Being someone who really cares about DRM, I’ve been very reluctant to use iTMS. Friends have populated their libraries with these non-portable songs, and I always opted not to. With Amazon, I have no excuse. I immediately bought an album. The process was completely streamlined and painless, including the use of one-touch ordering.

I give the mp3 store a thumbs-up. It is still rough around the edges compared to the Apple experience, but the DRM-free mp3s more than make up for it.

For those interested, I bought Thom Yorke’s The Eraser.

I was skeptical, seems as how the Page One’s in Hong Kong are all pretty limited in their selection (though good for new books, I suppose). I immediately went there that evening and found that she was right, the selection at Page One is quite impressive. I would recommend checking there first for general English books.

I had a special interest in finding a computer book store, seems as how I’m an electrical engineer and I was at least planning to work on some other non-Chinese skills over the summer. I was a bit worried, thinking I’d have to order things and have them shipped. That is, of course, until I found a topic addressing this problem on Forumosa.

Here’s the information from that post:
Ten Long Computer Book Co. Ltd.
Massive selection of computer books in English.
They have a store on the bookstore street near Taipei Main Station.

http://www.tenlong.com.tw

(02) 2331-8868

台北市重慶南路一段107號1樓

I had some trouble finding it (because I was at the wrong station…but that is another story), but it shouldn’t be that difficult. You just get off at Taipei Main Station, walk towards the train station and turn left at Chongqing street. Then you just walk a few blocks along that road, reading the addresses until you find number 107 and the name 重慶南路.

Anyway, upon entering this book store I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of computer books. Even split fifty-fifty between Chinese and English computer books, the selection was better than any bookstore I’ve been to in the US. They had all the obscure computer books I was looking for and even a few new ones I’m interested in. I was quite impressed, and I recommend that any computer scientists, engineers, or programmer go have a look.

This is just the O’Reilly section

Classes didn’t start for two weeks, and I spent most of that time just bumming around and sleeping, recovering from finals period (I spent the previous semester on exchange at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology).

You may have wondered why the site went down for a long time. The answer is simple: I let the domain name expire and then was lazy. Neocaridina.com was going to expire, and I felt that it was too long and complicated a domain name for most people to type anyway, so my plan was to switch the site to divergio.com.

Read on for a rant about web hosting…

Unfortunately, that ended up being much more of a task than I realized. It should have been simple, just renaming a couple of directories on the ftp server, but instead I’ve spent the last two days and literally the last four hours straight getting it working. I actually got so frustrated trying to make it work with my previous host that I gave up and switched webhosts.

I’ll just come out with it: my webhost was GoDaddy.com. Part of it is my fault, because I have the domain name and the hosting under separate godaddy accounts. It’s still possible to get things working, but because of the way their domain system is organized, you have to setup all kinds of custom forwarding (which really shouldn’t be necessary). I know this because I had the same problem with neocaridina.com and, even after an hour and a half of support calls, still had slower performance reaching the website.

Considering I’m in Hong Kong and can’t afford to sit on the phone with godaddy, and also considering how irritating to their user interface is, I just gave up and switched to a new host. This host is a pay-as-you-go pay-only-what-you-use host. I’m trying it out and seeing how much I actually use. If it works out I think I’ll stick with them.

Long story short, I had to resetup everything and reimport the sql databases, plus I ran into the typical configuration problems, too, so the whole thing was a huge headache and I’ve only now finished. With problems like these, I sometimes question whether it is even worth it to run my own blog instead of just using a service, but I still demand some custom plugins that the others can’t offer.

All this work getting it up and running and I still haven’t made any new posts!

Posts I’m planning to make:

• Sendai part 2
• Osaka
• Yangshuo and Guangzhou

I’ve put all of these off so long that they will likely be abridged with mostly pictures, but better late than never, I suppose.

Because I’m writing this long after the fact, I am afraid that I can’t go into as much detail as if I had written it immediately afterwards. In fact, as I am writing this I am on a plane on my way back to the United Steates. I had not enough time in the last weeks to document the trip, but I think now is a good time to reflect.

I’ll start with the day before I left, Thursday. I had the good fortune of being able to meet my cousin Kelsey, who was staying in Japan at the time as well, for dinner. She was a little less experienced with the trains, and our homes are about an hour and a half away, so we met halfway at a train stop I picked for its convenience. I ended up waiting for like an hour and a half for her as she bounced around on the wrong trains and had to have kindly Japanese businessmen who spoke a little English help her. At last she arrived and we wandered around and reminisced a little bit.

I asked her what she wanted to eat but she couldn’t really decide on anything so I thought ramen would be best. We wandered off the beaten path and ended up at a little hole in the wall ramen shop. It was smokey and all the menus were completely in Japanese. I really don’t think they get many visitors like my blond-haired American cousin, so it was kind of funny. We ordered simply “ramen,” and gyoza (dumplings). It was quite delicious (not to mention cheap), and the service was excellent. I was starting to think of how I would ask for our tabletop cold water thermos to be refilled when the owner came and refilled it. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to us at all, but clearly he was. Overall it was very interesting and strange to meet up with someone so familiar (but yet who I rarely see) on the opposite side of the world.

My cuz’ and I chillin’.

I got off work early, transferred a few trains to Omiya, and then hopped a shinkansen to Sendai. The shinkansen ride was fine, uneventful. I got into Sendai and immediately met up with Chris at the statue in the station. Viewing the night life, I think I underestimated the size of Sendai.

Samurai statue in the station.

We went back to his apartment and I slept on the floor, rocking out to a little Led Zeppelin before falling asleep. We woke up early and got breakfast at a bakery. I had one of those sausages wrapped in a bun and a couple of delicious sugary things, orange juice too. I should explain at this point I was beginning to realize just how sick I was becoming. I coughed pretty hard on Thursday and Friday, but it was getting worse on Saturday. We walked to the station and struggled through language barriers to find the right bus, eventually getting on and beginning our hour long ride to the city with the beautiful waterfall. This was one of the hooks for the weekend: a chance to see one of the top three waterfalls in Japan.

Old lady sleeping on the bus next to us.

Not many people on the bus, just commuters or something.

