We arrived to the JFK after only 4 hours of flight, which meant that we basically skipped the whole night. I had maybe two times ten minutes sleep, so with jetlag, that was not the nicest day ahead.

The customs were not a Bitch, if you don’t count the continuous CNN and morning shows where the ‘stupid people’ can complain about their loans. It took about 45 minutes and we were through. We didn’t even have to fill the green leaflets again since we had only been to Canada… Not exactly abroad now, is it?

It was 7am still and we got a taxi to our Manhattan hotel, the Hotel 91 in East Broadway, Chinatown. This was one of the two options we had in our price range, which was 100euros tops. New York hotels tend to cost average of 300dollars a night, so that was a bargain. The hotel is clean and nice. We have two double beds, so technically four people could have stayed in our room… The toilet is clean, but in comparison to all the hotels that we’ve stayed at before this: It lacks a kettle. There is a lounge for hot water though, in case we need it. There is a coin laundy inside and a post office as well as a liquor store next door. This makes it a great hotel for us, but of course not for all the people.

As tired as we were, we didn’t really get to our room before 3pm, so we had around seven hours to kill. This involved the trial and error or buying a metcard (7day overall pass to the metro and bus system) and realizing that it does not work if you need to go out and in again. Also the Halloween time had seriously closed down some of the lines, so the closest subway station to us was Canal Street. We took the metro uptown to Central Park, since we figured that it would certainly at least be open.

It was the New York city Marathon day today, which was closing even more streets, not to mention confusing the traffic in the Central Park. We had Vancouver-type breakfast in the memory of our friend KG, I had a vegetable omelet, brown toast, orange juice and coffee. I have to say that it tasted better in Vancouver.

When ever in my head I thought of New York, my first place to visit was always the Angel Bethesda. What can I say: I just love ‘Angels in America’ so much. New York is really a city that you see through the television a lot. It’s on all the TV series, it’s on all the films. We walked past the Mall of Central park in a gorgeous yellow and green blanket of trees. This was the spot on cover of ‘When Harry met Sally’. It takes you all the way to the lovely fountain of Bethesda, which to me symbolizes all the tragedy of the big city – the aids, the religions, The cold world outside. It’s as breathtaking as it is in the series.

After wandering through the ramble of the park, we came to our senses and returned to the road which took us to the Metropolitan museum of art. It’s a huge complex, like the British Museum or Louvre, but we were mainly interested in the exhibition on Samurai art, which had just gone on. It was a fascinating layout, lots of katanas, even some cloth pieces, which we know can only be exposed to daylight for a month in every five years, and of course some helmets and armor. The Helmets were even more obscure than we’ve seen before – not even Masamune Date had a huge ‘U’ shaped golden fork decorating his head. At this point however, it started to feel as we’d have to commit ritual suicide if we didn’t get any sleep, so my memories of the exhibition are specially vague. Sleep deprivation is a fascinating thing. Man can think that can accomplish anything, but if man does not sleep… There is nothing but insanity waiting.

We then walked to a subway and found ourselves back in Canal Street. We had one of the best meals of my life for lunch in a Schetzuan restaurant there, hot but great. After that it was three hour nap and dinner to make our night complete. I saw the angel, that was the main accomplishment of the day.

Day 18/63

No offence to the capital of Japan, but I can see many more interesting ways of spending time in Japan, than to spend it in Tokyo.

We took a reserved seats in a Shinkansen for 18 minutes from Shin-Yokohama and boom! We are in Tokyo. Neither one of us really wanted to see particularly anything there, so we did what we normally do – looked for bookshops and samurai statues. There is a great, huge bookshop ‘The Maruzen’ right outside the Tokyo station. That is where we headed.

Normally when we are in these bookshops, I try to find some photo books to leaf through while my husband digs into the world of history books in Japanese. My Japanese is on the level of please and thank you, and perhaps “What is that?”, but no way near reading a book. Maruzen however, has a bid collection of English books, so I spent some time leafing through actual books. I found the Japanese equivalent to Nigella Lawson (English tv cook that I like) and decided to get her book just in case I feel adventurous back home by cooking some Japanese when I get back. Normally what I like to do after returning from travels is to have a sort of a soiree for my friends or family, to show them pictures from the trip and cooking them the local food. Of course if you come back from Germany, this means a trip to the Lidl with some beer and sauerkraut.

After book hunting (some of which we decided to order from Amazon later on to be delivered without a fuzz of posting them, straight to our homes), we walked along the emperial palace park to see a statue of samurai, Masashike Kusunogi on horse back. It was a good day, so we decided to try to get some author pictures of my husband for his book on the samurai, which is coming out in Autumn 2010. He just finished it before we left for this trip, but the publishers take a year to print it…

After walking back to the station, we then hopped onto the JR circle line to this park called Ueno, where thousands of Japanese were spending their holidays. There was a zoo near by, but we were much more keen on another samurai statue of Saigo Takamori. He has however comically brought his dog on the morning walk in his bathrobe with him into this statue – I wonder if he would have approved that one? Doesn’t quite give out the impression of a fearless warrior now does it?

