DisneySea

If you have never been to a Disney theme park then its hard to explain how detailed everything is. Disney Sea is different to Disney Land as it looks to be intended for an older target audience instead of families. It still has all the family stuff but it felt a lot less kiddish. A small fact about the two parks in Japan is that they are the only two in the world that are not owned by Disney themselves.

The park has 7 sections, the Mediterranean Harbor, Mysterious Island, Mermaid Lagoon, Arabian Coast, Loser River Delta, Port Discovery and the American Waterfront and they are all themed extremely well. The rides, food and restaurants all relate to the area perfectly.

Like Universal Studios, Disney Sea offers a Fast Pass system to help you get a ticket in line in the future so you can enjoy the park and come back at that time to get to near the front of the line. The one benefit about the Disney system is thats its FREE, you don't have to pay any extra to use this feature. It was great last time I went to Disney as the park was a little busy but this time round Disney Sea wasn't at all busy so we just waited in line. A couple of the rides we had to wait 30 or so minutes but others we were able to get straight on.

We got in to the park about lunch time and were greeted by a small show out the front of the Mediterranean Harbor with Daffy, Donald, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and the whole crew dancing away singing crap in Japanese. Then we headed for to the American waterfront area and passed all the Venice canals with gondolas passing through them.

We came to our first ride, the Tower of Terror. This ride is inside a big crazy tower which drops you from a height, in the dark. I thought this was going to be hell scary like those ones which drop you faster than gravity but it wasn't. You sat with about 16 people together on the ride and you were able to take your belongings on with you, plus you were held in with a normal seat belt. This instantly gave away how lame it was going to be :) It was alright though, they throw you up to the top of the tower and down a few levels back up and open the window at the top fo the tower so you can see all over the park then all the way back down to the bottom again!

Next we had lunch, a Hamburger and Fries in an ole American shed which just happened to have a chipmunk show on stage when we rocked up. Not knowing we watched it and then headed off to the Port of Discovery, A section themed as if it was from a science fiction book. There was a bumper boat ride which when I saw how fast they were going I had to go on it but upon closer inspection they were little boats on rails under the water.. pass.

Stormrider had no line so we jumped on board. Your immersed in a spaceship in the future and your mission is to go out into the storm, fire your weapon and take the storm down. Your spaceship is on hydraulics so your thrown about everywhere to match what happens on the big screen. Water is sprayed on you to get the feeling of going through the storm and by the time the end came I sort of felt a bit motion sickness, I guess the ride did its job :)

The Lost River Delta was next and this was based on Indiana Jones. It had two rides, a small themed ride on a coaster of sorts where you go through chasing the Crystal Skull. Essentially your helping or following Indy through some of the scenes out of the movies. One included where you steal the Gold Idol and you set of the booby traps and you have to run away with the walls shooting spears at you. The other main scene was when the big ball comes chasing after you, in this case your heading right for a massive 3+ meter ball as it rolls towards you and just before you get to it your thrown down under the ball at a fast pace and this is pretty much were the ride ends. A very well themed ride.

The other ride was a small roller coaster, about the size of the one we have at Adventure world except this one has a 360 degree loop. I almost had troubles getting on this ride because I was too tall.. TOO TALL!! The ride was ok, it took you to the top of the coaster and at the start of coasters you always get that big drop but this one started like that but then took you back up again. You were about to scream and then.. nope. By the time you got to the 360 loop you weren't going that fast but they had steam/smoke before the loop and after it so you couldn't see the entry and exit to the loop. It was themed as very old and rusty and they did the job great. The ride was alright :)

Around the park we went skipping through the Arabian Coast as it was all about alladin and was orientated towards children.

Megan loves Ariel from The Little Mermaid so we had to go to Mermaid Lagoon. I knew this was going to be orientated towards children and the rides were but the place was awesome. So colourful and weird, I think someone spiked the Disney "Imagineers" drinks. A very whacky fantasy land. They had a Little Mermaid show which we watched and it was pretty awesome. Massive mechanical and human controlled puppets flying out from the roof and from everywhere. Very cool indeed.

Located in the middle of the park is a massive volcano which constantly has smoke coming out of it and often erupts with flames flying out of it. Under this volcano are two rides, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and the Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

The 20,000 leagues under the sea ride placed you inside a small submarine and it took you down under the water to view whats deep down below. But you didn't really go underwater, instead the submarine capsule you ride in had two layers of glass on the windows and between them it was filled with water. The pumped air bubbles into this to give you the feeling of submerging, hitting objects and coming back up to the surface.

The other ride, Journey to the Centre of the Earth was a coaster ride which took you inside the volcano showing what lives beneath us. The best part was the finale where they flung you up a hill fast and then you appeared through a gap in the mountain so you could see the park and nothing else ahead of you. The track then throw you back down again into the mountain into the dark and then around a sharp corner up again into an opening and then back down again to the end of the ride. Something we weren't expecting.