Mountain bussing.

The bus ended up not taking us as far as we thought, so we had to do some replanning. There was a crazy, but helpful, old guy at the visitors center that we stopped at. He was telling us about which buses we could take. It turned out that the next one wasn’t for a few hours, so we went to go explore the gorge. Halfway through the gorge, the old guy came chasing after us telling us that if we ran we could make a bus at the stop 10 minutes ahead. We ran and ran but missed the bus, of course. We couldn’t find the stop.

The gorge.

Chris in front of the gorge.

High res macro shot of slug + arthropod.

We wandered around, instead, finding a weird for-pay park/garden. There was a nice, and huge, koi pond, as well as a foot onsen, which was quite relaxing (if scalding hot). We walked back to the visitors center and got some tonkatsu and then italian ice. There was a jazz band playing at the visitors center. Finally we boarded a bus to the waterfall.

FOOT ONSEN.

Chris and spiderweb.

The park was pretty.

Jazz band (they weren’t very good).

Beautiful rice paddies on the way on the bus.

We arrived at last at the stop for the waterfall. There were a few gift shops and things in the area. I saw something there that really piqued my interest. There were two shops selling tiny plants. They were kind of like bonsai, but I’m sure they weren’t bonsai proper. There were different kinds of mosses with maybe one plant growing out of the pot or soil ball. I really wanted to get one, they were reasonable priced (under 2000 yen), but I knew they would be too difficult to transport.

Cool plant balls.

After figuring out when we had to get back to catch the bus out (a very important piece of information), we started out towards the falls. First we came to a temple of some kind. Outside the temple there was some kind of prayer tree or something, people had stuck coins into the bark for a long time. I got a cool picture of it.

Prayer tree?

After some walking on the path, Chris took some stairs the wrong way and twisted his leg. He said that the fact that he was limping instead of on the ground writhing in unbearable pain was a tremendous testament to the efficacy of his surgery. We came to a nice view from up above of the watefall. I was a little disappointed here, though, having seen waterfalls from this perspective for a long time and always feeling a little unfulfilled

A middling view.

We climbed up, crossed a bridge with an beautiful panorama of the mountains, then walked down a trail to get closer to the falls.

Panorama with bridge

Don’t feed the monkey! But he looks so cute…

After still more walking we ended up near some rocks at the bottom of the waterfall. It was here that we got some truly incredible views. This waterfall was gorgeous and incredibly powerful and there was a cool, wet mist coming downfrom it. We walked out on the rocks and had just a magnificent view. We stayed for a good ten minutes, enthralled by the falls even as we got soaked.

View of the falls

Me with the falls

Chris photographing rocks

As we left and crossed over the very high bridge again, I flipped a one yen coin into the water. You could see it all the way down, and even see the reflection of the light as it was carried a few meters down river. Also, I could see some river plants, which excited me somewhat.

Water plants

Cough drops, the only way I was able to survive the weekend. I made a lot of jokes about how the one with power level five was so much better than all of the other unitless power levels (they had other varieties with lower throat-pain easing powers), even though I couldn’t read the text around it.

Taxi fleet and Sendai station.

After the nice bus ride, in which I slept and listened to music, we met up with some people from Chris’s lab and went to a soccer game. I wasn’t that enthused because of my lack of interest in soccer, but I was a guest and actually thought it might be interesting to see a soccer game in Japan, if only for Michael.

It was a comfortable ride.

The game was pretty cool. Sendai is very proud and supportive of their team, Vegalta, despite the fact that they aren’t even in J-1. Though, actually, it is kind of exciting because they are at the top of J-2 and could move up to J-1.

The pictures don’t capture the excitement, ask me to see the videos if you see me.

There is one primary subway line to the stadium, so after the game everybody went to the station. The speed with which the crowd dissipated is a testiment to the people moving capatibility of the Japanese subway systems.

After the game we ate gyutan, or cow tongue. It is a specialty of Sendai, and there are many gyutan places. Though Chris kept reminding me that it was like I was making out with a cow, it actually wasn’t that bad. It tasted about the same as beef, just with a different texture.

Gyutan place

After this, Chris took me through Sendai’s seedier areas on our way back to his apartment. It was pretty seedy, but still not as bad as the hooker that touched my leg in Roppongi. That still creeps me out.

The night was absolutely miserable. I was coughing so hard I felt like I was going to die. I woke up with a sore throat and without being well rested, but I tried to make the best of the day.

That finishes up part one. See part two for exploring the beautiful islands of a city near Sendai.

As I mentioned, most of the people above me in the lab went to America for a conference, so, though in reality much of my work is unsupervised, I could use their absence to rationalize leaving the lab for half a week. After getting back from Sendai I was in really bad shape. I was very sick, coughing and feeling like I was about to die. I missed work all Monday, barely crawling away from bed to begin an arduous quest for medical attention in town. There is a whole story there, but to make a long story short I got home with pills. I slept most of Tuesday, too, trying in earnest to recover enough to be able to go to Osaka.

Wednesday morning came, and I did feel well enough. All of my various antibiotics and five other pills, plus the orange juice, sleep, and “eiyou” drink that I had been suggested to take. After printing maps at the office, I lugged my huge bag down to the station and started the cascade of transfers that would finally get me on a shinkansen for Kyoto.

The ride was uneventful excepting the difficulty in carrying my bag. At the Kyoto station, I took another train to a station near Handai. I rode the shinkansen to Kyoto because Handai is so far north that it was faster to just take a normal train from Kyoto station.

Here is a quote from my arrival:

I`ve been here for about two hours. The trip over was uneventful, but
very tiring. I think I overpacked, I ought to have brought a little
bit of clothes and then just washed those clothes instead of bringing
fresh clothes for every day. The bag was too large and cumbersome to
haul from place to place. Most of the passsage was simple, but the
final bus was a complication, as always. I was afraid that I had
gotten on the wrong bus and that it was going the wrong direction, but
fortunately I was mistaken and the bus was correct. My knowledge of
Chinese characters actually helped out a lot. I am able to rapidly
determine pneumonics for remembering certain character streams. Also,
I actually knew almost all the characters in the name of my bus stop.
Who would have known that my Chinese would help so much in Japan?

