Tokyo: VW’s, Ewoks and More

Fairly eventful day today.

There was a big VW show in Odaiba (will be on Auto Otaku soon) so Kaori and I headed down to Tokyo on the “express” to have a look and do some shopping as well. The forecast called for showers and when we woke up it was a little cloudy but we hoped it would stay dry.

As I said in the previous post, the sakura are finally starting to bloom in Tsukuba. I snapped a couple pics on the walk to the station. Here are some of the trees across from our apartment. Still kinda naked now but they should be full in about a week or so.

Some more trees near the local elementary school.

Just a short walk down this path to the station.

A nice Sunday morning in Tsukuba.

Heading down into Tsukuba station. Doesn’t look too crowded here.

Hop on the TX train which quickly fills with people. Sundays are actually pretty busy days for the Tsukuba Express as many Tsukuba people head to Tokyo for fun and many Tokyo people head to Mt. Tsukuba for hiking and and other wilderness stuff.

45 minutes later we are at Akihabara Station where we board a JR Yamanote Line train. The Yamanote line is probably Tokyo’s busiest and most well known rail line as it loops around the center of Tokyo.

After an excruciating wait of about two minutes the next train came. I probably looked like a major tetsu or train geek when I took this picture.

www.train-otaku.com?

After the quick ride down the Yamanote-sen we got off at Shimbashi where we had to change trains one last time time.

Yurikamome Shimbashi Station.

Advertisers will put their message anywhere they can in Tokyo.

Hey an alien exhibit!. That might be cool.

Inside Shimbashi Station.

Shinkansen heading for Tokyo Station on the JR line.

View from out the window of the Yurikamome. This line is probably one of the most scenic in Tokyo.

All of the Yurikamome trains are fully automated so there are no drivers. Kind of like the monorails at Disneyland although it’s not actually a monorail. I have ridden this train many times but this time I took some pics.

Crossing over the highway near Shiodome.

Kitty-chan bus.

The famous Rainbow Bridge with Odaiba visible across the water.

To elevate itself onto the bridge, the line loops over itself as seen is this Google Earth photo. Pretty cool.

Passing over some tugboats.

The rail line and standard road occupy the lower level of the bridge while the highway occupies the top. Cars drive right next to the train so you can make funny faces at people driving.

I wonder if the guy in this Stagea saw me taking a picture of him?

Kaori doesn’t seem as interested as I am.

Forrester and a chopper cruising in front of some Japanese Coast Guard ships.

Over the bridge and into the Daiba area.

Sakura in front of the Fuji TV building.

Setting up the stage for tomorrow night’s “Hey! Hey! Hey!” live TV special.

Got off the train, and while walking down to the VW show we saw this classy looking van cruising one of the parking lots.

After spending some time checking out all the dope old school VW’s it began to rain. We looked for something to do indoors. Hey, how ’bout that Alien show we saw the sign for?

I was kind of expecting some kind of sweet freak show thing with some Alien corpses or maybe even live aliens but it was actually more of a scientific educational thing. Oh well.

They did have this awesome Ewok from Star Wars though. (crappy cell phone pic)

By the time we finished at the alien thing it was raining pretty good and it was cold so we decided to head back to Akihabara.

I had been wanting to buy an HD camcorder for a while and Kaori’s dad wanted us to pick up an Ipod for him to play in his barber shop. Yodobashi Camera in Akiba is the place to go for one stop electronics shopping.

You can see just how big it is in the pic above. I didn’t take any pics inside but the place is absolutely crazy. Their prices are decent and what’s even better is their point card system which basically means you can get like 10-15% store credit on any item you purchase there.

I wanted to buy a Canon HV20 video camera and instead of some unhelpful clerk there is an actual Canon rep that helps customers with questions about the brand’s products. Even better is that you can negotiate the price! I had seen the same camera advertised a little cheaper online and we told them clerk and he came back with a small handheld calculator and knocked it down below the ‘net price. So cool. I’d like to see you do that at Best Buy.

