because we were speeding through dense forests and mountain valleys in the middle of a snow storm. Parts of it looked a lot like the Rocky Mountains actually; felt like I was taking a train home rather than through northern Japan. Had a brief layover to change trains and ran in to two other Americans, Fritz and Andy (the first tourists I’ve seen in Hokkaido). Turns out they’re doing a whirlwind tour of Japan while taking a break from teaching English in Korea and we had a good time talking about Japan and teaching ESL (I can’t wait to start my course in Thailand). The second leg of the trip was fairly boring, due in part to not having a window seat to watch the world go by, but I got some photos edited and listened to a good chunk of my book on tape (currently listening to “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein; absolutely fantastic novel, I highly recommend it).

Got into Abashiri early afternoon so I dropped my luggage off and managed to track down bus, train, and boat schedules in English so I could make plans for Friday. Having also acquired a map I decided to wander around town a little bit since it was still fairly early. Found the local Mister Donut to grab breakfast for tomorrow (would you believe that the Mister Donut was actually marked on my map along with all the tourist attractions and museums? I was highly amused) and walked through the pretty much deserted central shopping area. It’s interesting that a place that advertises itself as a winter tourist destination was so empty and most of the shops and restaurants were closed. Maybe it’s because it’s the lull between New Years and the Snow Festival.

Found a place that was open and sat down having no idea what I was getting myself into. The place was a yakinikku restaurant where you order raw ingredients and cook them yourself on the grill inset into the tabletop. And the ingredients here? All Wagyu (Kobe) beef. Now, Wagyu is one of those things you see them use on Iron Chef America and you think, right, like I’ll ever be able to afford that stuff (the price per ounce is obscene in the states). And I somehow managed to find a place in the home of Wagyu beef where I could actually afford to eat. Let me tell you, it was divine. The texture is smooth and buttery because of all the marbling and it just sorta melts in your mouth. And I proudly managed to not screw up cooking it (I had no idea what I was doing, never been to a restaurant like that before and there were no instructions). It was a fun and truly tasty experience and man, I could really get used to eating meat like that. Maybe I’ll move here and live of Wagyu and raw fish (the quality of fish here is amazing as well). Hmm, sounds like a plan to me!

Monday was Coming of Age Day in Japan; which means that everyone who turned twenty in the last year gets dressed up and celebrates. Monday was also the day that my sister and I went to Disneyland. Put the two together and you have one of the coolest, and oddest, visual experiences. Only in Japan can you go to Disney and see bad tourist fashion, crazy street fashion, and women in expensive silk kimono with elaborate obi and professional hair and make-up.

It was fascinating to watch them over the course of the day as they went about visiting Disney like everyone else (though they did get extra help getting on and off the rides because, well, kimono were not designed for clambering in and out of strange ride vehicles). Just getting to see all the different kimonos was spectacular, there were so many different designs and colour schemes and they were all amazing. And really, how many times do you get to see a woman in a kimono posing with the seven dwarves?

Disney itself was also amazing. The rides here are more low-key than the ones in the states but the emphasis is on the technology and creating the Disney experience. The technology is pretty impressive, especially on Pooh’s Honey Hunt. The ride takes you on a journey with Winnie the Pooh as he searches for the all-important honey and at one part takes you into this strange ‘dream’ world. The nifty part is that there are no tracks for the cars to run on, they are all controlled through a GPS system that prevents them from colliding but makes it appear that all the movements are random. Very, very snazzy.

And then there was the Haunted Mansion, which is a pretty spiffy ride under normal circumstances. But we happened to be there while they still had the special holiday edition of the ride up. Which meant that the entire ride was Nightmare Before Christmas themed! My glee was intense. And the ride itself was better than the original, with the decorations both inside and outside the mansion being totally over the top and fabulous.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the park doing rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblasters, Monsters Inc., Big Thunder Mountain (which had signs for Colorado farmland in the queue), and of course, Space Mountain.

We also marveled at the interesting varieties of popcorn including honey (which was amazing), chocolate, and curry. And there were the funny hats. Big, fuzzy hats that came in designs ranging Stitch with the bog blue ears, to Tigger with stripes and a tail for a scarf, to Sully and the Cheshire cat. There were also your ‘basic’ mouse ones which were most commonly either grey or pink leopard print faux fur. And everyone was wearing them, not just the kids. Granted it was cold and they were quite warm (we tried some on just for the fun of it) but they were honestly rather silly looking and not something that I can see being real practical in the real world, even in Japan.

Tuesday was our day at DisneySea and all I have to say is that if you ever have chance to go, take it without hesitation. Seriously, the place is amazing. The place is themed down to the trash bins, water fountains and walkways. Disney at its best. The entire park is built around the central lagoon and the massive volcano that houses the Mysterious Island and each area is called a ‘port’ in keeping with the sea theme.

