Category: Travel

Last week, I visited Yokohama, a bustling port city in Japan.

It’s only 20 minutes from my place

Yokohama’s main attractions lie far away from the Yokohama train station hence I had to take the Minatomirai subway to Chugakagai Iriguchi station. First stop, China Town!

Yokohama’s Chinatown is huge. The entire place is filled with restaurants and groceries stores. I notice that many restaurants were selling roasted water chestnuts and dumplings outside their premise. Damn, I hate roasted chestnuts.

Unlike other Chinatowns that I’ve been to, the shops in Yokohama Chinatown were renovated or built with Chinese designs. There were also more than 5 arches! Further, this Chinatown spans more than 2 streets and has numbers of alleys filled with shops. You’ll never leave the place hungry.

Hong Kong Road

Taiwan Road???

Few blocks away from Chinatown is the Yamashita Park. It’s a small park next to the sea. Great place to relax after a long walk around China town.

Next stop, Foreigner’s Cemetery at Yamate. It’s located on top of a hill hence I had to hike up to the Cemetery. But while hiking up, I could peep into the walls of the cemetery to see the old tombstones of foreigners who lived in Japan. Some of them date back in 1900s.

Unfortunately, the cemetery is not accessible to the public. But there’s a small place for us to take pictures of the tombstones together with the skyscrapers of Yokohama.

yamateeeeee

The word ‘Yamate’ has been widely associated to Japanese pornographic movies especially gokan (rape) videos. Many believe that the word ‘Yamate’ means stop in Japanese.

Few years back, a friend brought a Japanese girl from a student exchange program.

Me: What does Yamate means?
Jap girl: Yamate? You mean train station???
Me: ERRRR..

Then years later, I realize that the word ‘Yamate’ is incorrect. The correct word for stop is ‘Yamete’.

Cats are a common sight in the Foreigners Cemetery. I wonder what are they doing there. I hope they’re not feasting on dead bodies.

Mmmm..fat juicy cats…

Habour View Park is another ‘must see’ place after visiting Foreigner’s Cemetery. There, one can have a bird’s eye view of Yokohama Port and its surroundings. Many artistes pot their butts there to draw pictures.

Next stop, Minato Mirai 21, a large urban development built on reclaimed land in Yokohama. Along the stretch of waterfront properties lie a number of sky scrapers and also Landmark Tower, Japan’s tallest building. There’s a lift that takes you to the observatory, but for a fee of 1000yen. No thanks.

The best time to take pictures of Minato Mirai is at night as all the skyscrapers will be lighted together with the Cosmo Clock Ferris Wheel, the tallest Ferris wheel in the world. The Ferris Wheel changes its lights as well 😀

Landmark Tower on the left

World Tallest Ferris Wheel One of the tallest in the world

Sunday is the best time to visit Yoyogi Park as it will be filled with all sorts of strange people.

We were greeted with the sight of street buskers and performers. There was a group of guys who were performing some sort of comedy. Then the rest were some inspiring singers. They were selling their own CDs and even had their own fan base. Female singers especially, have many fans. We saw this bunch of middle aged men singing along with a group of female singers.

Comedian with 6 packs. Where to find man?

Amoi yang cantik hey! Saya mau kong.. (translation: Pretty singer)

Lost Gaijin in Tokyo

This group of girls has many fans

But some poor singers had no one. They were performing to thin air.

As we went further, we saw tents and stalls filled with hippies, bohemians and Native American Indians wannabes. They were selling many things and even erected a toupee.

One of the funniest people I saw were a bunch of school kids performing choreography dance steps, swinging their heads and bodies left and right. I mean like, dude!! You’re at the wrong place! The last thing I want to see here in Yoyogi Park is Melbourne Shufflers.

We spend some time resting in the park, playing with a self made bow that I found on the grass. We also took a picture of a girl showing off her huge thong.

Thong thong thongg

We saw many foreigners in that park. Some of them were surrounded by Japanese girls. Bastards.

Next stop, Harajuku Bridge. I was told that Sunday is a great time to visit this place as it will be filled with young cosplay and Gothic Lolita girls. They dress themselves like anime characters or in gothic clothes. And boy, they do love being photographed.

The bugger on the right is damn irritating

Few blocks away is Takeshita Street aka ‘Young people’s street”. It’s a long narrow street filled with shops that caters young people. There you can get gothic clothes or cosplay clothes and also a huge 4 storey Hyaku Yen Shop. (100Yen shop).

Takeshita Street @ Night

In Malaysia, all pornographic materials are banned. Hence, the sight of porn in Japan is..

WAHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Continue reading Japanese porn

I’ve heard so much about this controversial shrine. It’s the shrine where Japanese war dead are honoured.

Ever since Prime Minister Koizumi was elected, he made numerous trips to this shrine to pay respect to those who died in wars which include 14 Class A criminals from War World II. Due to this, South Korea and China have been protesting every visits by Koizumi and his predecessors ever since.

Van blasting propaganda.