The Handai campus seems very nice. It is hot as hell: I still got
really sweaty, even after taking a shower, from the short walk from
I-House to the lab. Here is another traveling lesson: wear traveling
clothes, pack your day clothes, and plan enough time to take a shower
at the destination. No matter how short the trip is, you’ll be so
sweaty and miserable when you get there that the clothes will be
soaked. I always imagine that I can save packing room by wearing the
clothes for the first day on the trip there. I should stop fooling
myself.

One part of the Handai campus
I spent three days staying at the International House and going to the Handai lab. I met a bunch of interesting people, especially this Australian fellow who is an applied physics PhD student. I toured labs and talked to some people about their research, like a guy doing tip-enhanced raman spectroscopy and a girl doing biological optical applications, basically poking cells with lasers. I also got to watch the fabrication process for the photopolymerization. It was actually pretty interesting, though I think it confirmed my lack of a real interest in doing this style of lab work.

Science. Most of the lab was like this, besides the office part.

Some cats angry at eachother in a nearby park.

Some members of the group and I went to a ramen house, this picture is a result of the Australian guy taking the challenge and eating their ultra-spicy ramen in 15 minutes. Now this photo will be posted on the wall.

Here’s another picture of the Australian guy doing his labwork.

The typical izakaya scene on Friday, in my honor, of course.

The visit mostly prompted me to have a lot of critical thought about my future and what research I should do if any. Sadly, I came to no conclusions and I don’t know when I will next seriously evaluate this. I did make some good notes, though. With the lab visit over, I started the second leg of my Osaka trip: hiking Yoshino.

I left the I-House at Handai in the morning at about 10:00. It was sweltering heat, but I decided against the taxi because I didn’t really know how to call one. I walked fifteen minutes with my backpack and too large bag, again regretting that I hadn’t packed lighter. After a nice train ride into the city, I met my Japanese teacher. A little backstory is necessary. In fact, I actually planned my Osaka trip such that I would be in town at the same time as her. You can imagine my delight at being guided around Osaka by an Osaka native.

A lizard greeted me on the sidewalk on my walk over, I couldn’t decide if it was a good sign or bad sign.

My giant bag subdued at last, for the time being.

We took a train to Yoshino, it took about an hour through some beautiful scenery. Yoshino is the most famous area for viewing cherry blossoms in the spring, but it is very beautiful all year round. We planned to hike in the afternoon and view the “lantern festival” in the evening.

The first thing that happened was we missed our bus to the hiking location. It seems that even Japanese people have difficulty with the buses, sometimes, a reassuring realization. Instead we shared a taxi to a bridge, picked up liters of water and gatorade equivalent from a vending machine (at the taxi drivers suggestion), and started out into the sweltering heat. First we explored near the bridge, as there was a beautiful river there. It was near this river that I saw one of the most seemingly fun activities I can imagine. It was sweltering out, we were sweating and we had a whole day of hiking ahead. These locals, though, they knew the best way to deal with weather like that.

What they did was have barbecues on the beach of the river and go swimming. Pictures describe it best.

People down by the river barbecuing.

Some people swimming on the rocks.

There were people like this down a large portion of the river. It looked so fun, and the water would have been a great cool down. I wanted to do it so much that I suggested we just go buy swimsuits and cancel the hiking.

After the river, we started up part of the mountain on our way to the “Upper Thousand Trees” part. We had a nice, leisurely stroll through idyllic mountain roads, occasionally stopping to look at part of the river.

This beautiful insect is more common in Japan than our type of grasshopper, this is what they usually mean when they say grasshopper.

Mountain road.

River with small bridge.

More beautiful mountain.

Asking an old women for directions.

More wildlife.

More mountain.

After this stroll we ended up at a part that went off of the road, the trail section of the hike began. It was reasonably steep, in some areas there were wooden shelves to step on. It was really beautiful, with a stream in the middle of the two slopes. As we got further up there was a small but very tall waterfall, but it was too obscured to get a good picture of. We also ran into things like shrines, and strained to imagine the dedication of the people who maintain these shrines up in the mountains.

One of the first shrines.

It started to get darker because the woods were so dense. It was kind of creepy. Also, I started to notice strange wildlife. As we walked past, single cicadas, bothered in their roosts, would burst up into the air with a low frequency hum as their giant wings labored to lift them out of the underbrush. Concerned about time, we were walking briskly. However, if I focused on the ground carefully, I could see that all in front of us these little spidery things would cross the path, moving like barely visible tumbleweed. Upon closer inspection, they looked very much like daddy long legs, except with even smaller bodies and longer legs, but also blue highlights. They were very interesting, but difficult to capture in picture. I have some videos to show if you see me.

Dark and kind of creepy, but cool and mystical.

I cropped a photo of the spider, you can see it in the middle. Look at how long the legs are.

As we got higher, we could see more light. Soon their was light streaming from the trees.

Lighter and lighter, a cool effect.

At one point there was a sofa on the road. I don’t know why. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sittable as the birds had mistaken it for a toilet.
Finally we broke free of the trees and could see the sky. I walked up this long pathway that was almost completely overgrown with trees and found a still more remote shrine. Then, standing on top of a log to peer over a fence I had the most magnificent view of the valley.

Shrine 2.

Beautiful view.

Climbing still higher, we reached a cemetery. This far up in the mountains, a cemetery. I stumbled on to two people visiting their ancestors graves. I wasn’t expecting anyone this far up and remote.

A beautiful place for a grave.

It was at this point that I discovered that, somewhat disappointingly, although it was very difficult for me to climb that high, on the other side of the mountain there were roads and houses that went up almost as high. We took a hiking trail that followed the road on the other side back into town. It was getting dark and we were worried about missing the train to the festival. There was a very beautiful view of the mountains as the sun went down. When the sun was finally down, the mountains and the horizon were all different beautiful shades of blue, almost like a painting. This image I am only able to hold with my mind, it being too dark for photographic equipment.