My favorite port was undoubtedly the Mysterious Island, which is a steampunk paradise designed entirely around the works of Jules Verne. There’s even the Nautilus docked next to one of the restaurant and the 20000 Leagues Under the Sea ride features small subs as the ride vehicles. The queue for Journey to the Center of the Earth is as spectacular as the ride is, featuring labs and schematics that make you feel like there really is an expedition going on around you. You even take an elevator to the staging point with depth gauges to show you how deep you are below the Earth’s surface. And then there’s the ride, which starts of nice and scenic as you go through some of the areas they’ve discovered to see the strange flora and fauna that live there and then turns into a swift rollercoaster ride through scarier places and pitch darkness when your vehicles gets diverted onto the wrong set of tracks. It offers a spectacular, if brief, view of the park as you shoot out the side of the volcano before plunging back into darkness.

Other ports included the Cape Cod (filled with shops devoted to the Japan-exclusive Disney bear Duffy), the American Seaside featuring a full-sized steam ship and the imposing Tower of Terror (same ride, totally different story line), Port Discovery with its idealistic view of the future, the Arabian Coast with its two-story carousel, and the immaculately and overwhelmingly detailed Mermaid Kingdom, which is all indoors and designed to make you feel like you are under the sea.

There was also the Lost River Delta, home to the Indiana Jones rides that was tragically closed when we were there and the only rollercoaster in Disney featuring a loop; as well as the Mediterranean Harbour, which serves as the entry way and main shopping area of the park.

The rides at Disney Sea were a blast and the lines were pretty much non-existent due to that fact that it rained all day.  There were more odd flavors of popcorn including strawberry and soy sauce; and more funny hats (though fewer than yesterday due to the weather). The day ended with the spectacular night-time show on the central lagoon recounting the tale of love between a water spirit and a fire spirit and featuring amazing effects true to Disney style. And after that we managed to sneak one more ride on Journey to the Center of the Earth (our fourth) before heading back to the hotel to thaw out.

All in all, Disney never fails to impress and a good time was had by all.

Wednesday morning was early. As in, checking out of our hotel at 5 am and having to take a taxi to the station because the buses weren’t running kind of early. But it was worth it to find ourselves at Tsukiji, Tokyo’s central fish market, just as the sun was making its first appearance.

I’m a firm believer that if you are in Tokyo there is no excuse for you not to put a morning aside to experience the insanity that is Tsukiji. If it lives in the ocean you can find it here and there are a lot of things that you question whether or not they’re actually edible. Also being there so early, a fair amount of stuff was still alive (hey, at least you know it’s fresh).

We wandered around for a good hour snapping photos and marveling at the strange variety while dodging motorized fish carts and trying not to get in the way of the people doing business. This experience was followed by a spectacular breakfast of tuna and salmon sashimi over rice and a hot bowl of miso soup.

Then we made our way over to a rather pretty garden near the market that houses a nice little tea house on a lake so that Tara could experience a simple form of Japanese tea ceremony. I personally am less than fond of green tea but it was a fun experience and a nice rest after the insanity of Tsukiji. The afternoon found us experiencing a traditional Japanese bath house and let me tell you, it was quite the experience. We kind fumbled our way through it and it sure was nice to just soak in the hot water. Then it was off to acquire donuts and dinner before returning to the guesthouse to pack.

Thursday was Tara’s flight back to states and we got the joy of dealing with our rather silly amounts of luggage on a packed commuter train (we called them sardine trains). But after dropping my stuff of in a locker in Ikebukuro, things went a little smoother and we got to the airport in time to grab lunch before she boarded her flight. It was sad to see her go; we had a fantastic time and got to see a lot of neat stuff. But it’s on to the next part of the adventure. I’m working on figuring out my trip to northern Japan (I’m stolidly ignoring the fact that’s it’s really, really cold up there) and will hopefully be heading up there on Tuesday.

Sp stay tuned for updates from the land of the frozen sea!

Yay for another long over-due post. I promise I’ll get better about posting regularly.

Anyway, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, off to Kyoto. No photos from monday since most of it was spent on the shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo and the rest was spent wandering aound the endless shopping arcades. Seriously, they never really end, they just run into a different arcade. They were interesting though; a little bit of everything with the high-end kimono dealers next to the trendy clothing shops and the kitschy souvenier places with a handful of restaurants thrown in for good measure.

