Xander & Christian in Japan

stuff

Hey everyone. Right now it’s Sunday afternoon (well at least here it is), and we’re on a bullet train to Nagoya, which is a couple hours west of Tokyo, to go to the International Exposition (a.k.a. the World’s Fair).

It’s been such an overwhelming experience so far, but lots and lots of fun. Last night we got a little drenched but it helped keep things cool. We spent a long time in “electronics town,” Akihabara, where some ginormous portion of the world’s electronics are sold. I loved checking out all the newest gadgets, though they were all a little pricey, and I’m such a bargain freak that I’ll just wait until they’re for sale on woot. Loved the lighting of the area at night, and we had some fun trying out the various equipment. One highlight was the dishwashers -- they’re these teeny little units, and the doors open both from the left and the right. We even took a video. The washer/dryers were often in one unit, if people buy a dryer at all – we saw lots and lots of balconies with clothes up. Yes, I’m easily amused. And both Christian and I enjoyed the massage chairs, which are probably illegal in some places.

We spent a long time at the Studio Ghibli Museum, which is this museum dedicated to the animation of Miyazaki, who did “Spirited Away.” It was a little Disney-esque; very colorful and lots of stuff to make you smile. They had some of those spinning cylinders that have images printed on them that move when you look at them. And a bunch of rooms that looked like Miyazaki’s workshops. Also got to see a fun 20 minute Miyazaki film featuring a bunch of Cheshire-cat like animals (they vanished and smiled constantly) who also were sort of like taxicabs, in that they (yes, the cats) had an interior compartment that a little girl could ride in. The only downside to the film and the entire museum was that English translations were almost completely absent.

I can see that the rain is hitting the train pretty hard now outside; it’s supposed to rain here all week, but I’m hoping it won’t be too bad (plus it should keep the lines down at the Expo and at Disneyland).

We’ve been enjoying interacting with the Japanese people. The whole bowing thing is really fun; at the hotel, I went down the hall to get a soda from the machine, and two women were having a conversation, and they both stopped mid-sentence, turned toward me, and bowed. Not knowing what else to do, I bowed back. I got my soda from the machine that was about 3 yards away, then walked back, and again stopped their conversation and bowed. Numerous strangers have also struck up conversations with us, despite only them apparently knowing only a few words of English. Last night, when we were trying to get back to our hotel in Narita from Akihabara, the rail attendant who spoke NO English still nevertheless managed to explain to us which trains to take.

We still haven’t figured out what those floats were that first night in Narita. The thing you can’t tell from all of the pictures is that they were also very noisy. All of those traditionally-dressed men on the floats were playing instruments, and on the top of the float a man was speaking very rapidly into a microphone. Whenever he finished his speech, he would then start saying two words in repetition – it sounded something like “What’s up? What’s up? What’s up? What’s up?” etc etc etc ad infinitum. Finally, when we were standing on a bridge and one of the floats went by underneath, we were able to see that the speaker was using an electronic repeater device, so it was a machine that was saying “What’s up?” 10,000 times. We were wondering how his voice never got tired. Anyway, I’m going to see if there’s a way to post a video of one of the floats – my blogging skills are pretty paltry, as you can see, but my camera does record short video clips.

On a final note, we were of course very sad to hear about what happened in London. Unfortunately, we did get the news before we got on the plane, so that was in our minds as we flew, but a couple of Tylenol PMs and some beer helped make the flight a sleepy one. I slept for about 6 hours; Christian got a couple hours in, I think – he watched one of the Korean movies. The other four hours I spent watching the dvd’s I brought – episodes of “The Outer Limits” and “Wonder Woman.” I talked Christian in to watching an episode of WW with me (I brought a headphone splitter), and I was completely embarrassed that I had done so – that was some of the most lameass writing I have ever seen. I guess when I saw it the first time around (i.e. at age 5) I wasn’t quite as discriminating. We’re going to try to find some dvd’s here to watch on the way back (hopefully region 1 and in English).

Hope you all are well. I’ll probably write more on our way back from Nagoya, on Wednesday.

X

posted by Xander @ 11:25 PM