We finished off the park with a dinner at one of the few table serviced restaurants in the park and then headed out to the watch the Christmas carol lights around the Harbor.

A few crazy things about the park.

1. how many different flavours of popcorn they have for sale.
2. Everyone had these hats which they wore, they were all Disney heads and looked to keep your head very warm. I looked for an alien one (from toy story) to wear camping but couldn't find one :(
3. In the carpark I saw the most modified cars together that I had ever seen throughout Japan.

The park was great and it is a lot different than Disneyland. So if you've been to any of the Disneyland's around the world you will know that they are all the same, except Disney Sea. It was very hard to fault anything, everything was so well themed. Everything.

Pics

Shaun

Apartment

As some of you may know we hired a serviced apartment in Tokyo (Roppongi Hills) for two weeks as it had some of the comforts of a home like a kitchen, a laundry and also being in the same place for two weeks is alot more relaxing than shifting hotels all the time. After some research we found it was actually cheaper to stay at a serviced apartment than at a hotel, we paid under $2000 AUD for this room for two weeks and a hotel in tokyo of this size would be well over 200$ per night and without the extra comforts of the kitchen and laundry.

The apartment is on the 10th floor (top) of the Court Annex building owned by Asahi Homes, yes the same Asahi that makes the AWESOME Asahi Super Dry beer, softdrinks, newspapers and the other 400 other products. It is across the road from Roppongi Hills, a 4 billion dollar complex built to allow people to work, live and be entertained in the same area saving travelling times and improving the quality of life.

My opinion, its another office building with the normal amount of restaurants, cinema's, shops surrounding it. The only difference is there are a couple of luxury apartment skyscrapers built near the main tower. If you have a extremely high up in the ladder job and can afford one of these apartments then yes, it is what they had planned for, but for the normal joe who works in Toyko and has to commute and hour or more to get here then no. To back this up. The only shops in the complex are Tiffany, Versace, Louis Vitton, Kate Space, Escada, MaraMax, Christian Lacroix, Hugo Boss and all these other ones ive never heard. the other main building in the complex is Asahi TV, yep, they do TV too and have 3 or more channels here in tokyo and this year they are 50years old!

Enough of that, our apartment is an ok size, its a 35sqm studio apartment so the living room and bedroom are essentially in the same room with a 1m high wall divider between them. An extremely small kitchen which has no bench space at all, a normal size fridge, oven, microwave etc. Behind that is our laundry which is a refrigerator size recess with a washer and dryer to do our laundry and also our bathroom which is a normal size fibreglass hotel which you will find in all hotels in Japan.

It came with an 80cm LCD tv, DVD, VCR (which i cant friggin figure out how to do the simplest thing and thats record. even after pressing the record button and every other combination. grrrr, piece of crap) and thank fark, cable tv. We have about 50 channels which are japanese but thankfully there are 10 english/bilingual channels, 5 movie and tv show channels and 5 documentary channels like discovery, NG and history so we can get home after a day of walking around everywhere and viewing the sites and just sit down and relax watching TV in English.

Roppongi is apparently the nightlife part of Tokyo and after walking the main streets of the area you can see why. There are a ton of clubs in the area compared to the other main area's of Tokyo and im talking a club every 20-30m surrounded by restaurants.

All in all, its a good little apartment right in the middle of Tokyo.

Some more pictures of our apartment and the area around.

Shaun

Umeda Sky Building

This building is one of the skyscrapers in Osaka, it is two towers linked together at the top. There are tons of buildings all over Japan just like this but what makes it different is on the top of the building you can go out into the open and view the city at 173m above the city floor.

The other thing which makes this building unique is that the two towers are connected via escalators with nothing below them except the ground some 40 stories below.

You catch a glass lift up to about the 35th floor and then hop on an escalator in one tower and ride up to the top of the building on the other tower. Here you can access the sky walk which we did at 7pm at night and it was damn freezing. It it wasn't so cold we would have stayed out there for a lot longer as it was good viewing the city from that high.

We got out of there and headed back down the other escalators and back down the lift to the ground floor where there was some German festival on selling all kinds of Japanese German stuff. I bought some candy, it was about the only place we have found proper candy in Japan. They call cakes and biscuits confectionery over here so confectionery stores are just packed full of that. :(

Osaka Aquarium

The Osaka aquarium is a huge with around 5500 cubic meters of water, 16 tanks and it uses so much acrylic glass that it has 1.5 times the annual production of acrylic glass used just at this aquarium. The windows used are huge and the largest one measures six meters by five meters and is 30cm thick! The aquarium's tanks represent the ring of fire and ring of death areas of the Pacific Ocean and all the animals are from that area.

You begin at the top of the building around 6 stories up where you are 'above ground' and get to see a few otters and a sloth in the tree above. You then walk down slowly seeing the top of the various tanks they have. One with dolphins, another with seals and another with sea otters. These are otters but a hell of alot bigger, they are about the size of a seal. I didn't even know they existed this big.