Tuesday morning we hopped an early train out to Hiroshima and then a ferry out to Miyajima to see the floating temple at high tide. The huge red torri gate is truely impressive standing out in the water supported only by it’s own substantial weight and the temple itself is beautiful. The buildings are essential just a collection of bridges built just over the high tide line so it appears that everything is pretty much floating in the ocean. I was here two years ago but it was during low tide and, while still beautiful, wasn’t nearly as stunning as it was this time. It also helped that the weather cooperated; it was cold but sunny. After a warm and satisfying lunch of tempura shrimp udon we took the ferry back to Hiroshima to visit the Peace Memorial Park.

The a-bomb dome there is one of the few buildings that remained standing after the atomic bomb was dropped and is still an impressive and grisly reminder. The museum also serves as a reminder by exlpaining the events leading up to the bombing, the bombing itself, and the aftermath, including the lasting effects on survivors. The stories shared by those survivors are truely heartbreaking and visiting the museum is a sobering experience, even seeing it for the second time.

Wednesday was a late start as we made our way out to Fushimi-Inari, the fox shrine and graveyard that sprawl over the side of a mountain. The shrine is famous for it’s paths covered by long rows of red torri gates (if anyone’s seen Memoirs of a Geisha, the scene where she is running through all the red gates was filmed here). It’s one of my favorite shrines and the weather was good as we hiked up the first loop. We didn’t make it to the top of the mountain this time but one day I’m sure I’ll managed to set aside an entire day to do the whole thing since it’s supposed by be a pretty spectacular hike.

Thursday was really cold and fairly cloudy but we still went to see Kinkakuji, the golden pavillion. It was still beautiful and we had fun marvelling at the sheer amount of ice cream they sold there. Between the ice cream stands and the vending machines there must have been fifteen different places to by ice cream. And people were eating it even though it was like 35 degrees out!

From there we just kinda wandered around Kyoto since Ryoanji, the rock graden, was closed for renovations. That night we did a short (once the sun went down, it got even colder) walking tour through old Gion on a search for geisha and maiko (apprentice geisha). And we found one who was nice enough to let us take her picture before she hurried off to her next appointment.

Friday was our last day in Kyoto and we visited Nijo-jo, the castle with the singing floors. And they really do sing when you walk on them. The paintings on the wallscreens inside are stunning; the level of detail is just mindboggling and the care with which each design was chosen is very apparent.

Next stop was Heian-jingu. Though the gardens were mostly dead since well, it’s the middle of January, it was a nice walk and we sat on the bridge over the lake for a while to enjoy the sunshine and the scenery. Then the sun went away and it quickly became too cold to sit on the bridge so we packed up and went off to the train station to explore. Kyoto train station is a hyper-modern structure that is amazing to look at but incredibly confusing to navigate. Somehow we managed to find ourselves in what was essentialy an eight-story food court/ grocery store where you could get just about anything edible that you could ever want and most of which feature free samples. It took us nearly two hours to get through but we came out the other side with all sorts of goodies for the train ride back to Tokyo.

Saturday was the grand quest for dishes. See, when I was here two years ago I bought a set of dishes but only enough for two people. Well I kinda had the realization about a year ago that I really should have enough for four people. So Tara and I went to Kappabashi, THE street for anything kitchen-related from knives to dishes to uniforms. The dish shops were an experience unto themselves. They were so crowded and so disorganized. One shop we went into  my feet were too wide for the aisles at points and I had to carefully manuver around towering stack of plates and bowls. It was definetly a nerve-wracking shopping experience but a fun day that ended with seeing Tokyo Tower and night and marvelling over the sheer urban sprawl that is Tokyo.

Today found us back at Harajuku to explore Meiji-jingu. It was still incredibly crowded but not quite as bad as last week and there were ice sculptures. I have no idea why there were ice sculptures but the main path leading up to the shrine was lined with them. They really are amazing works of art and it made me even more excited to go to Sapporo for the start of the ice festival where they do hundreds of these sculptures all over the city.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Harajuku people-watching and eating crepes before hopping over to Shinjuku in search of a store I wanted to check out and finding dinner to take back to the guesthouse.

The next update will hopefully be on Thursday after I put my sister on a plane back to the states and find my way out to my friend’s apartment where I’ll be staying for the rest of my time in Tokyo. So check back then for stories of Disney, fish markets and hot springs!

Sorry for the long gap between posts, life here has been pretty crazy. I’ll make up for it today though with lots of new pictures.

So let’s rewind to new year’s day and recount our adventures in kimono-wearing. Tara, Maiko, Michael, and I got all dressed up in our kimonos to go to a temple and have lunch with Maiko’s mom in Kamakura. It took us almost two hours to get dressed because Maiko was the only one who knew what they were doing and well, kimono are complicated. It was really cool to learn how to put one on though and I look forward to using the knowledge to do some more kimono-themed photoshoots in the future.

