Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Upstairs for thinking has a post linking to the Japan Land and Transport Ministry’s “Japan Tourism Policy” website which makes for an interesting read, answering such puzzling questions as:

Q: Is all the Japanese land urbanized like Tokyo? Is there no natural landscape left anywhere in Japan?
Q: Please tell me where Japan is located. Can I go from Tokyo to Hong Kong by Shinkansen bullet train?

or my personal favourite,

Q: Are there samurai in today’s Japan?

The answers to those questions and more can be found here. Is it just me, or are they taking the piss? Of course there are samurai. Here is a picture of one taken in Nagoya:

(credit: Rumpleteaser )

And you have to be very careful and stop and bow when they pass by or they will chop your head off. Actually I was late for work yesterday because this happened!

Some other interesting posts about Japan around the net recently include: Things About America I Didn’t Know While I Lived There from Life Nomadic’s blog. They have been doing a bit of travelling recently and one their travels came to Japan. Their post compares life in Japan, the United States and Panama and makes for a good read. You can check it out here. And, Hacking Japan: Inside Tokyo for Less than New York from Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week reminisces about his time in Japan. His unusual top four is a good little list of places to visit in Japan (although listing Akihabara is perhaps not the most timely):

The Most Unusual Top 4

Ghibli Museum: This is the real-life Alice in Wonderland. The most incredible museum I have ever visited, hidden in a park and designed by animation powerhouse Ghibli Studios, this gem is a home run. Get tickets at a Lawson convenience store well in advance.

Tsukiji Fish Market: Get up EARLY (around 5am) and see the largest fish market in the world. A single tuna for $40,000 USD? That’s low-end. Wrap up eating the best sushi in the world for breakfast in the outer market. Unforgettable.

Takeshita Doori: The kids and fashion here must be seen to be believed. Indescribable, especially sitting right next one of the most beautiful shrines in Tokyo. Red contacts and outfits that make Marilyn Manson look like Pokemon? Prepare to be amused.

Akihabara: From “maid cafes” (you can sit in a mock living room and have maids at your beck-and-call for food, newspaper, coffee, etc.) to electronics years ahead of the US, this “computer city” is the mecca of geekdom. Otaku central. Moe moe kyuuuuu!

You can check out his post here - along with a beautiful photo from Kyushu!

Finally I found a new blog about Japan that has a nice magazine style layout: check out the sevententotokyo.com blog!

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Before we left Japan for China, we visited the Boso Peninsula, which is part of Chiba prefecture and forms one side of the entrance to Tokyo Bay. We took the train down from Tokyo through to the Miura Peninsula. Miura Peninsula is the site of the American military base at Yokosuka. From Kurihama on the Miura Peninsula, we took the ferry across the bay (Japanese only site) to the port at Kaneya in Chiba. We visited the Giant Buddha at Nihondera, took the cable car and enjoyed a nice walk around there. We stayed at a little ryokan in Tateyama City. The next day we went around the tip of the peninsula.

It is a nice trip / weekend away from Tokyo. Being vegetarian we didn’t take advantage of the areas bountious seafoods which the peninsula is famous for. We went just after I bought the camera, so some of the photos have a strangely bluish hue to them.

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This is where we are heading tomorrow - the Shimokita Peninsula which is the axe shaped peninsula at the top of Japan’s main island of Honshu. It isn’t winter now, so it wont be too much like that video.　Will spend a couple of days up there, and even visit hell.

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Happy April Fools for yesterday! Yesterdays post Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Announces Retirement was of course a joke. Although whether him becoming a bikini pin-up idol would be more beneficial for the Japanese economy than his current performance is a question very much open…

Got my boss yesterday too - telling him I had found another job and asking him if he could find a replacement by that afternoon. Ah the look on his face:)

Chooch posted on mixi.jp that we were moving to Greenland! and quite a few people fell for that. She wrote that because of difficulties maintaining a car in that climate I would have to cross-country ski to work. And she was worried about the lack of vegetarian food there.

All in all a good laugh.

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There is an interesting post at The Consumerist about an American couple who were stranded in Tokyo after they were unable to get any cash, or use, their Bank of America debit card.

Before leaving for his honeymoon, Derek called Bank of America to make sure he could rely on his debit card while he was in Japan. Bank of America assured him that he would have no problem accessing money. Yet on the third day of his honeymoon, neither he nor his wife could draw cash from their cards, stranding them with only $15 in cash.

He writes:

….

On the third day of the trip, we went to Akihabara to make some video game purchases. I found the only Wii system we saw the entire time we were on the trip and tried to buy it. My card was declined, which was incredibly embarrassing and difficult to deal with because of the language barrier. My wife tried her card and it went through, thankfully. The next shop we came to had something she wanted to purchase, at which point her card was declined. She paid with the cash she had left over, leaving both of us with about the equivalent of $15 total in cash.

You can read the rest of the story Bank Of America Stranded Me In Japan Without Cash On My Honeymoon here.

Quite a sad story especially seeing as it was their honeymoon (I wonder how many people come to Japan on their honeymoons?). Japan’s banking system is still quite behind the times (and I know that wasn’t the problem here - it was suspicious activity outside the normal usage of their debit card) and even supposing their cards did work there are still a lot of places in Japan that don’t take credit or debit cards. And if you get outside of the main centers it is even harder to find places that take these cards.

This is a photo of the hours of a Japan Post ATM right bang smack in the middle of Tokyo

In the country side, ATM’s often close at 5pm - weekdays! and are also closed over public holidays, and convenience stores don’t always have ATM’s - so you will need to carry enough cash to carry you over 3 days. It is pretty safe to carry that amount around, as long as you stay out of dodgy bars in red light districts you shouldn’t have any problems.

I remember one time when I was living in Akita and there was a festival in our little town. The festival was held down the main street with lots of little stalls and people fishing for gold fish and doing all those things that people do at festivals. It was quite a large crowd, larger than I would have expected given the population of the town I lived in. Anyway, I was a little short of cash, so I went to my bank, who had a branch on the main street and lo! the ATM was closed - closed because of the festival. The reason I was given was that there were too many people for them to be able to guarantee perfect service - so rather than disappoint someone, the closed down the ATM.

Point of story - if you are travelling to Japan (or anywhere for that matter!) bring enough cash to carry you over for a couple of days. Divide your money up so that if some gets stolen you still have some. And smile:) sometimes there ain’t nothing you can do about banks.

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