Lunch opportunities in Ueno were poor and expensive, and even as the Chinese set meal in a delightful environment of a tea house would sound good to you, it certainly wasn’t impressing us very much. The food was tasteless noodles that didn’t go down well. We decided to walk off to see where we would end up, towards a temple that had many lanterns. We stumbled upon some pottery shops selling cheap kitchen stuff, which is where I decided to risk it and buy some. Perhaps they’ll survive to Finland in one piece, perhaps they won’t. Couple of Euros for a handmade sushi plate though, I was willing to take some chances.

Temple of the huge lantern was as crowded as Woodstock. There were stalls of tat sellers all around it on this area called Asakusa, which might sound amusing for a while, but after you’ve bought the essential series of sushi fridge magnets and blue wigs, you want to get the train back to the hotel. This is exactly what we did.

Tokyo to me, doesn’t provide anything that I couldn’t get from somewhere else in Japan. It’s a big city with big city’s problems. And even as it has the occasional parks, you’d still meet such crowds that I am happy not to live there. I think only now, I truly understand why Japanese act the way they do in Finland – running around like children if they see some forest. I would as well. A little nature is a great thing. My visit to Tokyo has made me appreciate the town where I live. Because for me it’s the best place in the world.

Day 15/63

Today, we went to Aizu-Wakamatsu. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time, ever since I heard that such a wacky name for a town existed. As usual, we were there to do research on a book. This time it’s the book about Samurai republic, which lasted for six months in Hakodate back in 1869.

A very red train with weird, red, legless creature as the symbol, takes us to Aizu. There is some Genkis (Japanese girls) dressed into pink, obviously performing some sort of function in the train. What back in the western world would have been a fund raiser – in here is a free raffle, where we get to take a small tag, rip it open and win something. Mine was empty, but I still got a cookie. My husband however gets a small bottle of Sake, which means we’ll have our first sake in Japan tonight in our hotel room… We are also given out some things like a map of the area, some information pampflets and a fan with the red, foxy creature. The Japanese never stop to amaze me… They just give out things:) This kind of spirit has also infected me and I’ve been buying small presents to people back home.

In Aizu-Wakamatsu, we decide to take the local ‘Loople’ the town bus, which takes us to all the two target places that we have mapped out for ourselves. This city bus is called the ‘Haikara’, which in Finnish means ‘Stork’, the bird that brings babies. Haikara first takes us to the castle, which in my knowledge of half-a-dozen Japanese castles that I’ve visited in my life, would be quite a kick-ass level of a castle. However, we are unlucky with the weather and have a very clowdy day, so we are lucky to get any pictures at all… Of course most of the time the pictures in my husband’s books are in black and white, so clowdy days do not matter… But I am personally a big fan or color pictures of Japan.

This castle is not on a hill, like the Sendai one, and so it has been destroyed and conquered. This one is a replica. We climb up the pagoda-like construction, way up to the top, to see the city view and of course also the mountains. Samurais here had particularly interesting helmets on, with a golden symbol of some kind stuck in their foreheads. As Date Masamune of Sendai had half a moon, the main guy here seems to have had a kanji, an ‘ai’, which means ‘love’.  There is a tv-series made of that era, so the castle is half filled with tv series posters and autographs of the stars… We do some tat shopping while we still can, I bought some bowls to be sent back home and some tat for my female relatives. Then it’s time to jump to the Haikara again and climb a mountain.

This mountain is the place where the white tigers, 19 very young (16 years old or so) boys comited suicide because they thought the smoke coming from their castle meant they had to do that. Thank god for modern communication devices, huh? There is a shrine area where you can light some insents to them and the smoke is not fading. The story is very sad, but to my opinion, they did die because they were just kids, because they were Japanese, and the Japanese always play by the rules. If someone tells you to kill yourself, you say: “sword trough stomach or beheading?”…

Our time in Aizu-wakamatsu may not have been the best in weather wise, but once again, a good day to learn about the different ways that people can think in this world. Back on red fox train, we see one of the most gorgeous sunsets over the mountains I have ever seen.

Day 9/63 of the RTW

We’ve been in Japan for ten days. Doesn’t seem like, but so it is. Today was our extreme Hokkaido sightseeing day. In the morning after well deserved sea chicken (tuna-mayo) onegiri (ricecake) breakfast, we head for the hill. There was a couple of shrines, a statue of samurai and two churches, one orthodox, one supposedly christian. The Christians were having some sort of Sunday morning shindig, in which they played very gay songs, including the jungle song from Lion King… Good way to start a day.

It was looking like a rainy day at that point, so we had museums planned. We got to the previous Russian consulate, in which, in a very Japanese fashion, you can dress up into a russian woman… This meant BIG dresses and hair extensions with tacky jewelry and your picture taken with the reluctant husband collection who try to hide when the Barok concert is going on in the main hall… Quite amusing as it was, I felt like I was not here to see what the Russians are like… I can do that back home!

