War, what is it good for?

this post was semi-written on the train from Hiroshima to Osaka, before being left to think about it/we have been too tired to write any emails or blog posts the past little while... its been way too busy!

The last 3 days which were his first were very busy with a visit to the fish market in Tokyo, a trip to a festival in Yokohoma (a suburb of Tokyo) and probably the highlight of our trip which was being in Hiroshima for the 70th anniversary of the first A-bomb attack.  Dimitri and I found the city of Hiroshima to be interesting, busy and energetic city.  The food was fantastic, people were friendly the capsule hotel we stayed at was... clean (about the only good thing about it for me) and the ceremonies in the morning and afternoon were fantastic.  

The morning ceremony involved speeches from The mayor of Hiroshima, the Prime minister and singing from children and adults during the 45 minute ceremony that started when the bomb dropped at 8:15 AM.  Doves were released during the ceremony that called for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons by countries around the world.  The PM of Japan asked all G7 countries to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the G7 meetings to see what happened to the cities because of the A-bomb.  Most of this I have read since the ceremony, as it was all in Japanese but hearing what the PM and mayor were saying was interesting as a foreigner visiting Japan.  

On August 5th, the day before the ceremony we visited miyajima island, which is about 20 minutes from the city and is a Unesco site for the shrine there.  It was a beautiful island, which is mostly walkable unless you want to do the crazy ass hike up the mountian to the top.  Thankfully my broken toe and Dimitri's lack of enthusiasm regarding hiking, prohibited us from doing the hike, as it would probably have killed me :p

We timed the trip to Miyajima perfectly, and were able to see the sunset as we were leaving to go back to Hiroshima for dinner.

Now, on to the capsule hotel.  This was an interesting experience, that was necessary because there were 10s of thousands of people in Hiroshima for the ceremonies, and the city was too full to find a proper hotel, or even a hostel.  I wasn't a fan of the capsule hotels. They were a more traditional way that men can find a bed on the cheap in a city, mostly used by business men in areas for one or two days.  They can check in, get a meal, shower, sleep and be out in the morning without much fuss.  All toiletries are providied and you get a set of PJ's to wear at night (which are filled with polyester - I didn't wear them!)  They are convienent for the business person travelling light, as you have to check out everyday and leave your luggage in storage, but for a longer term traveller they don't make life easy.  We couldn't come back and crash in the afternoon, which in this crazy ass heat, is a necessity!

It was an experience, one that I will only do if I have to because they are a bit more work than I would want.  It's easy to check into a hostel dump your stuff on the side, valuables in the lockers and head out.  We just found out that we planned most of our trip around a summer vacation for students in Japan, so everything is booked up!

Both Dimitri and I agree that Hiroshima was our favourite experience of the trip, and we were honored to be able to be a part of it.  On a few occasions since then Japanese people have asked us what our favourite part of the trip was and both of us immediately said "Hiroshima on August 6" the thanks and appreciation we get from these people is incredible, and shows the respect they have for others and their own country.  They were thanking us for going to Hiroshima to honor the dead.  It was one of the coolest things that has happened to me while travelling.  

I'm going to keep this blog going when I get home in a few days.  We still have more stories and experiences to talk about that I haven't gotten to! There will be pictures added once I'm back on a computer but to keep entertained, checking out my instagram account would show you a few pictures I've taken so far!

https://instagram.com/aniko25/

So, the last few days have been a bit crazy and exciting.  Today was gaijin goes to a baseball game! I saw the Yomiuri Giants (of Tokyo) against the Chimichuri Dragons (of...somewhere else in Japan :p) Up until the 4th inning, the game was close and it was mostly a pitchers duel but as the game went on it felt like the dragon's batters were figuring out the Giants pitching, and scored on a homerun in the 5th.. They hit it right into their section of the stadium, which was left field.  It seemed like the entire area was cheering for the Dragons (in blue) while the rest of the stadium was pretty much a sea of orange for the Giants!  It turned out that today, the Dragons would beat the Giants and the Tokyo fans would go home quiet. It was an interesting game, and very cool to see how baseball is in another country.  Most of the rules of the game are the same but apparently in Japan the stadiums are smaller than MLB regulation which I think is because they aren't power hitters like in MLB.  It was much more strategic hitting and fielding which made the game exciting to watch:)

Other than the baseball game, I have been doing a lot of sweating.  It's been unbelievable how hot it has been, and no matter how much water I drink, its NEVER enough.  Some days have involved going out in the morning, then coming back at lunch/early afternoon showering and going back out later in the day.  35 degrees with 60% humidity will do that to you.  Talking to locals, they say it has been like this for a month after the rainy season, and even while they live here it doesn't get much easier.  I have gone back to my old tricks of ducking into stores that have the AC blasting, just to cool down for a bit before going back out into the heat.  Yesterday I walked around the Imperial grounds, which while beautiful and interesting to see how they guarded the King and Queen was swealtering and I cut the walk short early.  The 2 hour walk involved 3 litres of water.  Walking around. Not some nasty run/bike ride up a mountain. Just walking.  I hope the next few cities are a bit better and cooler than Tokyo has been!