Actually wearing the kimono out though was definitly an experience I won’t soon forget. Normally the Japanese don’t give a second look to foreigners but put those foreigners in kimono and wow, suddenly it feels like everyone is staring at you. It also probably didn’t help that Kamakura is on the beach and was incredibly windy the day we were there. Wind + Kimono = very cold legs and an intense desire for a safety pin to keep the bottom part closed.

After lunch we went to go see one of the largest outdoor Buddahs in Japan. The statue it self was quite impressive but the coolest part was getting to go inside. The interior walls are scatterd with coins that people have lodged there with prayers for good luck and good health. The rest of the temple complex was pretty but nothing overly special except for the fact that it was out of the wind.

Our next stop was going to be a garden in Kamakura but it was getting dark and after a warm, tasty stop at a Mister Donut, we decided that it was time to call it a day. We even splurged and took the green car (quieter cars with nice comfy seats and fewer people) for the train ride back to Maiko’s apartment. The expense was totally worth it and made for a pleasant end to a very fun but very cold day.

The next day was the emperor’s new year’s address to the people and is one of the two days a year that the Imperial Palace is open to visitors. So of course we went. The palace is beautiful once you get past the incredible amount of security (bag checks, pat downs, and a large number of what I can only guess were Japanese federal service agents). We then got to stand in another large, non-moving crowd (felt like new year’s eve all over again, only warmer). When the imperial family came out you could barely see them for all the flags that the crowds were waving. Makes me glad that I’m taller than most Japanese people. The emperor is a tiny, frail-looking old man but he stood up there and waved and waved before giving his address, which was short and entirely in Japanese so we have no idea what he said but the crowd seemed to like it so it must have been good. We just thought it was cool that we got to go into the palace and see the imperial family really, how many people can say that they’ve gotten to do that?

The rest of the was spent wandering around Ginza and Shibuya, window-shopping and people-watching. Ginza was amazing simply due to the buildings and the names on them. How about a Gucci skyscraper? Or a two-building Hermes skyscraper made out of translucent glass blocks? Or the 8-story Sony building complete with 3-d movie theater? Shibuya was amazing in a different way. We ventured into Shibuya 109, which is one of the biggest department stores for young, trendy fashion, on January 2, which is the biggest shopping day of the year. The place was packed and in front of every store there was a girl with a bullhorn yelling about their new year’s sale. Total sensation overload. We made it out alive though and sat on the second floor of Starbucks to enjoy a chai and watch the sea of people cross the largest crosswalk in the world.

Sunday found us in Harajuku in search of street fashion on the bridge in front of Meiji Shrine. When we arrived there were only two people dressed up among the masses that were making their way to the shrine. So we abandoned our original plan of exploring Meiji (we decided that next weekend would be a better time to do that once the new year’s celebrations were over) and went for a walk around Yoyogi park, which was pretty but not very interesting. Then we went in search of the architectually-interesting Prada building, which was cool but alot further away than we thought. The walk back took us past an absolutely amazing cake shop so we stopped in for a snack and to give our feet a break before continuing on to La Foret (another young, trendy department store) and Takeshita-Dori (the alternative fashion street of Tokyo) for some more window-shopping and people-watching. Dinner was street food from the vendors that set up shop for the week after new year’s followed by Harajuku crepes (which I’ve determined are among the most amazing foods known to man).

That’s all for now, we’re off to hike Fushimi-Inari today so stay tuned for the next update, which will be all about Kyoto and Hiroshima.

Happy New Year from Tokyo!

So we arrived safely on the 30th, managed to find our guesthouse (out in the middle of a local neighborhood and shall we say a rather interesting experience), acquired dinner and then promptly passed out. The 31st found us kimono shopping with my friends Maiko and Michael, who live in Yokohama. Tara found an absolutely amazing kimono and obi that, while beautiful and a screaming deal, were very heavy. So we took a quick detour back to the guesthouse to drop off our new kimonos and change into warmer clothes for the new year’s eve celebrations.

Maiko took us to this fantastic ramen place in Shibuya for dinner and then we walked up to Meiji Shine, which is one of the biggest and most famous in Tokyo. The place was packed. Thousands of people were there to celebrate the new year by tossing small amounts of yen as offerings and making a wish for the coming year. It was really cold and there was alot of time just spent standing around waiting to move but it was fun and was definitely an interesting way to bring in the new year.

The only problem was that the train back to our guesthouse had stopped running by the time we got there at around 2. Needless to say we were a little panicked. But an incredibly nice old Japanese man who spoke a little English helped us by directing us to another train that would get us closer to home and saying that would could get a taxi from there. Getting the taxi was another cold and interesting experience  but we made it home finally and, after figuring how our heater worked, went to bed.

Well, we’re off to the Imperial Palace right now so I’ll post again later about our adventures in kimono-wearing.