You then progress down and down seeing below the water and into the tanks and what lies below. The main large tank had the usual sharks, fish and stingrays all ranging from small to freakn massive and the one which stood out the most was the massive Whale Shark present.

Other tanks included the great barrier reef which was jam packed with tropical fish. Another tank had 5 or so dolphins in there, this tank was quite small and for an active mammal like that you'd expect them to have a much larger tank.

Once you got to the bottom of the ocean you are left with the ugly jellyfish and huge crabs. *shudder*.

The weirdest fish there was the Sunfish, it was round, around 1m in radius and sorta thin. It had the ugliest face and mouth and it was in a tank of its own. Inside that tank though it was inside a net and you could see why. It would swim around and then just head straight for the glass and try to smack into it, luckily for the fish the netting was there to stop it :)

It was a pretty good aquarium and one of the largest ive been too.

Click here for some pics.

Baseball

I've always liked baseball for some reason and the Japanese absolutely love it so I thought it would be a good time to find a match on our holiday. I tried looking for some matches when we were to be in Tokyo but none were scheduled until I came across a poster in Osaka. We checked out the website and yep, baseball games for two weeks.

It was the Amateur League so we were able to get into the ball park for 1000 odd yen ($10) for 3 games. When we were in line to buy a ticket an old guy came up to us and gave us a free one, we thanked him a heap and went on our way. We entered the park and they were trying to ask us what team we were on and we had no idea so we just went to the right, found a tunnel and then a seat. We were then barracking for team TOSHIBA, I still don't know to this date what the friggin teams real name was because all they kept chanting was TOSHIBA and none of their merchandise had it either. Weird.

As we were watching the game the same guy who gave us the free ticket came past again and this time gave us a TOSHIBA team shirt so we began barracking for them. 30minutes later he came back again with another shirt for me. We paid him pack later with a pint of Asahi and some nuts. The Japanese are a too damn friendly :)

Beer at a baseball game is an important factor and these guys know how to do it. They have a bunch of people walking the stands with kegs on their back flogging a pint of beer for 700yen ($7). This made it way to easy to get drunk. Waaaaaay too easy.

Our team lost, and after all that cheering :( We stayed for the next game, Tokyo Gas vs Daiwa Gas and we were on the Tokyo Gas side. Their team mascots walk around handing out fans for you to help cheer the team on. An excellent way to get everyone on their side.

This time our team won. After all that booze and cheering it was worth it.

We somehow made our way back to Osaka and grabbed dinner, it was a great day relaxing watching the baseball and drinking beer.

Shaun

Kyoto's Geisha

Gion Corner is a theater that hosts seven different types of traditional japanese art. It is located in Gion, the land of Geisha's, as well as adult entertainment.

Chando (tea ceremony) Gagaku (court music)
Koto (japanese harp) Bunraku (puppet play)
Kado (flower arrangement) Kyomai (kyoto style dance)
Kyogen (comic plays)

I was not sure how they would get thru all these forms in 40min but it was achieved by doing some of the acts at the same time.
The chando commenced first using two participants from the audience. Half way thru the ceremony, ladies started playing koto & another lady & her assistant performed kado.
Gagaku was good except for one weird recorder that made you think it was broken. A dancer dressed like a warrior also performed.
Kyogen was funny. Three men performed a play about a lord tricking his servants and tying their hands up so they wouldn't drink his sake while he went to town. They managed to still be able to drink it without there hands and got pissed. He came back not happy!
The kyomai was slow but precise. The geisha's dancing looked young and it was mainly hand movements.
Bunraku was a one scene, one puppet play. Three people operated the puppet that would have been about 150cm tall. All wore black including their faces except for the main operator. His facial expressions showed the same as the puppets.

It was good to see the theatre. We would have pictures but being the good people we are and knowing that you cant photograph/film shows, we did not bring the camers. Apparently thou this time you could. Audience members were filming and taking photos with flash! Poo to them.

We also missed on taking photos of the old buildings and streets of Gion. They were cobblestoned, tree lined, dim light, very romantic. We saw a few geisha moving from building to building as well. A taxi went past with three in it and it was a little haunting. Yellow taxi with three white faces of old times. There was also modern geisha's out and about but they wore elegant dinner dresses.

Megan

Bike Riding around Kyoto

Bike riding!!! What is Shaun getting us into. We have hired bikes for our second day. At first we were abit dubious of the traffic but got the hang of the of it. Some cyclists were even driving into the traffic.

First stop was an art & craft market at Chionji Temple. It was PACKED! So many people in such a small place. There was a good variety of different items as well as food,some of it scary looking. Unfortunatley most of it was wood products which Border Patrol would not like. When then rode thru the Kyoto Imperial Place area. We went to get tickets to visit the palace but it was lunchtime so we didnt hang around.