We ended up missing the train to the festival, instead just taking a train back into Osaka. It was there that I ate okonomiyaki for the first time. It was quite delicious, though my Japanese teacher said that she made it differently with her own special techniques. (Editing Note: Unbeknownst to me at the time, just a few short weeks later I would experience the enjoyment of her homemade okonomiyaki.)

Oishikatta!
Finally we went to stay at her parents home, arriving too late to meet anyone. I showered in their amazing bath, which talks and has automatic sauna jets. After this she took me to my accommodations, apologizing for how old the house was. My bed was a traditional futon style, now used mostly just for guests, replaced by western style beds. It is a collapsible futon and a big sheet that goes over it, similar to what I slept in at the youth hostel in Kusatsu. Because it is so simple and comfortable, for a while I actually wanted to implement this back home in America.

My bed, so clean and soft.

Such an old host with old appliances, look at how old this air conditioner is… Ha! Even this old Japanese air conditioner still has five times the controls and automation of a typical American air conditioner.

I slept very well, looking forward to a traditional home-cooked Japanese breakfast in the morning.

This ends the first part of Osaka, the next part will be about a day in Osaka city visiting many sites and especially the Osaka Aquarium. Get excited!

(Editing Note: This post was backdated to August 2006, but was actually posted on April 18th, 2007. The sequel post is in a very rough state and may never be posted in completion.)

Well, I had such an amazing weekend last week that I suppose it’s natural that this one wasn’t as good.
That’s not fair, exactly, this weekend was actually pretty good, I’ve just been sick. I had a sore throat and trouble swallowing on Thursday and Friday, and started coughing too. I’ll get into this later.

On Friday there was a party at RIKEN which was kind of interesting though not as interesting as it could have been. There are a lot of Germans, Swiss, and French at RIKEN. I went straight home afterwards, to plan my Saturday with Dvir via interweb communique. We decided that rather than seeing the Bonsai gardens in Omiya-koen, we would go to Tokyo Disney Sea.

Trains to get anywhere.
Tokyo Disney Sea is like Disney Land, except it’s Disney Sea instead. It is one half of Tokyo Disney Resorts (of which Disney Land is the other half). Disney Sea was supposed to be more adult oriented, but I didn’t really find that to be the case.

A fun day.

You can hardly tell it isn’t a mountain.

Regardless, I agree with many of the comments of one of my fellow program participants that there is much attention paid to detail and that you can barely see the veneer coat. It was interesting as an exercise in Japanese watching. Most of the girls wear their little Minnie Mouse or Lilo fake ears, even some of the guys wear wizard mickey ears. I think it is really funny.

The subway had special mickey mouse handles.

More realistic themed scenery.

The rides were a bit of a let down. Disney’s rollercoasters leave something to be desired (like extremeness), and the rest of the rides were just kind of boring. Regardless, we tried to hit all of them. Most of the lines were 45 minutes or more, but they didn’t seem to take that long and the speedpass helped on one ride.

Children playing, note the little girl in a ready to strike stance.

Dvir in front of a fake ship looking…seductive?
The highlight for me was the Indiana Jones ride. It was an “adventure” ride, complete with animatronic Indie, a nice ride experience (in terms of being a fake jeep), excellent use of sound, and simply more realistic “scary” things than any adventure ride I’ve ever been on.

The little mermaid section was a highlight.

I thought it was funny.

Here is the bad part: when I woke up Saturday my eyes were really irritated and red looking, they continued this way most of the day. I’m pretty sure I have pink-eye, so in an effort to speed my recovery I cancelled the opera on Sunday and instead slept in until 2:30. I’ve spent the past five hours in a “dark world,” my shutters closed with only the glow of my monitor at minimum brightness. I feel like a naked mole rat or something, creeping from room to room in my tiny apartment, fetching small bits of food and chittering away at the keyboard.

That was kind of creepy. I went to the Death Cab website to look for concert information while I was looking for the lyrics of Brothers on a Hotel Bed. While I was waiting for the Death Cab site to load up and looking at the lyrics page, piano started playing. In the background the Death Cab site was playing the Brothers song. The grip these songs have on my emotions is almost scary. I don’t even know if its the intended effect of the songs, that song reminds me of my actual brother half of the time.

This reminds me. The Hulk sent me a new Dashboard cd and an album of Death Cab concert recordings. Listening to them brought back some memories and was really a pleasant experience. I haven’t heard “new” Death Cab content for a while.

Get excited.

After this I took a shower, and then asked a hostel employee for help in planning my trip. Based on the website and the map, there were a few things I really wanted to see, but it had become apparent that most of them couldn’t be crammed into one day. I had used the internet machine again to double check some things from a website, as well as reviewed the printouts I’d made and the maps they had available at the hotel. With these I produced a basic plan, but I wanted to make sure it was possible.

In a half hour time we basically hammered out the schedule for the entire day, including the last bus that I could get on and still make the cascade of transfers necessary to get home before the last train to Wako-shi from Ueno. I would not have been able to do this without him. I use Hyperdia to plot my courses, but it stopped working on Friday and it didn’t have internet. I could have talked to the JR East phoneline, but it would not have been so comprehensive. Only his ability to quickly read the huge Japanese train timetables saved me. In addition, we also had my whole hiking course planned out, including estimated arrival times. I thought the plan was perfect, leaving me plenty of time to accomplish each task and resulting in me returning home at the proper time.

The most important piece of paper for the day, my way home.

My hostel employee friend, bless his heart.

The first step was to take a bus from the hostel to the Sasshi-gawara lift. I had repacked my bag so that I had just what I thought necessary in my day pack, then I set out to take on Japan. Of course, as my travels increasingly remind me, even the best laid plans invariably fall apart in the field.

I couldn’t find the bus stop that was supposed to be so easy to find. I missed my bus, of course, and then wandered into a spa and tried to ask them where the bus stop was (after asking a bus driver, but not the same bus line). They didn’t really know, but I collected a map from them. I decided that maybe I could just walk to Sasshi-gawara, as I had determined to do before I talked to the hostel guy. I tried this for 15 minutes but , realizing that I didn’t even know how to get there, I swallowed my pride and turned around. There is still some lesson here that I am trying to formulate, because this isn’t the first time this weekend that I’ve tried to just “tough it out” instead of facing the situation and finding a proper solution.

