Life in Japan - Pictures galore !! Arcades, Temples, Rainy days, etc

sometimes I envy you guys who find these fascinating.
being brought up in there myself I don't and probably will not see in ways you guys see

probably why I bring my kids to visit various part of Japan coz for them it's fascinating foreign country unlike their dad

 

Ha, awesome, I went to a ryokan in Yunohira last month. I wanted to show some of my friends the real Japanese experience, and that was a wonderful place to go. It will probably be swamped with tourists in the future, since it was advertised on a big travel show a few weeks ago.

 

Not sure how fascinating I find these things. What interests me about Japan is living the big city life (I'm from a small accumulation of buildings in Norway), getting to know people and their culture. But I do enjoy traveling to new places, so I make a point of going at least one new place every time. But once you've seen a temple, a garden, and a shrine, you've seen most of it in terms of normal tourist stuff. It's nice to hang out with a date in a nice place and relax, but I don't really do the sightseeing thing anymore, unless I travel with somebody. First time I traveled to Japan I went with a friend, and he dragged me around to see EVERYTHING. I had blisters on all my toes and could hardly walk. He's the type who wakes up 10 am and panics because it's "the middle of the day" already, and he has 18 locations plotted in to the GPS. I prefer walking around in the city a bit, chill at a cafe, go eat dinner, chill at a bar, get wasted...

Yes, it was a nice place, nice to see the countryside and live in something more traditional, not just normal hotels.
The place was completely deserted though, we didn't see other people other than the host and some guy in the distance.

Continuing...

YOKOHAMA

I never heard of Yokohama until after coming back home the first time, but it's one of the biggest cities in the country, just south of Tokyo. It's pretty nice, more quiet than Tokyo. Maybe not worth sticking around for a long time, but it's a nice place to go for a daytrip or two from Tokyo with a girlfriend or a date.

1. Hung out in the harbor area with some beers. Those brick wall buildings are factories converted into shopping malls. They are popular for some reason.




2. Went to "Ramen Museum", lots of ramen shops under one roof, designed to look like a Japanese town a hundred years ago, complete with dark back alleys and whatnot. You can buy small portions, so you can taste different types from different shops.




3-4. Sankei-en garden. Nothing extraordinary if you've been to Japan already, but it was nice just hang out a bit. It's pretty big, I think we spent two hours going around.




5-6. Chinatown, crappy pics, sorry... Lots of good dumplings as well as nicer restaurants.





7-8. Nice panties.

 

Looks like you're having a great time on your trip around Japan

 

Absolutely, I can't stop going back. If there was a need for oil and gas engineers I'd probably move there for a few years, but doesn't seem to be much in that area going on in Japan...

TOKYO

1. Stuffing my face (censored) at Esse Due. OK, first thing first. This place has THEE best pizza I ever tasted: Esse Due in Akasaka (there is also one at Haneda airport, but it's not as good). I once booked my hotel to be close to that restaurant (true story) (walking distance to Roppongi does not hurt, either). For my next trip in a few months, this hotel is already taken, so I had to book one further down the street, putting FIVE MORE MINUTES between me and great pizza. Make sure you try both the cheese-based and tomato-based pizzas.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/E...2!3m1!1s0x60188b8173878b0f:0xe77a26f4a8a09b34
(On the topic of pizza, Devil Craft in Hamamatsucho has a different type of pizza which is also excellent, and a selection of maybe 20 craft beers all on tap, my second favourite restaurant in Tokyo.)



2. Oct 2014, first time, so cute girls in maid costumes on the streets was a new experience. My friend's trying to take a sneak photo.




3. On the topic of food, the Korean BBQ in Korea-town in north-eastern Shinjuku (around Shin-Okubo station) is as good and sometimes better than in Seoul. Can't wait to go to Seoul next week and eat this stuff every day! (Seoul is nice, but got nothing on Japan.)



4. Feb 2015. From Tokyo Skytree east of Asakusa. Photos in three directions. The city never ends...



5. skytree 2



6. skytree 3




7. May 2015. From some kind of festival in Asakusa/ Sensou-ji. They were hauling these things around, shaking them and chanting all around the area.



8. More from the festival. Not so exciting really, and made some really poor choices of street food. We went to a Thai food festival later that day, much better.


9. The real meaning of bukkake. My Japanese girlfriend at the time did not understand my confusion nor interest.




10. May 2015. Ghibli Museum. Highligts were an exclusive Totoro piece (10 minutes long maybe?), and a few rooms full of various art, storyboards, etc. Could not take pics inside. Found a really nice Vietnamese restaurant in the area, too.