We rode to Nijo Castle. The castle is surrounded by a tall wall and a moat. There are the biggest koi we have seen in there. The building was typical of japanese old skool architecture but it had "Nightingale Floorings". The floors around the rooms were wood decking but were designed so that the flooring nails rubbed against a jacket or clamp, causing chirping noises. It was used as a secruity device. The castle had beautiful gardens as well. Small waterfalls with large ponds and sculptured trees.

Cycling down the Kamo River towards Kyoto Station was an easy way to escape the traffic. It was just like the Swan River, lots of people out walking, riding except there were a few shanty homes. Skillfully made of tarps and wood. Some were even padlocked.

We parked in an area that we were not too sure if it was the right spot but other bikes we there. Did our business inside and come out to a shock. Our bikes were gone, all the bikes in our area had gone. Then I noticed the official looking man just moving the bicycles to another location. Phew! Would have cost a few pennies getting them back. Back up the river and home.

Megan

Kyoto City

First day in Kyoto was a relaxing one, just walked around checking things out but there was a couple of highlights.

While I was window shopping, Shaun walked off with the map scoping out the malls. I turned to let him know I was going inside when I saw an older lady take his arm. I caught up to them and she was taking him to the police kiosk, must've thought he was lost. In broken english and japanese we convinced her we were not lost.

We caught the train to Kyoto Train Station. This 15 storey building is made of glass and steel and has many escalators. At the top of the escalators there is a sky garden from which you can view out over kyoto and down into the station. A small piece of green in all the concrete. On the train ride to the station, there was a school boy flaked out on the seat. He must've been so tired and was falling off the seat. Suddenly he woke up, jumped off the train and crossed to the other train line. We think he missed his stop.

Megan

Universal Studios

Universal Studios Japan is apparently veryt similar to the Universal park in Orlando, USA except this one was built on an old contaminated site. This might explain the extreme happiness of the all the park staff and its craziness.

The park is themed into its different sections like new york, hollywood, Amity Village (jaws), Jurassic park, Snoopy Studios etc. It basically a mix of shows, rides and a crapload of merchandise.

Some of the shows included Shrek 4-D, Terminator 2 - 3D and there were many others. Were weren't really interested in any shows but as we were walking around we just happened to come across the Waterworld show which was just starting so we took a look. It was basically a 20minute action scene in an outdoor theatre including boats, fireworks, fighting, jet ski's and a almost full scale sized plane flying over the wall towards the audience giving everyone a scare.

Univeral Studio's offers a different way of reducing the waiting time for rides than Disney and thats buy paying an extra premium at the gate. Basically for an extra 22$ you can get four fast passes which enable you to go into another line and usually wait 1/4 or 1/10 of the time. This was well worth the money as the park wasn't too busy and allowed us to go onto the ride in no time as the lines were still 30-45mins long if you had no pass. Screw going to a theme park in peak season.

The rides we went on were:

Spiderman, you sat in a moving vehicle/pod thing and wore 3d glasses. The pod was on a tracks and was hydrualically controlled so you were move and thrown about here and there. The effects were quite good using alot of flames, hot air and water. The best effects were the feelings of extreme movement via the pod moving and also the 3d movie. One of them included flying up up above a skyscraper then back down against the road. This ride was quite good.

Back to the Future, your in a delorian and in a huge imax theatre and you are basically taken through time and into different scenarious. it was ok.

Jurassic park, a log cabin ride through some rivers with a few animatronic robots and the finale was a 25m near veritcal drop into the waters below. It was a pretty short ride and sorta boring, bar the drop at the end.

Jaws, your in a tour boat around Amity Village and Jaws is chasing you and the finale is him being fried to death. Sneh. :)

I got to see a delorean back to the future version (replica) :)

Because the park wasn't very busy and we had our fast passes we were able to get around the park in only a few hours so we had to kill some time until the days show finale, Peter Pans Neverland so we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. We thought the meals were a bit expensive for what they were but when they came out they were friggin huge, neither of us could finish our meals.

The peter pan show was in the huge lake within the park. It was basically the story of peter pan with fireworks, trampolines, music and the peter pan flying 30 odd meters into the air above the lake and the audiences.

Basically Univeral Studios is family oriented so you couldn't really go there expecting hard core extreme rides so they are a bit lame if your looking for a good scare. An example of this is their Dream Ride rollercoaster which looks to be for Cinderella with all its lights and looked quite slow for its size. It was still good though with how well everything was themed.

Pictures

Shaun

Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge

This bridge is a sight to see and is part of the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Project which is a group of bridges connecting the islands of Honshu and Shikoku. Many of the bridges in this group set various records for length and size and are also in the top lists for the same reasons.

Approaching it via train from Kobe you begin to see the 298m tall supporting towers over the hills, the closer you get the more you realise how damn big this bridge is. In reference to something local the bankwest tower antenna tip is 248m tall and these towers which hold the bridge up are over 50m higher.

Unfortunately we were unable to walk the bridge or even walk a part of it so we were only able to see it from below but it is still amazing at its size. The roadway above sits 50m above you which had a gallery/cafe but that was closed on the day we went.