 Dimitri arrived today and we will be moving to a new hostel that is closer to the fish market, as a 3 AM wake up call is going to be nasty, but hopefully worth it to see the tuna auction and for some breakfast sushi :)
After that we will be heading around Tokyo for the day before heading to Yokohama for a fireworks display that Dimitri found and looks fantastic!

There will be more updates coming soon as we take the train to Hiroshima I will have lots of time to update with pictures, so keep an eye out!

Tunaaaa

Ciao Tokyo! ... oh wait wrong language KONICHIWA!

So, here I am after 5? days in Tokyo... and it has been upgraded to my new favourite city!  I love the feel, bustle, the food, and even though they look like zombies on the subway I like the people :p

Its been a busy few days and I figured it would be the time to start up the blog again so people back home can see some of what I have been experiencing here.  The food has been fantastic although sometimes I don't know what I am ordering as the only parts that are in english are "Chicken with rice" all my meals have turned out fantastic.

The first few nights here I was at a hostel just outside the heart of the city which in traditional Japanese style made everyone take off their shoes at the door and wear sandals while inside.  It was something that normally wouldn't have been a problem, but the broken toe on my left foot was against that.  Luckily it happened a while ago and is mostly healing well... there isn't much pain to deal with.  The first afternoon/night I arrived was a very basic one. Sleeping was on the agenda and that's all I damn well did! It was lovely to get a good nights rest, as I didn't get much sleep on the plane as I wanted to.  The monday morning felt like a much better day, and I spent it going around the neighbourhood, and trying the local convenience food fare which was fantastic!  

The second day was busier and more interesting.  Going to the Edo/Tokyo museum to see the great history of this city was an eye opening experience that every visitor to Tokyo should do.  The incredible history of this country came out in the museum and gave me a better understanding of what people experienced before WW2 that shaped the country.  

After the museum, I headed to my hotel in Shinjuku.  The hotel that has a GIANT statue of godzilla sticking out the side of it, in the heart of tourist town.  Shinjuku subway station has 2 million people go through it on a busy day, and is the busiest station/area of the city.  I have adventured around this area for the past few days, getting ready to move on to my next hostel in Akihabara another section of Tokyo and home to the biggest electronics market in the city (guess where I'm going to be?)

The weather here has been a stifling 30-35 degrees with way too much humidity to comprehend and I am drinking more water per day than I ever thought I could.  It's all being sweated out like being in a sauna all the time while outside.  You can't even get any reprieve at night!  So far there haven't been any bugs or mosquitos... they probably stay away from here as well.

The first 3 or so days were a major culture shock for me, but that could have partly been due to the jet lag.  Finally after 5 or so days I'm starting to resume a proper sleep schedule AKA not waking up at the crack of dawn and going to bed after 9 pm.  

So far this has been a wonderful trip that is teaching me about other cultures, food, and people and I'm hoping to bring some of that back into my work/personal life back home in Toronto.

So for now, I say Nippon Sukidesu and Sayonara! (I like Japan, Goodbye)

Amsterdam!!

So far this was one of my favorite cities on this trip…even though it rained the entire time I was there. It’s been the wettest year in recent history for Amsterdam! Unfortunately I didn’t get the newsflash until just before I got there and had to run out and get a rain coat in Milan.

Even throughout the rain, I spent a lot of time walking around the city, seeing the sights, checking out museums and generally getting to know the city. It’s a beautiful city built around canals…but not like Venice, as they aren’t the primary mode of transportation for Amsterdammers. Bikes are. They are everywhere. There is a bike parking lot right near the central station that has more than 2,500 bikes in it most of the time. When the weather is good it’s a fantastic city to bike around…and when its bad they just hold an umbrella in one hand and bike with the other. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a picture of that, as I wasn’t fast enough with my camera.

On my first day, I did what I usually do, and walked around the area and got the lay of the land. The one thing that’s a problem is the language. Its really hard to pronounce and remember the names of the streets and made it easier to get lost. I had to rely more on my terrible sense of direction, and got lost and turned around a lot.

Since I took my mom’s advice and stayed in Amsterdam for 4 nights instead of the originally planned 3, I spent the next day going around the city on foot as I was going to get a 48 hour I Amsterdam card that includes transit, admission to some museums, and discounts around the city for the last few days. I did a bit of shopping, because up until then I had been in t-shirt and shorts weather…the weather was a rude awakening for me. Average 10 degrees and raining. I went over to H&M and grabbed a sweater, shirt and a wintery jacket as the weather in Paris and London were supposed to be pretty cold. I picked another area of downtown to walk around, shop a bit and just check everything out. The city has some great clothing stores, and if I wasn’t on a budget I would have bought a few things as they were pretty expensive.

The next day was when I bought the 48 hour transit and city pass. I went to the Van Gough museum, which I found really interesting to see how Van Gough lived, and all the problems he had before he killed himself. I had never realized that he had only been painting for 10 years , and wasn’t recognized until much later as an incredible artist. That day I also went to the Heineken Experience, which is a marketing ploy/museum/gift shop for beer drinkers. It was cool to see how the company has changed since it’s inception, and different ways they have marketed their product to consumers over the years.