Next was the British consulate… The tat shop sold tacky tea cups and London tea shirts. This I can do even easier at home: Next! We had lunch at the harbour in a Viking restaurant. I am pretty sure that the selection of food had nothing to do with the vikings, but it was one of those ‘all you can eat in 60 minutes’ deals… The selection was awesome for a Finn as you can imagine. My favourite was calamari stuffed with rice while my husband happily showed down Japanese curry down his throat. There was tons of different kinds of scampi, prawns, tentacles, octobus, you name it… And sushi as well. I was quite a happy Finn after this fest.
After lunch our mission lead us to the ‘Ainu’ museum, which is a museum of Northern people on the area. This means basically the escimos of the northern islands. I don’t know why but I find these people utterly fasinating. Their patterns of clothing decorations are their very own, they are no Japanese, Nore Chinese, Nor Russian. If I were a historian, I think I would probably do research on the Northern cultures. Somehow those have always facinated me… There was a wooden tray been sold in the gift shop, but was not mad enough to pay 120 euros for it, however cool it would be to have an Ainu plate at one’s home…

Museum number one after lunch was quite dull. We have so far figured out that if the Japanese call something ‘a memorial hall’, it means ‘like a museum, but we’ve ran out of things to show’ so there is probably a video, some posters and possibly some chairs to sit on… In any case, at this point we realised that we were just going to do the whole Hakodate in one day and head to Sapporo tomorrow.

Quick trip back to the hotel and then off to the great, huge pentagon fortress on the other side of the town. Hakodate has a good system of trams, so we took one of those. There is a tower looking over the pentagon, which all and all was a great experience, even if it was just a view and some gifto shoppus. I bought some samurai tat to be sent home and came to the conclusions that some things *are* too huge to fit even to my wide angle lens. Perhaps I will get a fisheye sometime…

We also visited the actual fortress and the park that is in it, and the museum of Northern seas that was next to the tower. Museum of Northern seas was great value for money: Real stuffed Polar bear, Valrus, Seals, Fish… You name it. My previous surname had the word ‘Kuutti’ (means a baby seal in Finnish) in it, so I am always overly enthusiastic about seals. They are so cute!
Sun was going down when we reached the Hakodate station and I finally got my two weeks rail pass. We bought tickets to Sapporo for tomorrow morning at 8:30. It is three hours one way, but as it’s not costing us anymore money, I thought – why not? It’s unlikely that I’ll be in Hokkaido very much in my life. If not at all after this. Even if my husband and I bought thought that we’d happily live here. I think Finns would be happy to visit – it’s cool enough and there’s not as many people as in the southern parts of Japan… Who knows, maybe one day.

Day 8/63

My husband and I left my family memebers to Tadotsu and took the morning train to Takamatsu. From takamatsu, we took the bus to the airport. I was looking at postcards in the gifto shoppu when I saw a familiar face: You know how in the middle of a crowd of Japanese, you are not sure if you recognise someone or not and you question your capability to know if it actually is someone you know, or just someone who looks exactly the same as someone you know… This was one of those cases. This time I was right: It was Kawashima sensei, who was on his way to Tokyo on a seminar and came to talk to us briefly on the way. Kawashima sensei visited Finland back in 2001. I think I’ve seen him since in Paris and perhaps also in Italy… Time does fly by.

I slept through most of the legs of our flights, there was a case of turbulence between Tokyo and Hakodate, but I didn’t really let it worry me too much. At Haneda airport, the toilet boots have got their individual screens that tell you what is on sale… I wonder if the squatting toilets also have those and do people hang out in the boots more because of them… Japanese are obsessed with toilets. Even the hotel toilets start their own theme songs or water sounds to cover the possible noises one might have in the toilet. I may not be completely happy with someone listening on me to pee, but for god’sake, it should be a natural sound!

We were the only Gaijin (foreigners) in the plane as can be expected and as we landed on Hokkaido, I immediately thought this was going to be a very different experience from Shikoku… For one, no vending machines at sight. Obviously less need to drink up, when it’s colder. For two, the weather was seriously colder. We digged up our long trousers, socks and even rain coat. I was happy that all these big items we carry around are not going to be just luggage. Plus it’s seriously easier to do power sightseeing in a colder weather.

Our hotel, the Chisun Grand is near the harbour, close to the cable car that takes you to the mountains. We can see both the sea and the mountain from our window. As you probably have also noticed, the room provided us with a long lost internet connection, which meant that I could seriously upload some pictures. There is a coin usable washing machine and “Lawson” the seven eleven at the corner. This supermarket sold gorgeous packed sushi, anime magazines and even stringy cheese. I felt like I had entered a comfort zone in our trip. Trip advisor said that Chisun Grand is a little bit away from the action, but our smallish walk to find dinner showed that it’s actually very close to everything, there is even a statue of a Samurai on our street. Hurrah.

We had weird curry noodles for dinner and walked around town in a small rain. The feeling that my husband got was that the town was a little sad, it has got a lot of western looking buildings, but not really a lot of people around… My feeling however was, that this is a home away from home. Climate, the limited amount of culture, the small town feeling – these are all what I feel is home. What can I say: I’m a nothern girl.