Beneath the roadway was a museum dedicated to the bridge which showed you how it was build and all the engineering feats they had to overcome to build a bridge of that magnitude. They had two scale models of the bridge, a 1:40 scale which they used in wind tunnel testing and also a smaller 1:1000 scale showing its surroundings. Another scale model included all the other bridges in the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Project.

Megan also got to build her own bridge in the special learning school :)

Some Statistics on the bridge which took 12 years to build.
Length: 3911 meters
Central Span: 1991 meters
Tower Height: 298 meters
More info at wikipedia.org

Shaun

How much everything costs.

A few people have asked how much everything costs over here. Well we've found everything so far to be alot cheaper than Australia and it is most likely due to the Australian Dollar getting stronger.

When i bought my R32 skyline back in 2002 or so the Yen was 69yen to the AUD but over the past week or so it has been as high as 107yen to the dollar and just yesterday it has dropped back to 97Yen.

So to convert to australian you can pretty much just divide the price by 100 and you have the price in AUD.

Some prices for things.

• 500ml coke from a vending machine, 120Y = $1.20
• 500ml can of Asahi SUUUUPER DRY from 711/deli etc. 250Y = $2.50
• Bottle of water from vending machine/711, 100Y = $1
  
• Red Bull from 711, 232Y = $2.32
• Ice creams from 711, 105Y = $1.05
  These are just like our Magnums etc which are 3$ odd at petrol stations?
• Mazda 3 MPS, 2,600,000 Yen = $26,000
  These are 40-45k AUD according to the mazda australia site.
• Porsche Cayman S, 8,200,000Y = $82,000
  These are 150k from the dealer in australia.
  The new GTR is in about the same price range of the Cayman too but a little cheaper.
  

The cars prices are most likely all the damn taxes the government puts on the things but all food is very cheap everywhere you go, except steak :) Plus there is also the cost of storage in japan which by looking at some of the prices in the heart of the bigger cities it can get up to 200Y per 20minutes! Other places usually charge 100Y per hour during the peak periods.

Electronics over here are dirt cheap, I found a laptop for $530 and it had the basic specs like youd find in the 700$ Australian laptops except that it was paper thin and lightweight. The 700$ laptops back in home country are chunky mofo's.

Another example is projectors, my dad just bought a Epson Tw700 (720p) projector for $2200 or so after a discount at The Good Guys, here it sells for 1380. The TW1000 (1080p) model was $3000 and the cheapest price I could find in Australia a month ago was $4300.

Megan has also snatched some housing/land brochures but we have yet to read them yet. Some of the prices ive seen have been more than what we'd expect to pay and in smaller areas but nothing extreme like everyone always makes out. I shall get into those brochures sometime soon

In the attached picture we have 2 bottles of Lemon water (damn its tasty water, 110Y each), an alcoholic Regae Punch (285Y), a box of chocolate almonds (these are soooo nice, 210Y) and a friggin big ice cream (105Y). the total? 820Y = $8.20 from a corner store.

Makes you feel jipped at the prices we are being charged in Australia. I guess its why im starting to import things I want from overseas as our dollar is strong and even by the time you add on postage which usually equaltes to 33% of the product price your still in front by about 33% of what the shops in Australia are charging.

Shaun

Cirque du Soleil

This was fun, trying to find the place that is. We had our tickets booked but we had to pick them up and pay for them by 4pm otherwise they'd be sold to someone in line. We dumped our luggage at our hotel across the road from the Nagoya Station and followed the instructions we were given from the circus staff via email. Their instructions sucked!

We ended up asking a staff member of a shopping centre where it was, she managed to point us in the right direction but didnt tell us how far to go. We walked around for ages and finally said screw this so we went to the biggest most luxurious hotel in Nagoya, someone there is bound to speak english and they did. The foyer for the hotel looked pretty snazzy which happened to be on the 15th floor and the rooms went all the way up to the 50 something floor. Megan asked a staff member and they spent 10 minutes making phone calls trying to find out exactly where it was.

It was in the right direction we were going, it was just another kilometre or so up the road. So ahead we went coming across all the people which had just seen the previous show so the paths and roads were packed.

This show was called Dralion and it was awesome just like all the different versions they have around the world. If you've ever been to one you will know what im talking about it. We had prime seats right in the middle so we got to see all the action right in front of us. The only thing I didn't like about the show is when they make a mistake they never did the trick again to prove that it was possible by them. There was about 4 or 5 mistakes (that I noticed) and only one was tried again.

An excellent show though, if you have the chance to go see one then do so.

No pictures unfortunately at this time as we weren't allowed camera's.

After the show we headed back to our hotel and stopped of for dinner and of all the billion Japanese restaurants there are we managed to pick one that was a chain of another we had out first meal at in Shinjuku. I guess it was their engrish menu which drew us to the place but we didnt realise it was a chain until we sat down and saw the menu.