 

TOKYO (still...)

1. Oct 2015. Halloween is a week-long event in Japan. The girls dress up like porn stars. Even if they dress up as Super-Mario or Luigi (which a lot of girls did, strangely) or whatever, it's always the porn version of the costume. These two were strangely well covered, and were putting on quite a show, sound and all, on the street.



2. Oct 2014. So had to figure out what maid cafe was all about... Not sure why I want to embarrass myself by putting this out publicly.



3. My friend's food at Maidreamin



4. My food at Maidreamin. Let's just say you don't go for the food... :/


5. I love yakitori, yakiniku, sushi, ramen and all the other various noodle soup stuff, and lots of other Japanese food, but... After one week of drinking until 7am there's only one thing that will cut it... (and the price for most interesting picture from Japan goes to...)



6. Feb 2015. From market in Ueno. Very nice part of the city that I usually don't go to, due to being on the other side of the city than where I usually am. There are some old buildings and a zoo in the area, too. The pandas are overrated, just sitting there eating.



7. Ueno


8. Had to take another friend to Maidreamin... Again I'm not looking at the camera..?



9. Feb 2015. They even have their own Eiffel tower.

 

Cool pics @Decades !! Seems like you had a blast

 

I was in McDonalds yesterday and saw these.



Chocolate covered French fries. YUCK!

 

Yesterday saw one of the worst winter storms to hit Kyushu in the past 100 years (for instance, Nagasaki got the most snow in 115 years). Kumamoto may not have got the brunt of it, but it was still a dangerous slick. I was walking around downtown, and there were emergency vehicles everywhere, getting people who slipped and hit their head. Kind of neat to see Kumamoto Castle covered in snow, though, that apparently doesn't happen often.



It froze pretty hard here overnight. No hot water until it warms up since they have the pipes exposed outside. Supposed to be 18C by the end of the week, though.

 

Wow. Not nearly as bad in Tokyo but still pretty cold. So far we've only had one day of traffic chaos due to bad weather last Monday.

 

We got snow in Yamaguchi too! In fact I'm in the office now with the snow coming down thick out side. Twitter link to a quick video I took.

Take a look at @RetroCoreYakumo's Tweet: https://twitter.com/RetroCoreYakumo/status/691460519086002177?s=09

 

Yeah, it was pretty nuts here. Pretty much all the highways and railways in western Kyushu were closed last night. It was still navigable in Kumamoto city, but by 6 PM, the roads were pretty dangerous. My fiancee's car was covered in ice, but as of noon it has all melted away. This is going to be pretty short lived.

 

Yeah, all the snow in Shimonoseki where I live has gone and on the way home from work in Kita Kyushu the snow had started to vanish. Very odd considering at lunch time it was pretty deep at 5 to 10 cm and it kept snowing until 4pm.

By the way, badinsults, what are you doing in Kumamoto, job wise?

 

At the moment, I don't have a job (I was employed in Sweden until December). I'm travelling back to Canada for a month, I probably won't start thinking about the job thing until I get back in March, since I have a bunch of lingering projects that I really need to get finished.

 

To he honest you might be leaving it a bit late. As you may know right now all the non Japanese are out job hunting at this time of year. If you plan on teaching English I'd get in quick if I was you, especially if you will need a visa. Public schools require you to have an instructor visa or be a spouse or resident. Even a dependant visa wouldn't do.

 

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I'm hoping that I don't have to resort to English teaching. I'm thinking of going into consulting, that way I don't necessarily have to rely on income directly from Japan. I have contacts with people who work in research facilities in a couple of places in Japan, there is a possibility I can apply for research grants with their help. But really, I need to finish up these loose ends of projects before I can have any realistic hope of getting these grants.

 

Good to hear you have a plan. I hope it all works out for you. It's nice being in Japan and not having to work as a teacher. Not that there's anything wrong with being a teacher, we've all done it at one point.

 

I actually accepted a job in Germany, but I haven't heard anything from them in over a month, so I am not holding my breath. My fiancee likes it better that way, anyways. The big problem in Kumamoto, of course, is that that it is a largely agricultural based economy here, not really a big demand for science.

 

Untitled by gaijin_punch, on Flickr


Untitled by gaijin_punch, on Flickr


Untitled by gaijin_punch, on Flickr


Untitled by gaijin_punch, on Flickr


Untitled by gaijin_punch, on Flickr


Untitled by gaijin_punch, on Flickr

 

... thanks for continuing to share these candid photos.