I asked some random guy at a ski shop, and he told me where the bus stop was. The next bus was in like 30 minutes (of course, by this time I was already almost 40 minutes off schedule). The bus sign said that the next bus was a different kind of bus. I couldn’t translate, but it was basically my last resort to just take whatever bus there was, hitch-hike, or give up on my grand hiking plans and just go onsen’ing for the rest of the day. I used one of my ten verbs to determine that the bus was indeed going Sasshi-gawara, and it was then that I realized how hopeless walking would have been. It was much farther than it looked on the map.

Thirty minutes feeling troubled.

A long ride in the mountains.

At Sasshi-gawara I got a ticket for the lift and got inside a capsule to start the ride. I took a video of the first 30 seconds or so. The ride was beautiful, going up a mountain surrounded by fog. The progress of the capsule, however, reminded me very much of the opening scene in Half Life. The ride gave me some time to introspect about the morning, but I still haven’t formulated the lesson precisely.

Pleased to have finally started.

A foggy trip in a capsule to nowhere.

A beautiful view on the way up.

The arrival at the top was again very Half Life-esque, the capsule skidding to a stop and making similar hydraulic noises. Once I had walked out of the lift building I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the surrounding area. It was much cooler on the top, with a mountain breeze but also fog obscuring the peaks nearby. I could see many ski trails from my vantage, and it really made me want to come back to ski there. After some confused communication (I can’t really call it talk�) with a man at the lift building, he at last drove me on the shuttle to the foot of the path that I wanted to take.

I don’t think I’ve emphasized enough how many times I had to try to talk to people to get crucial information out of them, but not been able to talk about it accurately. If this country were less helpful, I would have been lost. I have been so reliant on the kindness of these people. “Soto”, “tatemae”, or whatever, I don’t care, people have been very friendly and I won’t believe it’s just an act.

You can tell this place is a ski resort.

Feeling excited on the shuttle ride.

There was a big rest area at the foot of the path. Many tour buses stop at that place, it is the hub of the hiking trails on the mountain (including some really easy ones that people take with their families). By this time I was still rushing and feeling agitated about the huge (hour and a half) slip in my schedule.

The ski rest area place.

Let me make this clear. I wasn’t concerned about my schedule out of anal retentiveness or something, it was that it was very important that I stay on schedule. If I got bored of hiking I couldn’t just drive into town (or even call a taxi). I was alone with just my backpack, many kilometers from the hostel where the rest of my stuff was, and even further from the bus station. I was at the mercy of the bus schedules in order to prevent myself from getting stranded in Kusatsu or someplace between there and Tokyo (the trains stop running at a certain time). The hiking paths take an appreciable amount of time each to traverse. By the original schedule I would arrive at the hostel with just enough time remaining to visit an onsen or two and then leave.

Regardless, by this time I was very hungry so I ordered a bowl of tempura udon and rapidly scarfed it down. I talked to a shopkeeper and figured out where my hiking path was (my map was in romaji, so I couldn’t read the signs much at all). I was walking outside in the direction he pointed when he ran out to me and said he’d made a mistake (or I assume), but he excitedly pointed in a different direction.

Oishii desu.

I took the Yoshigadaira trail first, to the top of Mt. Shirane (or something like that). It was a very easy trail, with many people returning in the opposite direction. Most of the people were elderly Japanese couples, usually with matching full body rain jackets and sometimes with camera tripods. It seems that the favorite past time of eldery Japanese couples is to go hiking and take pictures. Hmm…it is strange that this is one of my preferred past times. Regardless, the trail was beautiful. Stark terrain populated mostly with grasses and mosses, mountain peaks, and the occasional stream. It was very desolate, but also beautiful.

Does it say Yoshigadaira? Probably.

Mosses always remind me of Andy.

Interesting colors.

Desolate beauty.

Later on I was in a store and they had this exact picture on a postcard, I excitedly tried to convey this to the clerk.

Turning the corner I stumbled upon this huge white mass covering part of the stream. At first I thought it was strange sort of salt deposit, but under further inspection it was snow. It wasn’t the first that I saw, these huge snow clumps were all over, but especially near streams. I don’t know why they don’t melt, it didn’t seem cold enough up there. Perhaps there is some chemical process going on, what would raise the melting point of water?

Some of the concrete Alex Kerr is so fond of.

Salt?

Framed by dead trees.

What do you think?

Mountain trail.

Slithering tendril plant.

I thought the flower was pretty.

Gradually the path changed to more wooded scenery, with many green trees in valleys. I came upon the fork where the main trail I planned to take began, the trail that would take me back to the hostel. First I wanted to explore the ike (marsh) trail. It was a loop that split off at the same fork. I walked with the couple whose picture I had taken earlier for a little while. There were some broken exchanges. I wish I had talked to them earlier, instead of at the marsh, because it distracted me from the marsh.

Let me say that the marsh was the most beautiful thing I saw on the whole trip. The walkway was a wood platform going over a huge open area. There were island type things that had trees on them, but mostly there was just nice, green low grass with beautiful oblong ponds. The ponds had perfectly still, mirror-like surfaces. They reflected the trees and mountains in the background. The whole route had dozens of these, they were absolutely beautiful. In one I saw a duck and her chicks, it was quite a sight. I don’t know what lives in these ponds. I hope that shrimp do, but I’m not sure. Regardless, they are supposed to be filled with rare species. I hope that these pictures can capture even a small sliver of the beauty. Hopefully some day I can visit them again.

Beautiful pools.

Me standing with the couple.

Mirror.

Context: a foggy mountain top.

It was absolutely serene.

A seat on the edge of nowhere.

Another view of the seat, I think it would be nice to picnic here with someone special.

The rain only made it more beautiful.

There were trails that split off of my main trail to mountain onsens at more than one junction. I wish I’d had days to explore, it would be amazing to go visit these onsens that are many kilometers from the road up in the mountains.

My main path was for the most part less beautiful than the first path I took, and certainly less beautiful than the ponds. However, there were some opportunities for photos, and it was an interesting experience nonetheless. The path was about 8 km, and more rugged than the first one. However, in typical Japanese construction style, they had placed stairs in all the hard parts. Regardless, it took me most of the afternoon and I was hauling pretty hard.