Nagoya was a very large and clean city and was the one which had two huge Loius Vitton stores across the road from one another at "Midland Square" :). Would love to see Midland with one of those stores there.. one day.. maybe.

Snow Monkeys

Today was time to see the Snow Monkeys. They are located up in the Mountains of Nagano about an hours train ride followed by a 15 minute bus ride and theeeeeen a walk up a steep hill and a 2km walk through the forest.

After finally reaching the very small village located next to a steam geyser all of a sudden these monkeys just started appearing from nowhere, first one, then another and then behind us and you then start to see them everywhere once you can distinguish them from the bush and rocks.

We paid our 500yen to go into the park which basically followed a river up into the mountain further. Once we went around the first corners there were monkeys everywhere, i'm not talking a few im talking a couple of hundred all doing their own little things, cleaning themselves, playing, fighting and even doing one another. :)

We walked further along the path with the monkeys following us, it was so weird having them walk near you and they aren't even bothered that your there. At the end of the trail there is a man made bath made out of rocks with hot spring water pumped into it. The monkeys sit in this bath to keep warm and clean themselves. There were little baby monkeys in their with their parents, some were scared of the water screaming when their parents would slightly dip them into the water. Others were little water baby's swimming like mad all around the pool.

It was quite an amazing site to see that many monkeys up close and not being disturbed by people taking pictures and even young kids screaming with excitement.

Check out the photo's.

Nagano

Home of the winter olympics back in the 90's which looked like it had a major makeover in the 90's because of it and nothing has changed.

There wasn't really much to do or see here as its a Winter city for everyone to come and go skiing. We took a walk around the city and went to the Zenkoji Temple which would probably be one of the biggest templates ive seen so far. This temple is currently in use everyday where they perform they're rituals. It is also thought to have the first Buddhist statue ever bought to japan.

Once you've seen one temple you've pretty much seen them all so you can walk through them quite quickly most of the time but there's always something very unique about each of them which grabs your eye and before you notice you've been there for quite a while.

More shopping and we came across this little shop at the end of an arcade. This guy looked like he had collected every sort of toy, nick knack and piece of crap over the years and just kept it in his shop as a museum with price tags on them. We found a few cool little things including a complete set of japanese coke bottles (with coke) to add to my collection. He even had a LaserDisc collection with Back to the future II music video sountrack, The immaculate Collection, Terminator 2 and a few others.

After that we then a game of ten pin bowling, Megan somehow managed to get a score over 100 for once. :P

That was probably the highlight of the day :)

Ohh, and i saw a HR30 Skyline which didnt look like it had moved for a loooong time but you dont see many of those suckers around anymore. Ohh to have a big garage to collect all the different models, i'll have to stick to the small scale versions instead.

Shaun

Sendai & The Zuihoden Mausoleum

First thing we came across when we got out of our hotel was a Small quad bike parked where people park all their bikes. It was registered for road use and had all the indicators and lights on it. That would be crazy to drive around in a city, unless he/she drives it around on the path. Crazy.

More shopping, all the cities have all the BIG NAME brands everywhere like Louis Vitton, Coach, Bvlgaria, Gucci blah blah and in some places you see the same shop across the mall or road. We managed to see two HUGE Louis Vitton shops across from one another, they were friggin massive. They manage to stay alive because all people do here are go out so they need all the latest crap to be seen with, even the guys (young and old) have matching Louis Vitton handbags and manbags. they also need these brand name products for their pets too which is a whole another story. Ohh its soooo funny :)

We then headed onto a tourist bus and went to the Zuihoden Mausoleum which holds the body of the first fuedal lord of the region and some other members of the Date family. Some of the temples had some amazing woodwork in them which would have taken god knows how many man hours to create but it looked awesome.

We also got to see some Samurai outfits in the museum, these guys were a hell of a lot shorter centuries ago.

Matsushima Bay

"Matsushima is a group of islands in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. There are some 260 tiny islands (shima) covered in pines (matsu) – hence the name – and is ranked as one of the Three Views of Japan.", Wikipedia.

This place was quite beautiful, we got there via train as usual and headed into the bay where we caught a ferry around the bay. They took you on a path weaving through many of the islands which ranged in sized from a few meters in diameter to a few hundred meters which is inhabited by 300 people.

Each island had its own characteristics, some with tunnels or caves underneath them, some tall, some covered in pines and some with nothing on them at all. One of the main islands near the coast is a place where Buddhist's still pray upon today and you are able to access this island via a bridge.

Next we headed to the Zuiganji temple which is one of the most famous in the region. It was originally built in 828 by Jikaku Daishi but was later rebuilt in 1609 by Date Masamune and is classified as a National Treasure. Inside the template where many screen doors with art dating way back, unfortunately we were unable to take photo's in the temple as people often leave their flashes on which can damage the art.

One of the rooms was where the bodies apparently laid from a battle between samurai's, this room was very weird and was extremely cold. ergh.