So now I have a new toy to play with. Expect some video content as soon as I reacquaint myself with the video editing world.

By then it was getting late so we got back on the Tsukuba Express to go home.

When we got home we were tired, hungry and lazy so we ordered some Pizza Hut delivery.

It tasted good in all of its greasy brilliance and made a satisfying end to a packed day.

Meat

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, I have been pretty busy but I should be updating more frequently now. Tomorrow we are heading to Tokyo so maybe I will have something interesting to post.

For now I’ll post a couple photos from this evening. I went with Kaori and her sister to Gyu Kaku, the well known yakiniku chain restaurant. If you didn’t know, Yakiniku is basically Korean style BBQ where you order various meats, veggies and other things and cook them over the grill in the center of your table. Gyu Kaku actually has locations in the United States also and I’m not sure where else. Check it out if you get the chance.

Cold beer and sizzling meat: perfect for a red-blooded American carnivore like myself.

Those strange-looking things on the left are mushrooms. They taste far better than they look in this crappy picture.

There’s Yuko grilling up some beef tongue.

Strangely though, one of my favorite things to eat there is the marinated cabbage. I took down nearly two bowls of the stuff by myself.

So that was our exciting Saturday night.  When we were driving back to Tsukuba we were following a couple EK9 Civic Type R’s that looked like they were on the way back from running on Mt. Tsukuba. I was jealous. s

The sakura trees were blooming pretty nicely in Kaori’s hometown and Tsukuba should also be in full bloom soon. I think there’s a law that if a Japanese person has a blog, they have to post sakura pictures. I guess I will do the same.

More soon.

Darvish Mania

It’s baseball time. I watched the Boston Red Sox beat the hell out of the Tokyo Giants last night in an exhibition game and the Bo Sox and Oakland A’s will play the first game of the ‘08 MLB season tomorrow night at the Tokyo Dome. The Japanese pro baseball season is getting started as well.

I was surprised to see this interesting article on Yahoo Sports about Yu Darvish, the 21 year-old half-Japanese half-Iranian pitcher for the Nippon Ham Fighters. He is the biggest thing going right now in Japanese sports. This guy is everywhere. Even if you aren’t a baseball fan I thought it provides a pretty good look at the crazy hype that surrounds athletes and celebs in Japan and how Darvish has broken the mold.

Check out the article here-

Zeebra - Bushido

Bushido spirit meets modern hip hop in this recent single from Japanese hip hop pioneer Zeebra. Pretty cool.

First Day of Spring = A Cold, Rainy Holiday

If you have talked to many Japanese people then you may have heard them say that Japan is the only country in the world that has “four distinct seasons”. That’s probably BS, but the Japanese do take the changing of the seasons quite seriously. As you know today was the first day of spring or “shunbun no hi” in Japanese. In a lot of cultures the day passes with an “oh it’s spring now” comment, but in Japan it is a national holiday. While restraunts and stores are still open, all government and company offices are closed and there is no school.

Unfortunatley the first day of spring in the Kanto area arrived not with birds chirping and sunny skies but with ugly clouds and cold rain. Oh well.  Since Kaori’s work was closed today, we headed out to do some shopping. Tsukuba has no shortage of shopping areas but we needed to pick up some items for the apartment so we headed out to a place called “Gran Stage”, located a short distance from our place.

Gran Stage Tsukuba opened about two years ago and includes a huge home goods store, an auto parts store called “Ken’s Garage”, a massive pet shop and  a large food court. It’s not your trendy fashion mall but more like a place you can take the family (and your pets) for a day of one-stop shopping.

This wasn’t my first time there but this time I remembered to snap a few pictures with my camera phone. Please excuse the poor photo quality.

The first stop was Ken’s Garage, which is very similar to Super Autobacs. They have everything from tires to car care goods to tuning parts to die cast collectibles.