This is called “ant’s path.”

Stairs.

Something seems to be blocking the stairs.

One of the prettier sights on my hike.

I thought it was pretty, too.

One of the reasons I took that path in the first place was the chance to see “Jofu-no-taki” waterfall. It sounded amazing. However, on the part of the trail that split off to see it, it was so foggy that you couldn’t see anything. I think that maybe the actual viewing site is from a different trail, maybe one that split off to an onsen. It’s too bad, I wanted to see it.

As I continued, the path changed from a hiking path to a concrete framed water runoff ditch/road to nowhere. The trail came to a fork, one side continued with concrete and what looked like a road, the other went into the woods. It looked like a detour, like the original trail had continued and turned into the road. I could hear loud water noises coming from what I presumed was the original trail. Feeling deprived of falling water sites, I ignored the warning and keep out signs and decided to explore the “original” path.

Sumimasen, A-go to Nihon-go ga wakarimasen!

The trail became a mountain road, wrapping around an edge with a huge concrete retainment wall on the right side. I think the reason it was blocked off was that there had been rock slides or something in the last storm (or earthquake, maybe?) and they were afraid it might shift or something, or if maybe they just hadn’t repaired it yet. I kept my wits about me and treaded softly as a result. I don’t know if it is permanently closed or if they would clean it up eventually, but I don’t think many people use that road.

You can see the debris blocking the road.

The retainment wall was gigantic, it gave the impression of Mayan ruins or something.

A wide view of the wall, taken from off the path.

At last I came upon the source of the water sound. It was a river of course. It wasn’t a damn, it was a concrete reconstruction of portions of the river. We heard all about these things from the architectural history talk that Alex Kerr gave. You can read more about it elsewhere, but basically the Japanese government (and associated research universities, government institutions, and construction companies) have gone crazy and built huge concrete structures all over the country. They have too much money and inertia, and now all they do is build unnecessary walls and river “restructuring” like this, ostensibly to help with earthquakes. Evidently most of this stuff makes the earthquake aftermath worse, but their PR departments handle that. You can probably read about it in Alex Kerr’s “Dogs and Demons.”

I can’t say it adds much to the river. But look at the textured concrete!

There were tall peaks on either side of this road.

More evidence for landslide damage.

I thought I could continue to take the path and eventually get back on track, but I panicked and ran back to the fork to make sure I didn’t end up getting lost (or in trouble). The rest of the trip back to the hostel was uneventful, except half way back I realized I only had ten pictures left but the rest of the day in town and on my way back to photograph. I walked quickly while going through old pictures and managed to delete about 30 pictures (mostly duplicates) and a few videos. Partly as a result of my distraction, I for the first time fell down and muddied my jeans terribly. As a result, when I got back to the hostel I switched to shorts and put on some new socks. The new socks weren’t made for shorts, so I was instantly transformed from preppy, stylish collared shirt and jeans man to dweebo tourist in shorts with pale legs. I like wearing shorts, but they are not very popular in Japan, so this is one of the reasons I became a little more self-conscious.

I at last emerged from the hiking trail to a road and sunshine. I actually ended up walking over the river that I’d seen earlier (there was a large bridge). I found the hostel easily, there switching all my wet and dirty stuff into plastic bags and rearranging everything for the trip back. I started out for the center of Kusatsu, about a 15 minute walk. On my way I ran into a group of older-aged Japanese tourist ladies. They were looking at an ant hill and thought it was interesting because the ants were scurrying all over the place. My kind of people, I suppose.

“Sugoi!” they said.

So it turns out that, as in most parts of the world, in Japan, Tyler is a friend of the old ladies. They quickly found out where I was going and immediately turned me around to go to their hotel. There, confused clerk after confused clerk looked at my map. I pointed at the place I wanted to go, and people made confused exclamations. At last the ladies were waving goodbye and a woman at the hotel was walking me to a shuttle, complete with a discount ticket for the onsen I wanted to visit.

Dweeb Tyler next to the old ladies. Thanks, ladies.

I got to the onsen in half the time, though perhaps all of the time trying to convey where I was going to the ladies delayed me enough that it balances out even.

There are dozens of onsens in town and outside of town. Most of them are free, supported by volunteers, with everybody in the community helping out. In addition, they all get their water from a communal source that I’ll get to later. My time extremely limited, and with many opportunities to go to other onsens in the future (like when I go to Sendai), I decided to visit a special onsen called Sai no Kawara.

Sai no Kawara Park, the park with many different ponds of different pH and temperature.

After walking through the park I came to the rotenburo, the main outdoor onsen. As my first onsen experience, this was pretty intimidating. It’s a huge outdoor onsen; there are walls, and different sections for men and women of course, but there were many people and I was the only newcomer (and the only white guy).

I could write a whole post about the onsen. It was quite an amazing experience. I paid my 500 yen, the clerk noticing the discount ticket in my hand. I put all my bags in a locker, stripped down, and for my towel I just used the little tenugui hand towel that they let me keep from the hostel. I washed my self off and quickly got in. There were groups of guys everywhere, and the water was so hot. I felt like I was being stared at because I was the only foreigner there. I settled in and kind of mimicked what everybody else was doing for most of the time. I went to the source inlet where it was really hot. One of the guys also went over there and he asked if it was hot, I said it was really hot. He scoffed humorously at that. I can’t remember if it was in Japanese or English. Anyway, I wandered around more trying to act like everybody else, I got out of the water for a while and looked over the walls at the river. Then I decided to try to stay in the hot end for a while. I was almost completely immersed. After a while I closed my eyes and started counting very slowly to thirty. It seemed to take forever, I was very tired and groggy. Time slowed down, I think I almost passed out. At last I took some deep breaths and got out of the bath. I laid on my back on the rocks next to the onsen and stayed there for what seemed like an eternity, recovering my life. At last I stood up, still feeling a little uncertain in my legs. I leaned against the wall and looked out at the beautiful river and the beautiful sky and everything in life just seemed so beautiful. Finally I started trying to move and, my energy back, decided that my first onsen experience was to come to an end.