After looking at the Museum and caves we headed back to Sendai for some dinner. Near our hotel was a Domino's and I had to try it to see what it was like in Japan. They had some weird gourmet pizza's and all the different sized pizza's came in their cute appropriately sized octagonal box's. They even had these small pizza wrap things. It was quite nice and a bit of a change from the other japanese food.

ohhh, and there was a quake before, read below. :)

I've uploaded tons more photos.

Shaun

For the girls

By request, here is another picture of Megan's ring, this time from the front as the last picture you can't really see it too well. Click on the picture to make it bigger.

I don't know squat about jewelery but it's a floater mounted in white gold so the light really gets into it from every angle so it sparkles like mad. Around the ring are 3 little diamonds on each side. Excuse the marks on it as I was taking photo's of it on the tour boat and there was salt water spraying up everywhere :)

A big thanks to Tash (my sister) for helping me pick it out and keeping it a secret from everyone! :)

Shaun

EarthquaAaAaAake

I think we just experienced a decent sized earthquake.

Were are in our hotel in Sendai on the 9th floor, I was surfing the internet leaning against the desk when it started to rock. I turned to megan and said "what the heck are you doing?", she looked at me strangely and she thought I had my foot on the bed and was rocking it. We both sat still and looked around and our clothes hanging from the chairs were swaying too.

It feels like when your really drunk at your at the point of spewing as everything is slightly moving by itself and you cant control it. :)

It was a 4.6 and 65km away from the city, but about 30km away from where we were today. You can see in the picture on the right where it was, we are in the city of Sendai.

Here is some more info on the quake.

At the moment there are a few sirens (ambulance/police/fire) outside going off, maybe the city occured some damage to older buildings or something. our Hotel and the buildings around us are fine.

PS. ive drunk a few beers and it made it even worse. hehe :)

Shaun

mmmm Whale

We made our way back to tokyo then hopped on a Shinkansen (bullet train) to Sendai, its cool seeing the countryside fly past you when your going at around 300km/h. The ride is so smooth as we didnt even notice the train taking off and stop as I was buried into Zelda on my DS and Megan was stuck into her book.

Once there we checked in and took a look around Sendai. We came across a pet store in the middle of the city with cats and dogs crammed into small cages which I very highly doubt they would ever leave. Some of them are a few months old and it made me wonder how long theyve actually been in there. And the price of the animals were crazy, 2k for a friggin dog and 1k for a cat. I know you can get breeds which cost this plus more but ive seen them a hell of alot cheaper in australia.

Under the cat/dog cages they had some Loius Vuitton dog/cat carriers which were closely priced to the same value as the animals. They also had a small Monkey, Porcupines and some other little creatures for sale. We bought astro a little toy to play with :)

Cruised around some more and found a very nice place to eat down in the basement of a shopping mall (which was around 2km+ long, 1km one way, a km the other). We perused the menu and came across Whale Bacon which I had to try as it was one of my goals in coming to japan, to try Whale :P Sneh, tasted like a weird meat. Id like to have a steak or however they cook it over here and truly just its taste.

Bed time, check out the pics for the Thorpedo water Megan found :)

Shaun

GTR

The GTR.. hmmmmmm. :)

When we got to the Nissan area they had the GTR on stage which had a crapload of people around it so trying to get a glimpse of it or at least a photo was a pain in the ass.

They had an upper area which we went up to and I had to put on the zoom lense to get a good view, they had smoke and flashing red lights going bonkers over the car so it didnt help at all in helping the car look good. We kept walking around the platform to the other end which had a guy standing outside and there was a sign about needing a ticket, I almost didnt enter until I saw a few people just walk through.

So I did also and through another walkway was another GTR, just sitting there where you could get up close and take pictures and even sit in it (if you had a ticket).

I took a heap of snaps and have uploaded a few of them to our Holiday Snaps (you can view them all when i get back).

At first glance on the stage I didnt really like the look of the front that much and it was the same with all the photo's i saw in magazines/internet. But when you see the car up close it looks totally different and freakn awesome.. It's a very agressive looking car.

After that room they had another GTR cut in half showing the engine and how the gearbox is mounted back at the rear of the car with the diff. To disperse the weight I guess.

Going by the specs it looks to be a mean mofo.

Look out Porsche.

Check out our holiday snaps for more pics!

Shaun

Tokyo Motor Show - Chiba

This thing was huuuuuuuge, think of the Perth convention centre and times it by 50+. I am not bullsh!tting. Alot of the car manufacturers had stages the size of one of the sections at the Perth Convention Centre. All the Japanese brands were there as well as a heap of european and a few american brands.

Some of the highlights include the Audi R8, what a friggin hot car. Lexus LFA, also hot and of course the GTR which seemed to be the most popular car there.

They also had the BMW 1 series Coupe which I didnt know they were making, it looks awesome. I hope they bring out a M or sports version at a reasonable price.

All in all, the car show was awesome and that was the last of the car things (well, big ones) we are doing on our holiday.

