Tuesday was our final day in Japan.  We only had a short time in the morning, so we went over to Ropponggi, the international district in Tokyo.  It seemed like a very cool area, but we were only there long enough for my dad to look at his watch and tell us it was time to get back to the hotel.  We grabbed our bags, then had a quick yakitori lunch at the hotel.  After a quick cab ride, we were at Tokyo Station and ready to take the Narita Express to the airport.  My parents were flying out of a different terminal, so once we got checked in, it was time to say good-bye.  Security was a breeze.  There wasn’t a line because there were so many metal detectors.  I realized one of the things I’d miss most about Japan was its efficiency.  I wandered around the shops a little, trying to decide if I wanted any duty free.  I didn’t see any good tequila, and the scotch selection was limited, so I saved my money.  The plane ride back was short, under 9 hours.  When I arrived in San Francisco, I had no problem with customs, but immediately realized I wasn’t in Japan anymore.  Everything seemed loud.  I saw people yelling into cellphones (absent in Japan), kids running around screaming (didn’t see this either), and poor fashion choices (a guy weighing in at around 3 bills, wearing a bright neon orange t-shirt).  But, at least I was home.

Blogged with Flock

On Sunday morning, we walked over to the Path of Philosophy for a quick walk before getting on the Shinkansen to travel to Tokyo.  I’m not sure how much philosophizing I got done, but it was a relaxing stroll to say the least.  We didn’t have time to walk the whole thing, or even visit temples along the path because our train left in the early afternoon.  So, after hitting the halfway point, we walked to a main street and found a cab.  Two hours later, we were zipping through the Japanese countryside on our way to Tokyo.

Our stay in Tokyo was brief.  We got to our hotel at around 5 or 6 pm.  Since there wasn’t much we could do before dinner, we settled on enjoying drinks and cigars in the bar on the 40th floor.  For dinner, we went to a fusion Japanese restaurant.  It was similar to Hamcyo in Kyoto, but more modern.  We had a hell of a time finding it.  We only had the English spelling, and every sign we looked at was only Japanese characters.  Eventually we found someone who told us it was on the top floor of a shopping center.  Once we arrived at the restaurant, we settled into a private tatami room.  We  opted for the 9 course set menu since we had no idea what was good.  We were served a variety of things, from sushi to steak.  I think the steak and sushi stand out in my mind as the best.  There were a couple of odd things my parents refused to touch.  That didn’t stop me though.  The thing I remember most was a slimy brown thing that may or may not have been a slug.  Really, I have no idea what it was, nor could I describe what it tasted like.  I tried it, and let’s leave it at that.    

Monday was our only full day in Tokyo.  We had no idea what to do, so we rode the subway to some of the districts.  We started at Ginza, the big shopping district.  We went through one of the department stores, and my dad found himself a nice scarf.  I found some 7 jeans, but they were about $300!  I guess only the rich get to have their asses wrapped in designer denim in Japan.  For lunch our plan was to eat near the fish market.  Once we got there, my parents realized they weren’t in the mood for sushi, so after a brief glimpse into some of the stalls we went to Asakusa.  Asakusa  sounded like it would be interesting, but it felt more like a Japanese tourist trap.  We saw the most popular Buddhist temple in Tokyo, then took the subway to Akihabara.  Akihabara is the electronics district.  There were a ton of stores with about any kind of gadget you’d want.  After more walking, it was approaching dinner time and our feet were tired.  We took the Ginza line back to the hotel, and relaxed with our usual drinks and cigars with the Tokyo skyline as our backdrop.  Dinner that night was shabu shabu.  I had never had it before, and I’m not sure if I’d be eager to have it again.  Shabu shabu is a hot pot, or pot of boiling broth in the center of the table.  You drop in thinly sliced wagyu beef until it’s cooked, then dip it in sauce and enjoy.  Chopstick skills are of the utmost importance to avoid making a mess.  We made a very big mess.  The beef was great, but I prefer my expensive beef cooked medium rare and served with salt, pepper, and maybe some butter.  We had an enjoyable meal, but at the end of it I was ready for some Western cooking.  Luckily, we were headed back to the US the next day.