Can you imagine doing this in the winter, after a fatiguing day of skiing? Also, consider when it’ so cold around you in the outdoor onsen, but so hot underwater. It would be amazing, much more so than a simple sauna.

After the onsen, I had planned on visiting a few of the other free onsens quickly. However, by this time it was almost time for the second to last train. I decided that it would be impossible to outdo that onsen experience, so it would be a waste to visit others on that afternoon. I could have stayed in town for another couple of hours, but I thought it would be better to have a margin of safety on my return in case any of the trains got delayed. Besides, I would have only had time for a rushed dinner somewhere.

On my walk back to the bus terminal I bought a few snacks for my lab group and some post cards and things for other people. There is a Japanese custom of gift giving where basically, after returning from somewhere, it is good for you to bring back a gift that that place is famous for. There are many shops at every train station for this explicit purpose. At the shop I tried to ask for the “Kusatsu no yumei ame.” Candy that Kusatsu is famous for. I ended up buying some weird candy that Kusatsu may or may not be famous for, as well as a box of milk chocolate that said “Kusatsu Onsen” on it, to cover all my bases (in case even the Japanese didn’t like the weird candy, my lab always likes chocolate).

After shopping, I had one more stop before the bus terminal: the famous Yubatake. The Yubatake is in the center of the city. It is the source of the water for most of the surrounding onsens. At a rate of five thousand litres a minute, higher than any other hot spring in the country, scalding water pours out of the earth. It is then naturally cooled by passage from wooden tub to wooden tub. This special cooling process does not dillute the water, which would change its desirable qualities (the pH and the phosphorous or whatever it is). It was pretty cool, though I had to look fast to make it to my bus on time. Evidently they light it up at night, which is supposed to be quite a sight. It’s too bad I missed that.

Natural cooling process.

One of the output spouts.

Dweeb Tyler in front of the output.

There was a free “foot onsen” near the Yubatake, you can see a family sitting around it.

Another shot of the center of town.

A statue I found interesting in front of the bus terminal.

At last I got to the bus and the set of transfers it would take to reach home. Compared to the ride there, the train ride back was the definition of easy. Transfer to transfer, everything went fine. There weren’t even any terribly long waits, nothing over a half hour. My JR East Pass made me feel like a king, I just walk through the sides of the station gates and flash my pass to the guard and I’m on my way.

On the train from Naganoharawhatever I was going to start writing my impressions of the day down, but impulsively tried to sew my backpack instead. The hole was getting bigger, and things were falling out. I’ve never sewn anything before, so I was just guessing about the technique. At this point this upper middle-aged Japanese woman walked up and started asking me questions. She sat down and practiced her English, and then started sewing my backpack and showing me new sewing techniques. It was quite amazing. She was interesting. Evidently, a few years back, she had visited her younger brother who was studying in Baton Rouge. This had made her quite interested in studying English more, so she was taking classes at some college because her husband’s company paid for them for some reason. She was also learning piano and computers. She is like one of those power-elderly people who start learning new skills for the fun of it when they are older. Anyway, we had a data-link augmented conversation about our hobbies, and I taught her about the English plural and singular.

My train friend.

Waiii-ting is the hardest part…

The shinkansen ride was nice. Depopulated, as usual. I had some thin noodles (related to soba) from plastic container that I’d bought at the kombini. That’s one thing about this weekend, I never ate at a proper restaurant. I usually just ate random junk from the kombini that I had time to eat during the train rides.

One stop shop, all automatic.

What a nutritious meal.

On the ride from Ueno to Ikebukuro, I was looking into another train car from my car. I met the eyes of some Japanese guy about my age staring at me. I stared back at him for a moment, and then smiled and laugh. He smiled and laughed, too.

Home sweet RIKEN home.

Home at last, my apartment is a mess. I’ve got to get up early for work, but I’m exhausted from a day of hiking and two days of running around. Ah well, another week begins.

I think next weekend I will do something interesting, but I don’t think I will travel so far.

As a final note, your comments are appreciated, folks. The content, style, anything you liked or didn’t like I want to hear about it.

To see a picture of the English map from the hostel that took me up the mountain and back, click here:

%Edit: I’m putting a plug for the hostel here, in case anyone reads this and wants to go to Kusatsu. It was pretty nice (by my middle-class midwestern American college student standards) for the price, with friendly staff when I was there, anyway. It’s called Kusatsu Kogen Youth Hostel. Best for me is that you can easily make reservations online.

The 100yen/15minutes internet machine I used. It has funny slogans on it like:
“It can enjoy the Internet for 100 yen” and “The Internet can be enjoyed on this table!”

On Friday I went to Ikebukuro after work to get my JR East pass. Acquiring the pass alone was a challenge, I almost didnt get to the View Plaza (which became just Vju, and was inside a coffee shop), but I was able to get the pass without trouble once I was there.

I wanted to buy a new belt because mine was breaking, but I didn’t know where to go. Most clothes places are really expensive in Japan, and I didn’t need some ultra-chic belt, I just needed something to keep my jeans up. Amazingly, I found a Gap. I wandered in and ended up talking to a sales guy there in Japanese a little bit. I was trying to convey how crazy I thought it was that I was wearing a Gap t-shirt that I had purchased half-way around the world. The music and the atmosphere of the place could have been any Gap store in America (just more Asians), they even had a New Order song on for a while.

I stayed up really late, Im not sure why. It may have been the 500ml coke that i impulsively purchased on my way back from the station. To make matters worse the mosquitoes were really bad, so I slept terribly, eventually resorting to spraying bug spray on myself. I also had just washed my jeans, and I needed them to be dry by the morning. I couldn’t put them outside because it was going to rain. I think my solution was pretty innovative (for 4 in the morning anyway).

I woke up around 7 o’clock, got ready and was at the station by about 830. First I had to take a train from Wako to Omiya, which took about an hour. From there I grabbed a shinkansen (bullet train) to Niigata. There was about a forty minute delay for that train. In the meantime I ate at this ultra-fast food traveler’s udon place, but it was really spicy and I got some broth on my shirt.

