First Pension

A lot of people have the perception that Japan is an expensive place to stay. This is actually false, and you can get around Japan on a budget if you really know where to look! One of the greatest deals in Japan are the pensions. You can consider them like a bed and breakfast but you get so much more!

The price to stay one night is in this particular pension was $70. This includes the room, Dinner, Breakfast, and usually Taxi service to and from the train station!

Below is a photo of the first pension we stayed at.


Dinner is a multi-course french-japanese style meal. The first course that we had was salmon sashimi and prosciutto ham salad:

The next course was soup! It doesn't look like much but it was extremely tasty actually. I was surprised!

The next course is a pan-fried fish dish! As with all the seafood I had in Japan it was fresh and delicious!

The main course is unlimited rice, and steak from the local cattle:

Polish it off with a Jelly dessert in a cream sauce with mint and berries:

In the morning we get treated to breakfast! This is more american style with Scrambled Eggs, Ham, Hash Browns, Salad, Fruit, Orange Juice, Tea, and Bread!

So you get all of that, for the low price of $70.00 per night! Try to find that anywhere in the U.S. I have to say that the dinner alone is probably worth at least half the cost!

Izu, Home of the Wasabi

The train ride took us to Izu. This is an area famous for the Wasabi farms. One of the main tourist attractions in the area is this big hill that you can ride a cable car up to and take a view of the whole valley.



Below is Kevin. Kevin is afraid of heights. Deathly afraid. Can you tell???



At the top of the mountain was a guy selling Mochis. These are made from Rice and are kind of like a sticky cake. They are pink because the flavoring of it is Sakura or Cherry Blossoms! (From the trees I posted earlier). It has a unique flowery flavor. We had to try one of course!

You can walk around the rim of the hill. I think it's probably a 1.5km walk. There is actually a "Bowl"in the middle like a volcano. Below is a picture of the bowl.

But if you look closely into the bowl... you realize that there's an archery range there! Sweet! I kind of wanted to give it a shot.

This is how you get into the bowl. You have to carry your arrows, your bow, down these stairs. And then when you're done you have to walk back up! It is a long way down! The group decided that they did not want to do this :).

Below is a picture of me at the top of the hill. Behind me is the valley and the coast line. The wind was blowing strong and it was COLD up here which is why I was wearing my leather jacket. The wind actually gave me quite a headache!

Another picture of the view from the top.

At the souvenier store we found "Hello Kitty Izu!". This is when I realized that every region in Japan had a specialized hello kitty that is for sale only in Japan, and only in that region. This particular hello kitty is supposedly holding a Wasabi root, and tasting it (which is why she has that funny expression on her face.)

But if you ask me, it looks like she's holding a giant green Dildo, Flipping you off, and squinting her eyes at you in disdain. What do you think??? :)

The Train! The Train!

This was my first long train ride in Japan. We were on our way to Izu. We picked up some Bento lunch boxes for the ride. Below is the one that I got. Yes, those are disposable lunch boxes. Aren't they kind of intricate??


Here's what was inside. Yes it's kind of jumbled up because I started digging through it before I realized i should have taken a picture first :) Oh well. You have fish cakes, fish, bamboo, mochi, plums, rice balls, some meat, carrots, and condiments! It was quite good!


Below is a picture of my friend's lunch box. They sure spend a lot of attention to their presentation! Everything from the Bentos to Snack foods come wrapped in fancy packages.

This is Kevin's lunch. He went for a burger and sandwhich! Boooo!!!!

This is the view out the window of the train! There's so much water in Japan that many of the train rides had scenic vistas of the ocean, lakes, streams, or rivers!



Below is a picture of a small bay that we passed by on our way to Izu!
The next trip post will be about Izu! Home of the Wasabi!

The Ramen Nazi

I never really liked eating Ramen in the U.S. I guess i've had too many bowls of "Instant Ramen" or "Cup of Noodles" as a kid that it tainted my opinion of Ramen.

After Ueno park, we decided to have Ramen for lunch. This is a picture of the poster outside that shows what it looks like inside the place. You sit in a "cubicle" of sorts to eat your Ramen!

The atmosphere kind of reminds me of the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld. You go in, get your food, enjoy it, and get out. No putzing around allowed!

I didnt want take many pictures inside because I wasn't quite sure if I should be doing it or not. But it was so unique I had to grab at least a few shots!

It was really dark, and i was being surreptitious by not using the flash. I'm surprised these shots turned out. Kudos to Panasonic's image stabilization. For you photo people these pictures were taken using 1/8 sec shutter speed all hand-held!

To the right is a picture of the cubicle. You have a little water spout to the left if you're thirsty. The little bamboo thing in front slides up and they pick up your meal ticket (I'll explain this later) and slide your meal through here.

The red curtain is always there -- so you can not see who is serving you your food. Apparently you are supposed to concentrate on the food and eating, and not be distracted by anything else!

To the left is a sign which is attached to every cubicle. Check out the pictures in Red. No smoking! No Cell Phones! And definately NO TALKING! :)

They really go out of their way to make this a personal / individual kind of thing. This posed a problem for us non-japanese speaking tourists. We have 1 guy in our group that speaks fluent Japanese. Usually he orders everything and does the communication.