Blogged with Flock

On Saturday, we woke up and were greeted with a beautiful, sunny morning.  We had a quick breakfast, then took a cab out to the Northwest part of Kyoto to visit Kinkakuji.  Kinkakuji is home to the Golden Temple that sits next to a reflecting pool.  There isn’t a lot to do visiting the temple, but it does make for some spectacular pictures. We took a taxi across the city to the Southeast part of Kyoto.  There, we visited Sanjusangendo, a temple that’s home to 1001 Kannons, the Goddess of Mercy in Buddhism.  It was quite impressive seeing so many statues lined up.  I wasn’t able to take any pictures because photography wasn’t allowed inside.  I did take some of the grounds, which were serene like most other places we visited.

After Sanjusangendo, we took yet another taxi to Kyoto Station in order to hop on a train out to Nara.  We were running short on time, so we grabbed bento boxes for the train ride.  I had heard a lot about how great bento boxes were, but I wasn’t all that impressed.  The bento boxes had rice, some pickles, and maybe some sushi or meat and is served cold.  Pickles, rice, and salted fish is not my idea of a great meal.  I’d rather find some hole-in-the-wall noodle place, but we had to catch a train.  We also grabbed some half liter cans of Asahi.  In Japan, it’s perfectly legal to drink in public, but some my Japanese friends have said you shame yourself by drinking in public.  So, shame on us.  Once arriving in Nara, we went to Nara park, home to 1,200 deer.  My mom and I both bought some crackers for the deer, and soon became their best friends for about 45 seconds.  As soon as we started unwrapping the crackers, we were swarmed by deer, and they didn’t give up until they were sure the crackers were gone.  After feeding the deer, we headed over to Todai-ji, the location of the world’s largest Buddha.  I couldn’t believe how big the temple was as we were walking up to it.  It was monstrous.  There wasn’t much to do once we got there other than snap a few pictures of the Buddha, which was also gigantic.  Afterward, we walked back to Nara Station and made our way back to Kyoto.
Before dinner on Saturday, we went down to the hotel bar with a couple Cuban cigars we had bought the day before.  In Japan, it’s perfectly acceptable to smoke indoors, including cigars.  My dad and I lit up our cigars, and the three of us unwound with some cocktails.  For dinner, we had tried to make reservations at an upscale yakitori place through the concierge but were unsuccessful last minute on a Saturday night.  Instead, we used our guidebook and picked out a yakitori spot near the hotel.  The concierge seemed nervous about making the reservation, but did it anyway.  When we arrived, it was obvious why he was nervous.  The restaurant, Ichi Ban, was small, warm, crowded, and smoky.  In other words, perfect for yakitori.  The grill was in the middle of the restaurant, with a counter surrounding it.  There was a table in the back, so full capacity was probably about 20 people.  Amazingly, there were three seats saved for us at the counter near the grill.  Since this was my second time having yakitori in Kyoto, I did the ordering.  We had some pork, chicken thighs, shiitakes, chicken meatballs, bacon wrapped asparagus, bacon wrapped scallops, and crispy duck.  Of course, we also had a few draft beers.  Looking back on that meal, I think it was the best one of the trip.  The atmosphere, the food, and our fellow diners made it a memorable evening. 
 

Blogged with Flock

Tags: japan, travel

Throughout my time in Japan, I was without a cellphone. The networks are completely different, so my cell couldn’t roam in Japan. It felt like I had traveled back about ten years. It is possible to rent a cell phone at the airport, but it still leaves the problem of actually being able to communicate with whomever I’d call since most Japanese don’t speak English. I knew my parents plane had been delayed due to an electrical problem, and I had no idea when they would actually arrive in Kyoto. I ended up just chilling in the hotel room because I was still dragging a little from karaoke. My parents finally made it to the hotel just after 9 pm, and we immediately went out for dinner. The concierge recommended a local okonomiyaki restaurant. I had eaten at one earlier in the week for the first time in my life. A common description is a Japanese pizza, but it’s more of a pancake. There’s a batter, cabbage, noodles, maybe some egg, squid or pork. There’s a number of variations, similar to different toppings on a pizza. They’re served on a hot plate that’s set into the table. They were very good, and it hit the spot that night. We were all tired, and it just felt like we were eating Japanese comfort food in a small restaurant. We called it an early night, ready for our first big day of exploring.