The sign over the entrance. It looks like Ken is a Mopar guy. He just got done throwing some new hubcaps on his ‘64 Dodge.

In case you were looking for stylish luxury curtains for your VIP car they have plenty to choose from at Ken’s.

TE37’s , Advans and coilover kits. I don’t think they sell these sort of things at Auto Zone.

A small part of the die cast section. They have everything from miniature Ferrari’s to GT-R’s to Toyota Hi Ace vans. They are far from cheap though.

Retro-style wheel covers in 12″ diameter. Perfect to take your kei car back to the good ole’ days. I actually thought these were pretty cool. If those aren’t your thing there are some more traditional 13″ “Nyron” wheel covers below.

After Ken’s we headed to the pet store to have a look. Pets are big in Japan.

We wanted to take this little fella home. I don’t think our landlord would be too happy about that though.  It’s funny because the American short hair kittens they had cost about double what the pure bred puppies cost. Always greener (more expensive) on the other side I guess?

This is sort of weird. Gourmet desserts that you can share with your dog? I can’t imagine that they taste too well.

As tempting as the dog bakery was, we grabbed some lunch at the food court and then did some unexciting shopping at the home store. Afterwards we headed to Kaori’s parent’s house for the afternoon.

When we got there Kaori’s dad was watching the movie “Crank” on DVD, he’s a pretty big fan of action movies. Cool flick, but kinda strange seeing it dubbed in Japanese. After that he gave me a complimentary hair cut (he owns a barber shop right next to the house).

Sporting my fresh new hair cut, I headed out with Kaori and her pops to the local kaiten sushi joint and stuffed myself with sushi and beer. Then we went back and watched some TV and played with Kaori’s sister’s baby, Kira.

It was nothing exciting but it turned out to be a nice “holiday”.

An Afternoon Stroll

Well, I must say that I’m surprised with the feedback I have gotten for this blog already. I’ll say that since I have only lived here a few months, I can’t really make many definitive statements about life in Japan. I am pretty much basing everything on comparisons to living in a medium-sized city in California and from how I have heard other people describe Japan.

I will say that I think the image of Japan often gets distorted based on broad generalizations, just as anything can. For example, a lot of people’s image of Japan is of some high tech futuristic urban wonderland. This may be true if you base everything on a huge city like Tokyo, but thinking of Japan as Tokyo is the same as thinking the United States is only New York City or San Francisco. There is simply more to it than can ever be uncovered by one person.

With that said, I will share what I personally find interesting about life here.

This afternoon I took a little bike ride and shot a few more pictures of the area around my apartment. I probably looked like a freak riding around on taking pictures of random things but whatever.

When I step out of my door, this is what I see. The parking lot of the 24hr bookstore/video rental place and a huge Internet /manga cafe. During the week it’s pretty quiet but on weekend nights the area is pretty busy. At least I can check it out cool cars in the parking lot all the time.

Outside of the bookstore. It’s pretty nice because I can go get my car magazine fix anytime 24/7.

This is a “wedding house”. It’s sole purpose is basically to be a place for weddings. Weddings in Japan can be quite extravagant (and expensive) affairs. Underneath the building is a parking area with some classy Rolls Royce limos. I don’t even wanna know what it costs to have a wedding here.

It is very common for parking to be located underneath buildings as seen in this photo.

A typical unpaved parking lot. Who says Japanese people only drive tiny cars?

This area has more “traditional” Japanese homes. There is very little room on the sides of the road, it can be make for a nerve racking experience when passing a big truck coming the other way. After a while you get used to it though.

Small patches of fields in the middle of the city.

This area has more “western” style housing., same narrow roads though.

A common misconception about Japan is that very few people have cars. That is probably true in Tokyo where there is a massive rail system, but once you get outside of Tokyo it is quite different. It is not uncommon for there to be 2-3 cars per household like this one. Basically, the farther you get from an urban area the bigger necessity a car becomes.

