30 Seconds: Shinjuku Station

Last night I went to Shinjuku ni-chome for dancing times! It was fantastic. Shinjuku ni-chome is the gayest place in the world. Seriously! It has the highest concentration of gay bars of anywhere in the world!

My life lately is work during the week and then food, drinks, and karaoke with friends on the weekends. It's been rather fun, but not really much to post about. Although speaking of karaoke, karaoke song suggestions would be welcome. Sometimes I sing something new, but sometimes I can't think of anything or can't find what I want, so I just end up singing the same things every time.

Anyway, in lieu of having anything interesting to talk about, I thought I'd start a new thing that maybe I will continue to do every once in a while in future. Enjoy 30 (okay, actually 40) seconds of random Japanness. Last Monday night, outside Shinjuku station. I think the guy in the chef's hat is amaaaaazing.

Nagano: Day Two

When the trains started again in the morning, we again headed to Yudanaka. Unfortunately, the nice limited express train didn't start until later in the morning, so we ended up on the local. It was horrible again. When we got there, we had to wait around for a while for a bus that took us closer to the Jigokudani Monkey Park. Then we had to walk for at least 2 km, mostly on a very snowy path through the forest, until we actually got to where the monkeys are.

There were so many monkeys! They were hanging out in the forest and digging around in the snow and cuddling together by the river. And lots of them were hanging out in the hot springs! It was super fantastic; like, I've always seen things about Japanese monkeys who hang out in hot springs, and I actually got to see them! すごい！ It was very exciting, although occasionally a little scary if you accidentally looked at a monkey in the eye or if the monkeys fought with each other or if this big scary monkey who was protecting all the other monkeys walked past you.

Hiked back to the bus stop where we found that there was only, like, one bus per hour, so we had to wait for quite a while. Were luckily able to get the limited express train back to Nagano City (I slept most of the way) and then were able to get a shinkansen back home without too much waiting (I slept for most of that trip too). It was a faster shinkansen than the one we took to get there; the first one made a few stops, but on our way home, we only stopped once between Nagano and Omiya. Nice.

It was really fun to see somewhere new in Japan and a really fantastic way to finish up my holiday, but I was happy to get back home to where it was not freaking cold and snowy.

Nagano: Day One

When we were on our way home on the last train after our Kamakura day, we decided to get out of Tokyo during our last couple days of vacation. My friend really wanted to see snow, so we decided to meet up in, like, eight hours and hop on a shinkansen to Nagano.

The shinkansen goes through a lot of tunnels, and one of them was a magic tunnel. On one side of it was sun, and when we got to the other side, it was super snowy. It was snowing when we got to Nagano City and much colder than Tokyo. Nagano City has a big temple, Zenko-ji, that we wanted to visit; we ended up walking there (a long walk, but it was interesting to see a new city and we built a tiny snowman on the way). The temple was really beautiful in the snow! I really enjoyed it. We also got amazake there - second time in two days!

Our plan after the temple was to go to the Yamanouchi area of Nagano to see monkeys who hang out in hot springs. We took a 40 minute train ride (a comfortable limited express train) to Yudanaka and asked about where to go for the monkeys, but we were told that it was too late and the monkeys would be sleeping. So we hung around there and explored and took a lot of pictures (there was a lot more snow there than in Nagano City) and threw snow at each other and got really cold.

There wasn't a limited express when we wanted to go back to Nagano City, so we had to take a local. It was horrible. It was freezing and the train was old and loud and it took forever. When we got back, our plan was to get the shinkansen back home; we had only intended to stay for the day. But we were disappointed not to have seen the monkeys, so we decided to stay the night. However, we had nowhere to stay. So we decided to do what we would do at home if we got caught out by missing the last train: stay a long time at a restaurant, go to karaoke, and then go to McDonald's and fall asleep. This plan went great until the McDonald's part; there was a 24-hour McDonald's at the station, but when we went in (at a bit after 4 am) they said we could only get take out and weren't allowed to stay there. So we walked around a lot to try to stay warm until a waiting room at the station opened and then hung out there for a little while.

Enjoy our shinkansen, our snowman, a reminder of the Olympics, three pics from Zenko-ji and three from around Yudanaka.

Kamakura!

On Saturday, I went on a road trip! I went with three friends to Kamakura (my number one place!). It was really nice to go by car; we were able to catch a glimpse of Fuji-san from the road, and we got to see Tokyo from a different perspective.

We visited Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu (the big shrine there) to pray. Because it is very important to visit a shrine or temple at the start of the new year, it was very crowded. We waited for ages! It was exciting to be there with so many people though, even if it took forever. Before we left, we drank amazake, which is a hot fermented rice drink. I'd never had it before; it was amaaaaaazing.

After some lunch, we visited the Daibutsu and then went to the nearby beach. The beach was lovely because it was around sunset; so pretty!

After we drove back home, we went out for okonomiyaki and karaoke. Delicious and fun! A lovely, lovely day!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2010!

I ended 2009 with a visit to Senso-ji in Asakusa where we prayed our last prayers of the year. Then there was some amazingly energetic karaoke!

I started 2010 with festivities at Zojo-ji (the temple my friend and I visited a couple days ago) and a spectacular view of Tokyo Tower and friends old and very new! Ended the night at an izakaya in Shinjuku before heading home (all night trains! amazing!). I couldn't have dreamed of a more enjoyable New Year's celebration!

I hope your New Year's was or will be just as much fun!

Please enjoy this video of the countdown!