Unfortunately, our first big day was met with rain. Not a big storm or anything, just the persistent rain the hovers around and can completely ruin the day. It didn’t ruin ours, but we didn’t get to check out any temples. Instead, we headed indoors for shopping. But first, we had breakfast at the hotel. They had an Eastern and Western style buffet. I wasn’t in the mood for pickles and salted fish, so I went the Western route. I wasn’t too impressed with the buffet, but I could say that for any Western style food I had there (except the gelato, that was good). As an example, none of the pastries I had could match what you could get at a Starbuck’s in the US. That’s a pretty low bar. However, I’m sure Japanese visiting the US feel the same way about a lot of Japanese restaurants here.

After breakfast, we headed down to some of the covered arcades near downtown Kyoto. We wandered around and checked out a few shops. I bought some nice chopsticks, as well as a new hat. The hat is not a baseball cap. I’m not sure what the proper name is, but Alex said it looks like something Gavin DeGraw would wear. I would guess Tanner would refer to it as capri pants for the head. Whatever. I like it. After walking to the end of the arcade, we found the Nishiki market. It’s the big food market for Kyoto. We walked through about half of it and saw a bunch of weird stuff. I’m not sure how else to describe anything because I’m really not sure what everything was. We did find a Japanese cooking store, where I realized how seriously the Japanese take their knives. At a Williams-Sonoma, there’s always the one knife case with Wusthoff, Henkels, Global, and maybe Shun. At this store, there was an entire WALL of knives, ranging in price from 7,000 yen all the way up to 50,000 yen. I drooled. I thought about buying one, but everything I looked at was $250 or higher. We walked back to the arcade, ate some noodles, then trekked over to Gion. For those that have read the novel or seen the movie, Gion is the setting for Memoirs of a Geisha. Gion seemed like a very interesting area, but it was late and none of the temples were open. We gave into the rain and our tired feet and took a cab back to the hotel.

For dinner, we went out to Hamyco, a somewhat traditional Japanese restaurant in downtown Kyoto. We went with the set Kaiseki menu. I took pictures of all the courses, so if you’re curious as to what a kaiseki meal may look like, check it out. There were some interesting dishes, including a gelatinous soup with a rice cake at the bottom. I have mixed feelings about Japanese food, although that probably comes from my Western tastes. Like Umesh warned me, upscale Japanese food can be really good, or really bad. I think all the set menus left me somewhat disappointed.  I enjoyed eating at some of the low end places, like Ichi Ban, more than nicer ones.  After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.  We would need the rest.  The next day was going to be filled with temples and a trip to Nara.

I still need to finish uploading pictures from my camera to Flickr, but in the meantime I thought I summarize my trip to Japan. This is the first of what I’m expecting to be 3 parts.  This gets me from Santa Barbara through the last day of the conference, but before I meet up with my parents.

I was pretty nervous the days leading up to the trip. I hadn’t traveled abroad since I was a senior in high school when my parents and I went to Madrid and Paris over Spring Break. To add to my anxiety, I was headed to a country I knew little about, save for my experiences with Nintendo. I was especially worried about communicating since the only word I knew was “Konichiwa,” which I learned from a Simpsons sweatshirt I had in 4th grade.

I left on October 13 from Santa Barbara bound for Kansei airport near Osaka with a connection in San Francisco. Luckily, I was able to travel with a couple other grad students along with my professor, so getting around wasn’t too hard. We arrived on October 14th at the Kyoto rail station at around 6 pm. Kyoto station is quite the site. It has about 10 floors, but is very open. There are some nice restaurants near the top of the station, as well as a department store. The hotel I stayed at was a Japanese business hotel, meaning small yet efficient rooms. The first night, not wanting to stray to far from the hotel, we ramen at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It was a great meal, and cheap, too. I was a little embarrassed by my chopsticks skills, but those eventually improved. I called it an early night since I hadn’t slept at all on the plane.