This building is typical of the “mansion” buildings that have been springing up all over the area since the Tsukuba Express has arrived.

Another apartment/mansion complex. To me, this one looks more like something you would see in California. Check out the R33 GT-R and the awesome 3rd generation Pontiac Firebird!

Most of the time Tsukuba is pretty relaxing and quiet.

The busier streets in usually have decent sidewalks.

The one generalization about Japan that is true is that there are vending machines everywhere. There really is.  Whether you are in the middle of the boonies, or in the center of Tokyo there is probably one within spitting distance.

This photo shows some of the greenery that is common around here.

Pizza Hut and their fleet of exciting delivery vehicles. I wonder if they are hiring?

Is that Urkel? Where are his glasses?

One of the many research facilities around here. I think this one has something to do with soil.

The Tsukuba Mini dealer right across from our place.

This is an older photo, but it shows the outside of our apartment building. My next door neighbor is pretty into cars and he has managed to squeeze three cars into a spot made for two. My other neighbor has a pretty cool FD RX7.

I hope you enjoyed that exotic tour.

Next up, the apartment itself.

Welcome to Jungle! (Tsukuba Science City)

In case you didn’t know, I moved to Japan with my lovely wife Kaori at the end of December, 2007. She is now working as a travel agent and I have started on my path towards a career in auto-related media after graduating college last year.

I already have a blog  about car stuff but occasionally I do something not related to cars. I figured I should make a new blog that is more like a traditional diary type of thing so I can share my relatively-uninteresting life in Japan with my friends and family back home, as well as anyone else who might be interested. I will probably also post random music, movies or other stuff I find interesting from time to time.

There are a million blogs about “life in Japan” so I’ll try to show a more unique side of things though I can’t promise it will be very interesting to read . I’ll start off with a small intro to our city for those that don’t know.

Tsukuba city is located in southern Ibaraki prefecture about 30 miles or so from the center of Tokyo. Even though it is not that far away, going to Tokyo by car is kind of a pain in the ass. Luckily in 2005 the Tsukuba Express train line was opened, connecting Tsukuba to Akihabara in the center of Tokyo in 45 minutes. Tsukuba is also close to my in-laws house when we feel the need for a nice, home-cooked meal.

In this photo you can see our location relative to Tokyo. Tokyo/Narita International Airport is at the bottom right.

If you are interested in cars than you are probably also thinking of Tsukuba Circuit which I frequent quite often. Actually, the circuit is located in Shimotsuma which is the city next door to us. It’s only about 12 miles away from the apartment but the trip takes about 30-40 minutes given the slow speeds on the roads.

Tsukuba City is known for its university and its large amount of research facilities and other science-related establishments. Because of this, Tsukuba has a pretty large population of foreign people and fortunately they are generally a quiet, intelligent bunch and not really the rowdy, trouble-making types that sometimes cause the Japanese to view jam-packed everywhere with no regard for how it looks. The city has a lot of trees, parks, and bike trails like this one pictured below-

Since the Tsukuba Express was finished the city has been going through massive growth. Tsukuba is now becoming a commuter town for people who work in Tokyo but want a quieter lifestyle with more room and cheaper property. There a huge, high rise luxury apartment or “mansion” buildings being built all over the city as well as a number of fashion malls and other “Tokyo-like” stuff.

This is the Tsukuba Center area near the train station. There are bunch of department stores, restaurants and other places that that have been built within the last few years. This is about a 10-15 minute walk from the apartment.

We even have a Lexus dealer. So classy.

One of the entrances to Tsukuba Station. Just 45 minutes to Akihabara and all of its nerdy extravagance!

A JAXA (Japanese NASA) facility down the street from our place. They don’t launch rockets here but it is a large training base.

No less important is the Up Garage store, which is also down the street. I have been tempted to buy parts here for a car I don’t even own yet.

Well that does it for the first post. Next time I will show a little more of the local area as well as our apartment itself. Stay tuned!