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!

Maxwell Dropped the Bomb

Last Friday Vanessa treated me to Honda-Ya, a Japanese Yakiniku restaurant. We had all sorts of yummy dishes there. It was great! Thanks Vanessa! :)

Afterwards we went to her place and measured the living room since she wanted to get a new TV. I also finally got to meet her kitties, Maxwell and Angelina! They are such cute kitties. They are sooo spoiled!

I'm mildly allergic to cats. So at first I just watched them from a distance. But as usual I can never resist a cute furry pussy so I had to play with them! Surprisingly enough I did not seem to have any reaction to them at all! Even with Angelina shedding all over the place! Sweet!

The highlight of the night was when we were sitting at the table. Behind me I heard Maxwell munching away at his dinner. As soon as he finished I saw him dart into one litter box, and then run into the other litter box. Their litterbox has a huge dome on top of it so it's almost like a little house with a hole in front.

I saw his guilty little head poke out of the hole, and I looked at Vanessa who had a funny look on her face. "OMG He's going to drop a bomb!". And oh did he drop the Bomb haha, that kitty must get a lot of fiber in his diet because the smell was impressive!!! I just started laughing while Vanessa bolted for the air freshener and proceeded to run around the room spraying it for 30 seconds straight!

That left us with the wonderful aroma of lavendar air freshener and cat turds... Which for some odd reason made me think of strawberries???? Who'd have figured!

So Vanessa, it was fun playing with your pussy cats -- Even though one of them dropped the bomb! Thanks for Friday, I had a great time!

Introducing... Cindy's Turd Song

I took the day off today, and while I was waiting around in the Morning I decided to concentrate on recording the Turd Song. I actually got it done! Well, it's not as well recorded as I like my stuff to be but it's a joke song so I figured being a little lazy is ok. It's short, but sweet! :)

You can download it here! You can right-click "Save-As" to save it to your hard disk if you want.

Yes, that's me singing. Sorry you'll have to put up with my voice cuz I can't find a singer for my music :) Oh well!

I had rearranged the lyrics a little to make it fit the song, so here are the words:

Yo turd, my lovah,
thought you were gone forevah,
but then I turned and whoa mama,
my ass got taken ovah…

(Chorus)
My biggest mistake in my life,
was when i flushed you down away,
How could I have done you that-a-way,
my turd............
my only turd!

(Repeat)

Just in case someone tries to steal or sell our work (lol), this music is (C) Cindy and James 2007. :)

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! :)

It's Coming...

That's right. "Cindy's Turd Song" is coming! I wasn't kidding around when I told Cindy in that chat that I had picked up my guitar and started writing the music for it.

Vanessa was over and I played it for her today. She was laughing the whole time, and she gave me a GREAT idea to play it on Cindy's voice mail so she can hear it first thing as a "Welcome Back!" to the USA and the Blogger world. Thanks Vanessa! I think Cindy's going to love it.

But then I realized that all you other bloggers won't be able to enjoy the turd song. That is... Unless I recorded it!

So I'm putting together a recording now. It'll take a few weeks for me to get all the instruments written and recorded, but when i'm done I'll post it for download.

P.S., Happy Birthday Vanessa! Well it's not really her birthday but I just got her a special belated birthday present!

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???