The reason for my trip to Japan was the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS), which took place from Monday to Thursday. I was giving a talk on some of the work I’ve done on Tuesday, so most of my free time went into getting my presentation ready. This was only the second talk I would be giving, and I wanted it to be polished. Jet lag helped, waking me up at 6 am everyday so I had a few hours to work before the conference started. I thought the conference blew by pretty quickly. On Monday, a large group of us headed out for dinner only to find out that Japanese restaurants don’t handle large groups well. Four is a big number for dinner, so trying to find a place for 8 was near impossible. (As an aside, I really like small restaurants. There’s a personal feel to them, almost like you’re eating a meal in someone’s house.)

On Tuesday, we went out to an izekaya, which is a restaurant where people go after work to eat and drink. This particular spot specialized in yakitori, or grilled chicken. No part of the chicken is off-limits, so if you ever wanted to tried grilled chicken heart on a bamboo skewer, a yakitori-ya is the place to go. I had a great dinner with my professor and some current and former group members. We ate a lot of great food and drank some good beer (Asahi is my favorite, btw).

Wednesday was the day for my professor’s plenary talk, and hence the night for karaoke. It’s become a tradition (if 2 times make a tradition) of going out to sing karaoke when there’s a conference in Japan. In Japan, karaoke bars aren’t bars, but rather buildings with private rooms. There were about 20 of us, so we reserved a large room.  I’m not sure how many pitchers of beer we, or should I say Umesh, ordered.  It was a lot.  Enough to have me screaming “Shot Through The Heart” into a microphone with Nick at one in the morning.

Thursday morning was a little painful after Wednesday night.  I had my usual breakfast of Starbucks and a pastry.  Not very Japanese, but I have a serious caffeine addiction that I’m not going to just ignore.  My parents were coming into town that night, and their hotel has a remote check-in counter at the train station.  Since my hotel was right next to the train station, I wandered around hoping to find it, but to no avail.  I wasn’t very interested in the morning talks, so I didn’t mind missing them.  Around 11:30 I was starting to get a little hungry, so I hopped on a bus and headed over to Kyoto University in hopes of running into other UCSB people.  I found 7 of them, and we went to have lunch a nearby noodle place.  We got some odd looks as we walked into the restaurant.  Eight was roughly half their capacity.  After lunch, it was back for the afternoon talks.  Those wrapped the conference.  We took a bus headed back to the station area.  The rest of the UCSB people got off near downtown to find dinner.  I said good-bye, made it back to the station, then took a cab to the Westin so I could meet my parents.

I have a lot to write about, but I’m not in a very blogging mood right now.  Last night we ate kaiseki downtown.  Today, we went to a couple temples in Kyoto, then went out to Nara for the afternoon.  Before dinner tonight, my dad and I smoked a couple Cuban cigars at the hotel bar.  For dinner, we tried to go to a nice yakitori place downtown, but everything was booked because it’s a Saturday.  If we were in the US, we would have thought to get a reservation yesterday, but we didn’t.  We found a yakitori restaurant in the Lonely Planet guide book called Ichi-Ban, so we settled for that.  The hotel concierge seemed to be against, and now I sort of know why.  This was not a fancy restaurant.  It probably sat 20 people at the most.  Most of the seats were at a small wooden counter that surrounded the kitchen.  The restaurant was staffed with a man and two women.  The  man was at the grill, and the women were serving and cleaning.  Yakitori is grilled meats on skewers, especially chicken.  This particular place had chicken tail, heart, gizzard, and even ovaries for order.  We weren’t THAT adventurous, but I did have some kawa, or chicken skin.  We also had some bacon-wrapped asparagus, chicken thigh with onion, duck, pork, and a couple other things.  As usual, we went with draft beer to drink.  I was incredibly impressed with the dinner and restaurant, and need to spend more time on it and all the other cool things we saw today.  Overall, I took 140 pictures.  I’m uploading them to my Flickr site tonight, and I’ll go back and add some descriptions later.

