beijing

What I originally wrote was some commentary about how I can read Chinese almost as badly as I can read Japanese due to the large overlap in writing systems. Also the fact that both of their currencies are sometimes written with a Y is causing me much confusion (I've misunderestimated prices several times today -- I keep thinking things that cost 100Y ~= 15USD ~= 10 GBP actually only cost 100Y ~= 1USD = 0.60GBP. doh!)

I've signed up for a walking tour along (part of) the Great Wall, leaving early tomorrow morning and getting back in the evening. There's an "are you lame?" tick-box that luckily no one has marked (it seems if you do this, you get put near the end of the route and only have to walk a little way).

Bloke here who was squatting in the Moscow hostel a couple of months ago at the time i met him -- he's managed to get all the way here starting with no money, which I find quite impressive.

phone finds GSM networks but shows 'forbidden'. maybe buy yet another number (according to remote observations, my +7 number no longer works, which doesn't surprise me -- the balance display always said it would only last until about the 15th of June)

arse

just as I was thinking "I wonder if this machine is so crappy it'll lose my long blog posting", all of the lights in the building (including the one on the front of the machine) ceased to glow.

so hot and humid here

so hot and humid here... not pleasant to go out in daytime... this evening is my last night in Tokyo.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices

Despite the Troubles, I made it to the top of this tower which houses the tokyo city government as well as having a 45th floor observation level. It was, unfortunately, rather cloudy. Other photos from today and the past few days are at the end of my giant recent upload page.

twisted

tummy still sore - some kind of evil in there. for dinner I had bento and 500ml of fruit/veg juice containing carrot orange apple bell_pepper broccoli.

mos burger

There's a burger chain here called Mos Burger. I think I went to one of these in Honolulu (weird teriyaki burgers). Any Hawai'ian readers of this respected publication confirm/deny the presence of such on Oahu?

continuing n-day hangover...

... came from continuing multiday hangover as well as upset tummy meaning that i had to find something to do with my evening other than drink; the result was fireworks that girls had acquired earlier and wanted to explode and then the animatrix DVD (false start with that as it was dubbed in japanese but a few minutes of fiddling with the (Japanese) menus converted it to something more intelligible; also fun to see the haunted house one set in Japan whilst being in Japan).

dangerous use of fireworks

click on the chick:

more bleugh

although seemingly mostly recovered by the evening, I decided to take a night off of heavy drinking. this was scuppered when two Cambridgeshire chickies (Holly, Lucy) turned up and (after I had finished teasing them about their inability to make a pot noodle properly) revealed that it was their last day in Japan and that they'd never had sake. 650ml x 2 tetrapaks was acquired rapidly from a nearby convenience store (on the way finding perhaps the only FamilyMart in Japan that doesn't sell alcohol), the contents microwaved and rapidly inserted into the various occupants of the common room (about 10 people peak). At about 2330 all the sake was gone but there was still some beer and fruity cocktail stuff floating round. A second mission to the convenience store resulted in 1L of Asahi, 1L of fruity cocktail cans and 2L of sake. At about 0020 the common room was closed, but the man doing the closing suggested we could hang out by the nearby river. This we did, polishing off both the rest of the alcohol and a third supply run for more beers and fruity cocktail (I had guava flavour). Some people came, some people went, some people were too friendly to others (not me this time!), and by 0300 we were pretty much worn out and stumbled the 100m back to the hostel. Luckily someone could remember the door code.

bleugh

evening of drinking in shitty expensive tokyo bars with fun random boys and girls that I found in hostel. forgot to have dinner so now feel like crap...


raining in tokyo today

PuTTY

found PuTTY (or an imposter) on the desktop of this machine!

i followed a danish girl home...

... but didn't end up with a bed. so now have checked into another capsule hotel 100m down the road. nevertheless, the nice people here said I can chill in their common area which has a beer vending machine and what appears to be free internet...
hurrah!

now will hang out and drink until either all my money is gone (that happens lots) or fall asleep again.

hiroshima

arrived in hiroshima very hung over (last night drank rather a lot at english pub, met short cute japanese girl and also australian(?) as well as people from Japan, Algeria (there with his japanese neice and her friend), Sweden(gothenburg) (Israeli barman laughed when I told the algerian that I'd been conceived there); mixed guinness with bloody mary and tequilla shots (japanese have some paper / scissors / stone elimination game to decide who must drink the next shot)). Stumbled back to hotel around 4am after falling asleep and then falling over several times in Club Metro. Have found little inn to stay in with japanese rooms (tatami mats on floor, mattress on that, take of shoes at reception and put on slippers but in tatami rooms just wear socks). Once checked in (green tea and a banana served to me in my room as I filled out the registration form) slept for a few hours, then out to convenience store for nibbles and some Pocari Sweat to finish off the end of my hangover. Now at internet and comic club (Futaba@cafe), which I had to become a member of (JPY105) in order to enter. Perhaps after this, will grab a pint before bed... perhaps not.

stevie menim indulging in japanese vice

nice bird...

