FUCK YEAH!

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Just to fill you in, in case you didn’t know, Kevin Rudd is Australia’s current Prime Minister!

Ciao for Now!

When I woke up I felt great, and like I said early, it was the start of my enjoyable travel. We had a quiet one up in the common room of the Hostel that night, Paul, Annie and Chris filling me in about their day out. They had a great time.

The following day Paul, Annie and I got up early to go to the Tsukiji Fish market. We were really tired from the early start, but we got up, took on the cold, and made it to our destination. We had a bit of trouble finding our way in, but soon enough someone pointed us in the right direction. There were all sorts of crazy fish and GIGANTIC tuna! I’ll let the photo’s speak for themselves:

The guys riding on their little cart things were vicious. Everyone was in a hurry and they were, in the end, at work. They needed to be quick and efficient, and so people like us were always in the way. We were constantly looking over our shoulders trying to make sure we didn’t get in their way, but it was tough.

When we got back, we went back to sleep to catch up on the lost rest we had that night. The fish market was awesome.

Sorry for the late postings guys!!!! Just remember these posts were written well in the past!

The day after New years, we went to the Imperial Palace, turns out Emperor Akihito was gonna show himself to the likes of the lowly public. Back in the day, Japan was “ruled” by its emperor, not only that but the Emperor was divine! DIVINE! …. Lol Well, he isn’t anymore, the Americans made sure of that after World War II, but the Imperial bloodline continues and the Imperial Family is still alive, and I was super excited to be able lay eyes on Japan’s Emperor. The Emperor only comes out twice a year, on his birthday, and the 2nd of January. We were lucky enough to be there!

We took the subway to Tokyo station on the borders of Ginza where we met up with another old friend: Chris! YAY! Remember Chris? “Do you like bubbles?” I went to Korea with Chris, a lot of fun this guy, an Epic piece of Aussie man.

We walked into the Imperial Palace grounds and followed the crowd to where the Emperor was going to come out. We didn’t know WHEN he was supposed to come out, or if he had already, or if we missed it, or anything. We just went. We walked to the big crowd of people in front of this pretty huge building that had a big glass room protruding out of it, I guessed that’s where the Emperor would be.

Ok, so i havent updated in a while, and YES there is still 129387123 posts about the backpacking trip still to come, but i’ll still update you with the goings on of the beginning of semester.

First of all, i lost my apartment and (rage incoming) i don’t know what the fuck is up with the Japanese and giving away things that have been reserved.  It happened with my phone last semester, and now my apartment this semester.  I even paid my deposit, but they still gave my room away leaving Annie, Paul and I without accomodation on the first day back.  But! More details on that when I cover it via the backpacking posts.

I’m currently living in Seminar House 4, i’m actually enjoying the dorm layout a bit better than the apartment layout but everything still kinda feels the same as last semester – everyone’s full of energy!  (’cept me)  But that energy dies down, as reality kicks in with the noobs and study pressure really starts the weigh everyone down.

Tokyo was a riot.

On the first night, upon arrival we met up with Logan and his friend Nathan. Logan is a Kansai Gaidai friend of ours from South Carolina in America, greeeat guy! So much fun. We made our way to our hostel, checked in, dropped our 19837198371982kg’s of luggage and headed out for a bit of a night, some Japanese barbecue and a Wendy’s which didn’t have any meat left so we went to Maccas instead. Shunjuku was alive, lots of things to do and things to see, if we had the time and the energy.

Tokyo is an extremely and ridiculously large city, the likes of which I would claim that if you put every capital city in Australia together, it would STILL be smaller than Tokyo, my guess would be quite a bit smaller too. Tokyo is made up of various districts, districts such as Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Roppongi…. And the thing I love about Tokyo and its districts is that every district is famous for something different, such as Shinjuku’s nightlife, Shibuya’s shopping, Roppongi’s Nigerian infested nightlife (neutral comment, make of it what you will), Ginza’s the business district, Harajuku’s crazy fashion….

After the shinkansen (I love Shinkansens) ride from Nagoya to Shizuoka (south-west of Fuji) we grabbed some food (tortilini – yummmmmmm) and hopped on some local trains on our way to fuji station. Fuji snuck up on me whilst I was gazing out the train window at the ocean, it literally snuck up on me. I turned around for a second and it was there! They call fuji a “shy” mountain and I can definitely see why. Even on the train it kept ducking out of view behind buildings and the train itself… and when we finally got off the train and rushed to get a good look at it, it was hiding behind clouds. We saw a bit of the snow covered peak through little holes in the clouds but there wasn’t that much we could see.

But what we COULD see was most definitely breath-taking. It just looked as though the earth rose into the clouds, it was most impressive. We asked around at Fuji station for bus information, they said the next bus would rock up in about… 4 hours…. Yeah, not gonna do that.

So we caught a different bus that was supposed to apparently maybe possibly should kind of drop us off somewhere in Japan. Sounds good. We jumped on and it headed up the foothills of Fuji – awesome.

Our lodgement for Nagoya was Hostel Ann, located near Kanayama Station – so we weren’t in the heart of Nagoya but a short train ride away.  However, Kanayama was quite a built up little city, and it was really well lit up at night time with bright lights and columns of store signs.  Anyone who has ever visited Japan, or at least seen a picture of a city in Japan, will know that the buildings are lined vertically with signs advertising the stores inside the building, they’re usually colourful and so… i like them… coz they’re all shiny xD

We arrived late, so we had a quick dinner at a ramen place, and crashed pretty early.  The next day was eventful, we started out by looking for a temple that was supposed to be tucked away within the city… but as it turns out… the map we were given, lied.  Again and Again.  So we were lost… but then we found this awesome Panasonic guy who was both busy and VERY willing to find the temple for us.  Annie went and asked him where it was and he just did the whole “uh… eeto.. … … *RUN*” and away he went, with Annie in tow.  He found us the temple, then knicked off.  The temple was tiny, and pretty dodgy… and had a car parked in it. … … .. booo.

After Tennoji we began our journey to Nagoya, but we decided to take a brief stopover at Hikone to see Hikone Castle. Hikone Castle was supposed to be a little less refurbished than other castles like Osaka Castle (which was a little disappointing to be honest). However, we did overlook one thing: the fact that this was an all day STOPOVER.

Stopover meaning we didn’t make accommodation reservations anywhere in the area, meaning we didn’t have anywhere to drop our 50kg backpacks. This made for an extremely painful and tiring day, however, it was most definitely worth it as we got to see a couple great things.

First thing was of course Hikone Castle which was absolutely amazing. It was a LOT smaller than Osaka castle, however, it was also a LOT less untouched than Osaka Castle.