That night, I went for a walk and found a little noodle place for dinner. They did fast food noodles that were fantastic. It also helped that I found a guy playing the guitar in a square down the street that was fantastic. It was a cold night (about 6 degrees) but the guitar and good food made it worth sitting outside freezing my butt off.

The next morning I went to Anne Frank Haus, which was one of the best museums that I went on, over the entire trip. They were really good at teaching you the story of Anne Frank, and what her family went through during the war and how the survived in that apartment for 2 years. It walked you through how Anne Franks father changed the ownership of the company to a friend, because Jews weren’t able to own property, who lived in the apartment (there were 8 of them) and who was fighting with who at different times. Anne Frank wrote a lot about the family, and how everyone was feeling at the time.

After the Anne Frank Haus, I went on a canal cruise for an hour. It was part of the 48 hour card, and was a nice way to see the city. The tour was good, but again it was raining so my pictures weren’t turning out that great through the windows, so I didn’t take many. That night was a simple night in, eating the fantastic noodles again and relaxing as I was off to Brugges, Belgium the next morning.

Milan

Oh…what a city. A boring city that is. I was only in Milan for a few days, as I was flying to Amsterdam, and I figured I should see another city in Italy before I went north and I thought that Milan would be nice. As a city it’s ok, but there just isn’t that much to do. I went to the Duomo, Davinci museum of science and Technology and witnessed my first European riot.

Really there isn’t too much to say about Milan. It’s the business and fashion capital of Italy, and acts as such. It’s a lot like the business district of Toronto with better dressed people.

The Davinci museum was pretty cool, its interesting to see all the different inventions he came up with and how much time he spent helping cities in Italy change their infrastructure. In my opinion, there wasn’t much else to do in Milan. I was using it as an airport on to my next destination which was Amsterdam. I really should have gone somewhere else, but I guess it’s a pretty good track record when only one place out of all the places I went was bad, eh?

That’s really all I have to say about Milan…but that says wonders in itself.

Firenze and Tuscany

This is my second trip to Florence, but my first as an adult. I was here on the last family euro trip back in 1998, and came back as it’s situated in the middle of Tuscany’s wine country and it’s the easiest city to take a wine tour out of. When I got there I did the same thing we did the last time we came…I didn’t have a hostel reservation. I cruised around the city near the train station, and found one fairly quickly. That hostel only had one night available, so I didn’t really unpack much of my stuff but ended up going for dinner with my two roommates and we just walked around looking for a good restaurant. After walking around for a while we found one near the Duomo, and sat down for a plate of… you guessed it Pasta! After dinner we grabbed a couple beers and just chilled outside on the patio of the hostel before getting bitten alive by mosquitos. I found a new hotel online, and booked my wine tour and just chilled out for the rest of the night.

The next day, I found my new hostel after a bit of searching and decided to relax there for a while as I was still feeling sick. Lucky for me the hostel had satellite TV, and the world series was airing, so I got to catch up on a bit of baseball for the afternoon while resting. That night was just spent relaxing and making dinner at the hostel (it’s a luxury if the hostel has a kitchen in it!)

The next day was spent on the wine tour through Tuscany. The tour I decided to go on went to two wineries and Dario Ceccini’s butcher shop/restaurant for lunch. When I read about this part, I was sold on the entire tour. I read about this famous butcher in a food book about a year ago and being able to go to the butcher shop was fantastic…and the food was GREAT! The first winery was really nice, and we spent some time with the winemaker, who gave us a tour of the winery and the grounds.

Like I said before lunch was fantastic. We walk into this tiny butcher shop and there is this towering smiling man behind the counter talking in rapid fire Italian and greeting every customer as they were long lost friends! We got handed a glass of wine, and there was fantastic salami, and bread with oil on the table to sample before we went up to the restaurant. The meal upstairs was fantastic, it was a communal table that normally doesn’t take reservations but because we are a tour the –sometimes- save a table for us. The meal was fantastic, and obviously included a lot of meat. Beef Carpaccio, their twist on a meatloaf, porchetta, potatoes, a salad we didn’t touch…and more wine! It was a great restaurant, with a great vibe. You sat beside different people and just started conversations with them. I was sitting beside a group from Vancouver so we started talking about the city and Eleni’s school and stuff like that. It was nice to speak to a group of Canadians and be able to say “eh” without everyone noticing. The rest of the meal went by well we ate talked and just relaxed before going to our second winery

The second one was smaller and a bit nicer. We spent some time with the wine maker, who let us taste the wine just as it had been pressed. The wine is supposed to ferment for 20 days and we tried it after only 5 days. The wine maker was apparently very excited about this year’s crop as the weather was perfect for wine making and should be a very good year.

That night I – again - just chilled out in the hostel with the people who were around. We chatted and chilled out as I packed. I was leaving for Milan the next day on the high speed train.