... unfortunately obscured by a pigeon standing on my hand.

Kyoto

So here I am in Kyoto. I ended up taking the bullet train from Osaka to Kyoto, which was perhaps a little frivolous -- for twice the price, the journey took only 15 minutes compared to the 35 minutes it would have taken on normal express train.

I'd arrived without accomodation, so spent an hour wandering round trying out likely looking budget traveller accomodation before realising that none of them were going to be open until about 1600. So back to the railway station where I dumped rucksack into locker (600 yen) and hung out there for a while -- the architecture is pretty cool, can walk up to the top floor and look out over the city; also got some conveyorbelt sushi there (although it was not very busy so the choice of what was going round was a little minimal, especially on the cheapest plates).

I have a place now at 'Tour Club' which is a sort of Japanese style youth hostel; on the first night, they had no dorm bunks left but stuck me on a futon in the japanese style common room, which was pretty cool. Interesting people here; the biggest downside is that they lock the door at 2300 which makes it difficult to go out late; for Friday night, which I think will be my last night in Kyoto, I'm considering finding a capsule hotel so that I can stay at The Pig And Whistle (local branch of the region's chain of fake english pubs) until late.

There are many temples here in Kyoto; the big one in Nara (where the deer were) was mostly enough for me, but maybe I'll check out one later today (although it seems rainy today, compared to yesterday's hot humidity so maybe I'll hide inside somewhere).

Also maybe camera shopping for australian boy who has just moved here for long working holiday teaching english.

must escape these scotsmen

an evening with scotsman, a minifridge of beer, bottles of whiskey and a tub of vegemite has left my face with a table-edge induced bruise.

will decamp to Kyoto today to recover.

i like deer

the deer picture previously posted was at Nara, where wild deer frequent the parkland. going there was something I read about a year or so ago and wrote down in my XML based "things to do around the world" file, before forgetting all about it until I was reminded by an 18yr old American high school girl three days ago.

Two more nights in Osaka (with a day trip tomorrow to hamachi(?) and kobe), then to Kyoto, Hiroshima and finally to Tokyo.

nara

grrr

camera shop renamed all the files off my CF when they transferred them to CD.

S Club gonna show you how

On TV after Japanese/n.korea world cup qualifier (Japan won, which made the Japanese people here smile slightly... so muted in their pleasure), there was a programme teaching english to people, in the form of two japanese girls and a gaijin who appeared to speak japanese providing subtitles in Japanese and English as well as tellytubbies style repeat/repeat/repeat explanations of scenes from `Miami 7`. funny to think of japanese people going round saying "I`m not chucking him" in Jo-accent.

benjamin-san is in Osaka!

turned out not too much more expensive to buy a seat on a vladivostok air tupolev to Osaka... crappy plane, yummy food -- beef/prune stew, meat roll and salmon/caviar!
now to find sushi&sake...

blogger is all in japanese here so i must guess the buttons.

poop

poop. ferry to Japan was full and they had no record of my reservation.

papers

hotel seemed confused that I'd turned up in Vladivostok with a Moscow and St. Petersburg registered visa, with nothing in between... in fact, they seemed confused about someone turning up at front desk and trying to purchase a room for the night... they seem mostly used to dealing with package tourist Japanese and Chinese, as far as I can tell... alas, there is no running hot water here (which seems to be why they actually have free rooms -- everywhere else I tried was full). At least its hot and sunny here.

Vladivostok

Arrived in Vladivostok after three days of fun on train -- many people very excited to meet foreign tourist and give free food, beer, vodka!
By the end of it, I really needed a shower though - in the words of one of the Russian girls on the train, "Ben, you are smelly." She would get on well with a certain someone in Chicago, methinks.

kvas?

Had this at lunchtime.

tired...

of new city every day... looking forward to being in Osaka for 6 night... same bed every night... no carrying 65L of crap round with me all the time... maybe even meet the same people 3 days in a row!

The Plan...

is this...

tonight Irkutsk
tomorrow morning 0250 Moscow Time train to Vladivostok
5th June 0207 Moscow time arrive vladivostok ... hopefully find a shower there?
6th June 1800 Vlad. time boat to Japan, 42h approx
8th June 0900 (?tz) arrive Japan -> goto Osaka
14th June Leave Osaka, go somewhere else

cyrillic mormons

there appear to be about 20 cyrillic-labelled mormons in this internet cafe

I have not heard them speak so cannot tell where they are from

Irkutsk

Back in Irkutsk, after spending a couple of days in Listvyanka by the side of Lake Baikal, stunning views but rather a lot of litter on the shore. At the bus station on the way, met a french backpacker by chance - shared a double room in a homestay a hundred metres from the shoreline with him. Now I'm back in Irkutsk, but this time I have somewhere to stay!