Yesterday, in hopes of avoiding the rain, we decided to do a little shopping in downtown Kyoto.  We went to the shopping arcade, a covered pedestrian only street with little shops on both sides.  It seemed quite busy for a Friday afternoon, so maybe other people had the same idea as us.  We found a store that sold primarily chopsticks.  I had no idea how expensive chopsticks good be, but they had some for 50,000 yen (or ~ $450).  We also wandered through the Nishiki Market, which seemed to be the equivalent of the Ferry building in San Francisco.  There was a ton of…um…interesting food items, as well as a bunch of ingredients I had never seen before.  We also found a Japanese cooking store, with a wall of expensive knives.  I thought about buying one, but decided $250 may have been a bit much for a knife.  Hopefully I’ll be able to find a Japanese knife for the slightly more reasonable price of $100.  We had a quick lunch back at the arcade before walking over to the Gion district.  We were only able to see a couple temples from the outside because we got there too late.  Most of the temples close by 4:30, so most of our time was spent walking down narrow streets in the rain.   It didn’t take too long before we got tired, so we hopped in a cab and headed back to the hotel.

Now that my parents are here and the conference is over, I’m ready to explore Kyoto on foot. Unfortunately, it’s raining, and it’s supposed to rain through tomorrow morning. I think we may start with a museum today and hope that the rain lets up a little in the afternoon. We want to walk around the Gion district (where Memoirs of a Geisha was set) or up the Path of Philosophy, but we’ll see how the rain affects our spirits. For now, I’ll leave you with a picture of Nick, Rongming, and I with a maiko from the ISCS banquet.

[I wrote this entry last night at my hotel]

Today has been a very long day. I woke up at 6 am Santa Barbara time to get ready for my trip to Japan. I met my professor, Umesh, at the airport for a 8:40 flight up to San Francisco. We me up with some other grad students (Nick, Matt, and Ken) who were on an earlier flight. We got on the plane, and settled in for a 12 hour flight across the Pacific. We were on a 777, which meant a personal video screen and 9 channels of entertainment. United was showing some decent movies, so before I entered productivity mode, I watched Knocked Up and had “lunch.” “Lunch” is in quotes because I’m not sure if airplane food qualifies as a meal. It’s more of a means to prevent starvation. After lunch, I was productive for about an hour and a half before my laptop battery died. I’m giving a talk on Tuesday, so I was able to work on my presentation a little bit. Once the battery was gone, I had another 8 or so hours before arriving in Osaka. I watched some movies, played around with my iPod Touch, and read a little bit of United States of Arugula. The time seemed to past fairly quickly for me, although I didn’t get much sleep. I may have gotten an hour, but that’s being generous. After landing, we went through immigration, picked up our bags, made it through customs, then hopped on a train for Kyoto.

As I watched Osaka pass by through the train window, I realized everything in Japan is small. I had heard this from friends, but wasn’t sure what too expect. On top of being small, the buildings were packed tight. I had a hard time telling if there were any roads in between them. After about an hour long train ride, we arrived at Kyoto station. Not knowing which exit to take, we picked one at random. At the top of the escalator, we were met with blinding fluorescent lights, a bunch of flat panel TVs each displaying random Japanese commercials, and music that can only be described as “Super Terrific Happy Hour.” Yes, I was now in Japan. We stumbled through the electronics store with our luggage, still shocked by the transition from dark train station to vibrant TV land. We finally found our way back to the front of the train station where we meant to come out in the first place. Our hotel is located about a block from the station. Nick and I checked in, then met Matt for dinner. We walked another block to some hole-in-the-wall noodle house Nick had been to last year during IWN. I couldn’t tell you the name, because there wasn’t any English on the sign. We ordered a “medium Ramen,” because we had no idea what else was on the menu, along with a couple large Asahis. The ramen hit the spot, but after two airplane meals the bar had been set pretty low.

I’m now back at the room, about to pass out. My laptop says it’s 5 am in Santa Barbara, so I’ve been up for the past 23 hours with only an hour nap. I want to go into more detail about my room, but for now let’s just say it’s efficient. My plan is to let jet lag wake me up around 6 am so I can work on my talk for another couple hours. Then I’m meeting Nick, Umesh, and Matt to take a taxi to Kyoto University for the first day of the conference. I’ll try to update once a day, and maybe even upload some pictures. For now, it’s time to hit the hay.