We are off to Sendai tomorrow on the Shinkansen (bullet train) and we will keep you posted!

Shaun

Super GT

God damn this was awesome. A F1 grade facility (which there racing there soon I think). Everything is perfect and it looks like your in a video game, ie Forza.

Entry was 60$ or so but it got you everywhere except the pits which was an extra 30$. Grandstand seating was not reserved so you could make your way around the whole track and sit wherever you wanted.

The Super GT's cars sounded absolutely friggin awesome and while your sitting in the grandstand and the cars are 50+ meters away I couldn't even talk to megan because they were so loud :) It was good to gear the different cars out there in the track ranging from a toyota Mr2 (The Toy Story Racing Team, Yes, the movie) which had a 3.5 v6 or something stupid in it to the most popular of cars the 350Z's and the Honda NSX's to Corvette, Ferrari's and Lamborghini's. Ive never heard a lambo on full song that close before and they sound absolutely awesome, I want one :)

I got a crapload of pictures and unfortunately I could only upload a few but when they come to Perth (if they ever) you will absolutely have to go and see them!

They even had Stagea safety cars :)

Also saw a Japanese guy with a Holden jacket on!

Shaun

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

On top of Mt Fuji (a minature version in the middle of Fujikyu Highland Park), Shaun asked me to marry him.

I said yes.

Megan

Fujikyu Highlands

We thought this placed was closed over this period but when we rocked up into this town via train we saw the coasters going so we went and took a look. You know those parks you use to create on the game Theme Park? We'll this was just like that. It was so cool.

They had about 6 or more coasters, 3 extreme ones and then some smaller ones for families/kids etc. And then other various carnival rides but alot larger :)

We first went on was a coaster called "World Bucchugirl Coaster", sounds a bit.. you know but it was freakn awesome.. you strap yourself in and before you can count to three your thrown at 4G's to 172km/h in only a few meters in a dark tunnel on a flat surface, you then appear into the daylight and over a few turns and then over a big hill which takes you vertical then over and back down straight towards the ground. Not good for the stomach but you come off the ride with a smile you cant wipe of your face for a long time! :) I have some video of the coaster being launched and it sounds awesome!!

The other coaster we went on was called the "Fujiyama", the king of coasters!! This ride has a world record (in 1999) for being the highest rollercoaster (70m) and longest drop (71.5m) and takes you to 130km/h, not as fast as the Bucchigirl coaster but its 2km long and takes you through some hellish twists and turns. In our holiday snaps you can see a picture of the coaster which we took from the restaurant we were having lunch at outside the ice skating arena.

The other coaster was some whacky one which was so friggin stupid there was no way in hell I was going to go on it. It had loops, twists and the seats your sat in span around 360 degrees so you were going everywhere. Something my stomach would not be able to handle. Megan called in the Lethal Weapon (from Movie World) but times One Million!

The rest of the park had all sorts of rides such as Cabin Log Rides, Ranger, Pizza La (a pizza spinning around in circles and then flying up into the air
like bounties revenge but waaay higher), Tower drop, Haunted House and a few other I cant remember. There was also a few themed rides which were Anime related so I had no idea WTF they were :) One was called Gundam Crisis which I think Rebecca (from MU) is interested in or am I mistaken?

They also had Thomas Land which JJ would have loved, they had all the characters there in large form including a ride on Harold which was a sort of flying Merry go Round (as he is a helicopter)

All in all, a friggin awesome day.

Mt Fuji

Our next destination was Mt Fuji, Japan's highest peak. The hotel we stayed at, Mt Fuji was located high upon another mountain above Lake Yamanaka which looked to be a summer and winter town complete with a two story swan ferry which was a hovercraft (see pictures).

Our hotel room looked directly over the lake and also onto Mt Fuji which gave us some awesome views.

We pretty much took a walk around the hotel in their gardens and headed on down into the townsite for a excellent Italian meal!

Attached: Mt Fuji taken while on a taxi drive.

we made it

We made it but we are friggin tired. We both got about 2 hours of sleep each on the plane so today was a feat trying to stay awake so that we could sleep tonight.

Walked around Shinjuku a bit as you do when your a tourist just scoping out the shops and crap while in a daze. Were back in tokyo for two weeks in two weeks so it wasn't a biggy that we missed things in this city as we will be back thats for sure.

We took a chance and went to some random Japanese restaurant on the 7th floor of some building that that chance paid off. Awesome food, great service and they guessed we were from Australia :) Are we that obvious? I'm glad I took all those Nascar stickers off Simon's suitcase.

One thing we tried in the restaurant was Horse sashimi, I was a bit skeptical at first but it just tasted like beef. The next step is to find Whale somewhere, thats one of my goals while im over here.

time for sleep though, sooooo tired.

remember to look at the pics and how many people are lined up outside Kristy Kreme.. nutters!!

Tomorrows agenda is to get to Fuji for the SUPER GT!!

Shaun