Because of the way the seating is done, and because there is no talking, we were not allowed to communicate with each other. The ordering was slightly complicated as well because you can choose: How thick you want the soup; How well done you want the noodles; if you want pork or not; if you want green onions or not; How spicy you want it, etc. You really can customize your meal to your taste!

This is how the line works. When a cubicle opens up a little light turns blue on this wall. When that happens the next person in line can go in and take his seat. I.e., you can't choose who you sit next to.

Everything is written and communicated in Japanese and since you can't see the person serving you it's a little hard to communicate :)

You order your food through a machine like this.
You even pay the machine, and it gives you tickets which
you give to your server.

This is a close-up of the Ramen! It was fantastic!
The soup really made it special, but the noodles were
hand made, fresh, and al-dente. If they had Ramen
like this in the states I would eat it often! :)

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

After the fish market we were scheduled to visit Ueno park. This is a famous park in Tokyo where they do "Hanami" or flower watching.

April is the month when the Sakura, or Cherry Blossoms, bloom. This happens once per year. After it blooms the flower petals will float to the ground throughout the day covering the ground in pink, or white flower petals. Once all the petals fall (they all fall in less than 1 week!) the tree is left bare for the rest of the year.

It's the national tree of Japan, so april is a special month. People come out to sit under the trees, have lunch, drink sake, and enjoy themselves.

Unfortunately for us the first day of bloom it was raining quite hard, so the petals that would normally be blanketing the ground were wet and smooshed. No one was out sitting under the trees either!

Since the sky was cloudy the pictures didn't turn out too nice. Plus it was hard taking pictures with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other! So this time around i didn't grab too many pics. Here is a shot of one of the trees.

We actually lucked out for the 3 weeks we were there. We started in the warmer region and progressed through colder regions each week. The trees bloom later when it is colder -- so we ended up seeing the trees in full bloom for all 3 weeks of the trip!

I actually have better pictures of the sakura coming up in the later posts. But, I'm posting in chronological order.

This was the last week for some of the people in our group. So they needed more bags to carry souvenirs home. We found this bag shop in the park where you can get them for about $10.00 each!

Now, i saw this sign on a bag. It's written in Japanese and I was instantly drawn to it! I can't quite figure out why, but I wanted to buy this bag :D.

I pointed it out to my Japanese speaking friend and he said, "What? I don't see anything weird!"

Is it just me???

Hotel Trettio

Most people have the impression that Japan is expensive. But with a little investigation you can get around for a very reasonable amount of money.

Instead of staying at the big hotels (For $200-$300 a night) The first few days in Tokyo we stayed at Hotel Trettio. The price was great (around $75.00 a night). Although, it was tough to find since it was tucked away behind several alleyways! (There are very few street signs in Japan so you have to get around via landmarks)

To get there you have to find this temple:

Then you make a right down a little alley:

Follow this alley around a few turns like this:
The staircase to the hotel: (we climbed a LOT of stairs carrying our luggage)
(Had to steal this photo from the web cuz i forgot to take a pic of this myself!)

Here's the hotel. It is really does seem out of place here if you compare to the other photos above:
(Stole this photo too!)


Inside things were really old fashioned. Take a look at the Key that they gave us. Apparently this was the only key, because we had to return it to the front desk everytime we stepped out:


Each room came with a toothbrush and a Razor. I couldn't help but laugh at the caption below. "Have a good shaving for your fresh life!". My life is much freshened after using this razor!

The First Morning

The first day I arrive, we decide to go to the Tsujiki fish market. It opens early in the morning so we woke up at 5:00am to get there on time! That was quite a feat for me for anyone that knows me!

The fish market is a gigantic warehouse. Imagine an area of a couple walmarts. Except all the merchandise is seafood! Inside there are carts, weird drum-cars (see the video), and people running around like mad to bring the daily catch in.

1. View from the center of the market

2. Doesn't he look friendly?

3. A bunch of little Fishies!

4. Tuna is Expensive!
5. Lobster! Yummy!

6. Shrimp to throw at Jordan!

7. Clams!

Here is a short walk-through video I took in the market:

After the fish market we decided to visit a sushi bar next door to have breakfast! Mmmm Jordan and Flat Coke this is what you can enjoy if you come visit us :)

We wanted to get the freshest items so we told the Sushi chef to order the items for us. We got a few items that we never had before. Here's some of the selection we had (I didnt take a picture of all of them):

1. Sweet Shrimp (Ama Ebi)

2. Another type of Shrimp

3. Sea Urchin!

4. I think it's Clam...

5. The salmon was only $1.50! Cindy would love it!

6. Baked Eel. Jordan can Handle this!

7. Don't know what it is!

8. I think it's squid tentacles!

Everything tasted great and was super fresh! I forgot to take a picture of the Salmon eggs. But for anyone that's had them before in the U.S. they are usually extremely salty. The ones here were not salty at all and they were great! It may be because they are fresh and don't need to be preserved? I'm not quite sure why.

We had quite a few items that we weren't quite sure what it was. This won't be the last time that happens either!

So... Did this post make you hungry???