Then last week, according to BBC news, Mr. Koizumi will be visiting the shrine at 8:00GMT, which based on my calculations, would be 5PM Japan time. (+9 hours)

It rained heavily though. My socks were soggy and my jacket was soaked but yet managed to visit the shrine. However, it was like any other typical Japanese shrine.

I took refuge at the Yushukan Museum, which is just next to Yasukuni shrine. The museum is also hell of a controversial place. The place is filled with exhibits and photos which relate to wars that Japan were involved in. Unfortunately, most of them were in Japanese, even the explanations of the bloody exhibits were only available in Japanese.

Yushukan Museum

The entire exhibits blamed imperialist, mainly Americans for World War II. It was said that WWII was due to USA’s harsh treatment i.e. embargo against them hence they had to ‘defend’ their country taking over other territories.

The museum never mentioned about atrocities committed during World War II and some facts were even distorted. For example, they blamed the Marco Polo Bridge incident on the Kwantung Army.

Pictures of those killed in the war

They had no mention of the Nanjing Massacre. All they said was that they ‘surrounded’ Nanking and then “residence in Nanking were once again able to live in their lives in peace”. Despite photographic evidence of mass rapes and murder of the residence of Nanking, the bloody Museum basically said nothing happened and everyone lived happily ever after.

Unfortunately, the Yasukuni Shrine is independent from the Japanese government and is privately funded. Intervention from the government to alter the contents of the museum is highly unlikely. To me, no matter how provoking Yushukan museum has said, I personally think that insulting the Japanese people on what the museum had said is not acceptable. I have not checked other Japanese museums regarding World War II hence the views of Yasukuni Shrine and its museum cannot be regarded as the opinion of the Japanese society as a whole.

I had another 30 minutes before Koizumi’s visit to the shrine. I waited and waited till 5:15PM. The sky was already dark. But…

He didn’t turn up!

The fucker FFK ME. CHEE BYE!

Located about an hour away from Tokyo. It was the ancient capital of Japan during the Kamakura shogunate

Jane said loads of retirees choose Kamakura to spend their retirement there.

Our first destination was Daibutsu (Great Buddha). It’s a huge Buddle statue. It was housed in a temple but the temple was washed away by tsunami in 1498 leaving the Buddha statue intact. The Buddha is hollow, you can go inside the statue with a price of 20 yen. Nothing interesting though.

Jane & I @ Daibutsu

Daibutsu side view

We took some pictures, bought some souvenirs and left the place immediately.

Continue reading Kamakura – ancient capital of Japan

I find it amazing to spend the morning in Kuala Lumpur and then the rest of the night in Tokyo.

So here I am, in Oomori, 9 hours from my departure from Kuala Lumpur. As usual, it was a hassle, had to carry many things. I made a mistake by bringing my jackets along. The weather here isn’t cold at all.

One of the most difficult things to cope here is taking a train. Although Japan is famous for its extensive and convenient train services, I usually spent 10 minutes staring at the map, trying to look for the station that I want to go. Then another thing is the bloody phone booths. It’s all in Japanese. Even the bloody lady who tells you, “the line is not in service”, speaks in bloody Japanese.

wah..headache man…

Shinjuku

My first destination was Shinjuku. This place has everything, high class department stores, home less people, erotica related shops, restaurants and so on.

p0rn anyone?

I walked aimlessly around Shinjuku armed with a lousy Lonely Planet guide. Shinjuku doesn’t have many interesting places to visit (I visited the interesting ones on my previous trip) but the unique neon signs are something worth to see.

There was some sort of film festival in Shinjuku. It was a small festival though. They had a row of Star wars troopers, Darth Vader and other Star Wars character lined up in front of a red carpet. Darth Vader was rather short though. Hek hek

Then they brought a monkey walk the red carpet. I had no idea what the f00t they were trying to do.

Reminds me of Michael Jackson’s pet monkey, Bubbles

Darth Vader clearly pissed as attention is diverted to the monkey

I went on another round of aimless wandering. This time round, I saw a man standing on top of a bus with speakers around it.

If I had this on video, you can see a guy waving his hands aimlessly.
In Japan, this is quite common during election time. That man standing on the bus is a politician. I guess he was trying giving a speech about his policies.

While walking under a bridge in Shinjuku, I saw boxes lined up along the pathway. It’s shaped like a coffin. It’s kinda amusing to see home less people popping their heads in and out from the boxes. Reminds me of the game which one has to hit moles with a cub when it pop out.

Shibuya

Shibuya is a youth oriented shopping district. I met up with Jane for dinner here.

Shibuya is the place one should go to check out Japanese fashion trend. Kogyaru (young girls who tan themselves and colours their hair blonde) are abundant here.

The best place to watch people is at the area of Hachiko Statue and Shibuya 109 as it’s an extremely popular meeting spot.

Hachiko Statue

The food here is great and quite affordable as well. A nice bowl of noodles usually cost me less than 1000 yen (RM33~). But if I want to be stingy, I can head to the nearest supermarket at night and wait for them to slash the prices of their takeaway food.

Buy a ticket to get your food.

This is xes signing off from Tokyo. Will update from Japan for the next 28 days!