February 28, 2009
The Adventures of Clare, Tarou and Souda
“medical reasons for window tint excema”
“stupid gaijins”
“will cannabis buds regrow once picked”
“i has”
“yelling hippos”
All of these, for some reason, are search terms that led to this blog. I am Sorry about your excema, those 5 people and cannabis person…well…um sorry, can’t help.
So yes, last time I wrote I went to Shinjuku and my poor second cousin was made fun of by the entirety of my massive family.
Then next day it was organised that I would meet Daijirou’s older brother, Tarou, at Takadanobaba the train station in Tokyo which is closest to Waseda University, which is where Tarou goes. Daijirou The Failure (:P) goes to Chuo University. So I met Tarou at Takadanobaba and he was throwing around ideas as to where we could go. He also brought along his friend, Souda. He would be Linda’s type, if any of you understand what I mean by that.
It was finally decided that we would go to Kamakura. After a trip to Yokohama to pick up Tarou’s car from his house, we were on the road
CUE ROAD TRIP MUSIC.
Thankfully, Tarou and Souda liked The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jet, The Arctic Monkeys and Collective other things that were not generic j-pop, which was good. On the road I saw a lingerie shop called, get this, Sexy Miser. It seems that once you leave the centre of Tokyo, the Engirsh pops up again.
After a longer than expected time on the road, we stopped in Enoshima to eat the local speciality, baby sardines. That’s right, small scaleless baby fish scattered over everything. I had kakiage don- a bunch of vegtables fried in tempura batter, covered in a special tempura sauce. This was placed on rice and covered with baby sardines. The baby sardines themselves have very little taste, but have a smooth and almost rubbery texture that I, for one, quite enjoyed. However, the Kakiage were so huge that I had trouble finishing off my meal.
The brown disc is the kakiage, and the white is the shirasu (baby sardines). There were originally two discs, much effort was made to eat all of one.
After the meal, we went up a nearby mountain to look at the illumination and flowers displays. The lookout points gave a great view of the general area. We also went up a large lighthouse to look at the small number of visible stars and the views from there.
Tulips and Illumination
Souda on the left, Tarou on the right. Taken from the top of the lighthouse
I’m not sure what Souda is looking at there. Oh well.
So after a leisurely time walking around and admiring the natural wonders around the mountain, we made our way towards Kamakura.
Kamakura contains one of the most beautiful historical sights in Japan. formerly being the capital of Japan, there are dramatic, multicoloured building dating back from that period. Definitely worth seeing.
After that there was a long drive home (made even longer by neither Tarou nor Souda knowing how to get home and Souda’s ipod being an ok but not fantastic map) where I found the Clothing Store: Atrantis. Mother’s dire warning to get home before dark rang in my head as the time approached 10.30. But my great aunt and uncle were fine with it and forced food upon the boys until they made their excuses and ran away to the nearest convenience store.
(and now for a brief public service announcement
Because I rushed past a number of things in my adventures, the rest of my time in tokyo was spent revisiting places. This means there aren’t exactly new Tokyo adventures after this. So I will continue on to writing about Hakuba in Nagano prefecture, which is where I went after Tokyo. Will post soon! xx)
February 18, 2009
Shinjuku with Daijirou
Hah, my second cousin (Daijirou) intended to meet me at 2.15 in Shinjuku
He was late and, aware of the punctuality-is-God thing that the Japs have going I was rather worried. Turned out that he got lost.
We walked around Shinjuku for a bit, got rather off-track, and ended up walking around the train line in the rain.
He admitted that he hadn’t known of my existence before the previous week, when his father announced it to Daijirou that he was to guide me around Tokyo for a couple of hours. I doubt that this meant getting us completely lost, but that happened anyway.
We finally ended up close to where we started, a Maccas right by the train station, where Daijirou said he would like to meet my (and his) great Aunt Isuzu. So we went to Numa (numa)bukuro, where she fed us both until I could hardly stand.
Afterwards, I got a call from Daijirou’s father (My Mother’s cousin) apologising for his son’s incompetence.
“Getting you lost and then eating Isuzu’s food? Stupid son” etc etc etc.
I heard this same thing at least 3 times, from different people quoting him.
Tomorrow? Adventures with another 2nd cousin (Daijirou’s older brother) and his friend.
Oh, just a warning. I will be inserting photos in past blog posts, so keep an eye out for the changes/ improvements.