When I boarded the train there was some old guy passed out on it, he may have had a heart attack or something. The JR squad assembled and got him out of the train in a timely manner, at which point I finally sat down.

The ride up was alright, but I was on a double decker in economy class, so it wasnt especially comfortable. From Niigata I started running into trouble. I was already feeling late, and now I had to decide to take a bus or take the train. I tried to take the bus because it would take me to within walking distance of Aqua Design Amano, but I couldnt find the bus. See, in Tokyo there is much English, romaji, or at least hiragana. In Niigata this is not the case. After some deliberation I called the English hotline and used some Japanese on a JR gate guard to find the proper train. I found the right one at last, by this time feeling very late as well as hungry. I had another 30 minute delay so I bought some random food at the kombini. This was the pattern for the day, buying random kombini food and eating it in a station or on a train. I felt I was stared at a lot more in Niigata than in Tokyo, I don’t think this was imagined.

At the Niigata station I saw these cardboard box structures that were the “homes” of the homeless. They were actually pretty well designed and you could tell their owners cared about them.

Also, I saw a homeless man in the same hallway as these cardboard houses. He only had a piece of cardboard and a blanket. Yet still, he took his shoes off before passing out on the cardboard. I think that says something about Japanese culture.

The ride to ADA was strange. There was this weird guy with a facial twitch or something in the seat next to me. I don’t know what it is, but I think a lot of people in Japan have weird degenerative nervous system disorders. I see more people than usual with strange gaits or twitches or things like this. He got off at a middle stop, and I spent the rest of the time sampling the new music that my Finnish friend gave me.

The view outside the train looks very different from Tokyo.

Another shot outside the train, the houses are more traditional here.

A quick pic I took outside of the train on the final trip to Maki station, I like it.

After getting to Maki station I was confused about the map. I thought Maki IC was Maki station, so I wandered around the area for about a half hour trying to figure out where ADA was. By this time I was a little panicked because I was running out of time to see the tanks, as well as in the process of getting stranded in a rural town in the middle of Niigata prefecture. By this time it was about 2:30, and I really needed help. I talked to some school boys I found on the street (it takes all my courage to try to talk to someone a little older than me, or even the same age, but little kids I talk to easily). They eventually got it through my head that where I want to go is very far away. I walked back to the station and found the taxis there, as they had explained (and as the ADA map originally said).

A view down main street, standing at the station.

Helpful school children.
I will talk about the ADA place later, with a special post devoted to aquariums. It wasn’t as I expected, it was a place where he actually works on tanks, where real people have to maintain tanks. So, though a showcase, it was also more down to earth. I realized that what he does is not impossible, and that I can accomplish similar things with effort (especially if I am focusing all my efforts on a single tank). I got a lot of good ideas from looking at the tanks, I can’t wait to implement them.

Note especially my reflection.

The highest concentration of beautiful aquariums I’ll probably ever see.

Now, the ride back. I left at five on another taxi, waited for a train again at Maki station, and took the train to Niigata. There was another delay before the next train, so I went to the kombini and provided some entertainment to the cashiers as I tried to ask them to heat up my soy sauce (I should have known that is not the custom). On the train I lucked out (I had been trying to strike up conversations with people all day, but usually it was innapropriate or I couldnt muster the nerve). The girl next to me had a DS. We talked for the whole thirty minute ride. She is a graphic designer and is studying to be a game user interface designer (the art side, I guess). I think she is going to one of those technical schools that Bachnik talked about, that are less prestigious than even the lowliest Japanese University, but yet actually teach good skills that lead to good employment opportunities (vs. shitty universities that lead to nothing, but have more prestige anyway). I forgot her name already, too bad. The conversation was in a combination of Japanese and English, augmented by m y DS Lite dictionary (her English was almost as poor as my Japanese, so it was very interesting).

One of my snacks, it was the last one that had the goat and wolf friends manga post it pack. I attribute this to fate.

At Niigata I was very concerned that I was not going to get to Kusatsu in time for the bus and would end up stranded in Naganoharakusatsugochi or whatever it was. I bought a ticket and was lucky that there was a shinkansen at that exact time (very lucky, I almost didn’t get on in time). I missed the transfer at Takasaki though, so I had to wait. Fortunately I ended up on a limited express and it took me to Naganoharakusatsuwhatever faster than the normal train I had scheduled for, so I got there in time for the exact bus I needed. It was a comfortable ride.

Shinkansen.

Comfortable ride.

On the bus I was freaking out that I would miss my stop. Everything was kanji, I was frantically looking up words to try to match them up. At the station I couldnt find my ride to the hostel and was starting to try to call them, but then he walks up and he’s like “Taylor Baasu?” The van he took me to the hostel with was kind of ghetto, it also seemed farther away from the station than expected, but we arrived in one piece.
The hostel is pretty nice, or at least as nice as 4500 yen a night can get you. It is almost completely empty. This is because it’s mainly a hostel for skiers. I can tell, everything has a ski feeling. The whole town has a feel of quiet town in the summer that gets really busy in the winter (kind of like Taylor Falls in Minnesota). The biggest difference is that it also has the hot springs going for it during the summer and all the time.

My room, could fit four people in it.

I hope it did it right, I’ve never been to a hostel before.
I dont know what I’ll do tommorow, there is very little time, I will probably have to pick two things. Even then, everything seems far away and all the maps are unreadable to me. I’ll figure it out in the morning, I guess.

The bathroom slippers, it looks like the gentleman and lady are walking to the toilet together.

I think it would be really fun to bring a group here and go skiing, the rooms are very big and I can just imagine it being very fun. I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to do that, but how awesome would it be to do that this winter before I go to Hong Kong? Imagine going to onsen after a long, fatiguing day of skiing.

The “Cyber-Labyrinth Megalith” game I tried playing in the lobby.

During the long rides I mostly slept, listened to music (both familiar and music I got from my Finnish friend), and played my DS lite a little bit (mostly Super Mario Kart).

Maybe Ill edit this post later, I also have some content to add about the aquarium and things. I’m out of time, peace outside.

Get ready for part 2, Sunday, as well as the ADA appendix.

%Note: you have just finished reading the edited version. I added pictures and cleaned up the grammar in parts.