Japan to Australia

On my second day in Tokyo in rained all day so I decided to go to see some museums. I headed to Ueno where most of the major museums and the zoo are. I went to the Tokyo National Museum Main Hall and the Hyokei-kan which had a special exhibit on national treasures from the Yakushi-ji Temple. The special exhibit was very popular I had to wait an hour in line to see it. It was like being at Disneyland. The exhibit was cool but it really wasn't worth the wait,it has some cool Buddha statues and some pieces of an ancient pagoda along with other artifacts. The main hall was great it showed art and artifacts in historical order starting from some pieces that were over 5000 years old all the way to modern ones. The coolest parts for me were the samurai armor and swords. I decided to check into a business hotel for my last night in Tokyo, I needed to organize my bag and I was also tired of only having communal space. I found a hotel about 200 feet from the capsule hotel that was owned by the same company. It had a really good Internet special, I paid $70 and it included high speed Internet,it was nice.

My last day in Tokyo I went back to Ueno to see the things that I didn't have time to do the first day and the outdoor ones that I couldn't do in the rain. The first thing I did was to walk Ueno Park which has a great lake with lily pads and other Asian water plants growing all over it. There is also a paddle boat rental and many other gardens and fountains. Then I went and got some sushi, I was lucky enough to find what ended up being a great place. It was a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where all the pastel are the same price and you grab the plates you want off the belt and they go around the guys who are making them and you sit in a big circle around them. I have eaten at this style of sushi restaurant in hong Kong too. I choose this one because it was crowded with lots of locals,always a good sign. When I was eating I was lucky enough to have a professor from a local university sit down next to me. He was originally from the U.S. And has been living in Tokyo for 8 years. He said this was the best Sushi place in Ueno and the best for the price in all of Tokyo. He also told me of a dollar store to visit,which I thought was strange but he was very convincing so I eventually checked it out since it was right next to my train station to the airport.

The thing I really wanted to see was the five story pagoda, a pagoda is an ancient Japanese style building.Pictured above. I also need to mention that I hate zoo's, I think there horrible prisons for animals, I would personally rather be dead than spend my entire life in a cage and I think that animals feel the same way so I try to never support them. I don't ave a problem with wildlife parks or places where animals have a large area to roam,which some zoo's provide but very few and never Asian zoo's,there the worst! Having said that I really wanted to see the five story pagoda and after having walked around the zoo for an hour I realized that it was only possible to see it from inside the zoo so I reluctantly paid $6 to enter so I could see it....

After the zoo I went to the National Museum of Western Art,it only had one floor open but it had a lot of great pieces there was one wall of Monet's,there must have been a dozen of them. It was an impressive collection for it's size. The rest of the museum was being renovated until 2009. After this I only had about half an hour until I needed to head to the train station to get my train for Narita Airport which is 75 minutes away so I checked out the 100yen(dollar) store the professor was talking about. It really was quite impressive,it was big but I have seen bigger but the quality of the things you could get for dollar was unbelievable. You could even get 12aa batteries for a dollar or really nice laptop sleeves or camera cases and much more. I was impressed the professor was right....

I then got on my train to Narita,my flight left at 8:30pm and arrived in Sydney at 7:20am with a 1 hour time change so it was just under 10 hours. Narita airport had a free yahoo sponsored Internet cafe and a lot of shops but only a few restaurants. The Sydney airport sucks, I had to pay $5 to get to the domestic terminal from the international and there is very little to do here and the wireless site wont even let me pay for Internet,I'm not impressed. My flight leaves at 3:20,so I have a very long layover. I was at least able to plug in my laptop at the kiosk style coffee shop and have been able to watch some TV programs I downloaded and type this blog...Once you go past security there is more places to eat and it's not bad,the only problem is Jetstar wouldn't let me check in until 2 hours before my flight departed,but there dirt cheap so I still think they are a great airline!

I finally got to Cairns after a 3-4 flight. My hostel, the Dreamtime Hostel picked me up for free at the airport,there employees are very friendly and so are the people who are staying here,its nice but I need to crash because I start my SCUBA certification class at 8:30am tomorrow. Cairns weather is great its hot enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt at night....

Japan Day 1

I got to Tokyo's Narita airport at noon; I slept a few hours on the 4 hour bus ride and 2 hour plane ride to Tokyo. then after getting my bag and clearing customs and the 1 hour train ride into Tokyo($10 on the regular train), the subway transfer to the correct stop, etc., it was 2:30pm. I then got some Subway, a guacamole/Japanese grassy straw type vegetable sub on wheat and watched the traffic for 1 hour.

I then started to look for one of the 2 capsule hotels in the area, I am staying in Akasaka, it’s a foreigner friendly area within walking distance of Roppongi where all the night life is. Cabs are very expensive so its best to sleep in an area that you plan to be in after 10pm when the subways close. It took me 2 hours to locate one as the first one was no longer open( a regular problem when you don't call ahead and rely on lonely planet) and the area is confusing because most of the street signs are in Japanese, After the first hour I started asking for help, which I should have done in the first place, but since the capsule hotel check ins aren't until 5pm,it didn't matter anyway.

I then got to my capsule watched 2 episodes of Entourage on my laptop and crashed for 13 hours, I was exhausted from drinking all night and traveling and that brings me to now its the second morning in Tokyo and I am at a coffee shop typing this I'm still not sure exactly what I'm doing to day but I'm about to head off on the subway and figure it out.... (Wrote this earlier)

I decided to go to Ginza to see the Sony building and whatever else was nearby. It is only a few subway stops away on the same line my hotel is on so that was nice. I loved all the gadgets they had there. It was 4 floors of stuff I wanted to buy. Joe if your reading this don't ever go there you’ll have to mortgage your house. They had all sorts of cool new gadgets, some where literally just created this week and they were prototypes so you couldn't even buy them yet. I think the most amazing thing was a little regular sized square battery, it didn't say what it was called or how powerful it was, but it was a standard 1 inch by 2 inch by ½ inch square battery. It was powerful it could run 3 processors by itself at once. I'm sure they were mobile low power processors but this is still amazing, you weren't even allowed to take pictures of it. The coolest gadget for sale was the Rolly, its a small cylindrical speaker system about 2/3 the size of an American pop can or jut slightly larger than an Asian pop can. It played music loudly and could spin and twist so it danced to the music, it even had a few moving parts that opened in closed in sync with the music, it was amazing. They also had some really sweet and ultra tiny laptops for sale that had only been out a few days. After the Sony building I walked around Ginza and looked at all the designer shops and the Kubuki-za Theater. Ginza is the oldest and most famous shopping district in Japan there was every designer I have ever heard of there and tons of electronics stores.

After Ginza I walked around the Imperial Palace grounds and gardens. The palace itself was closed, it always is except for 2 days a year, but it took me almost two hours to walk around it and see all the sights it's huge. I then went to the Yasukuni-Jinja which is a shrine and a few museums that are there to celebrate the 2.4 million Japanese who have died in wars since 1853. There are statues and memorials for several well known war criminals there so there are usually protesters there but I didn't see any. I can't really say anything anyway as these days we Americans regularly commit war crimes and we don't arrest our leaders who do this. The coolest things I saw here were a real Japanese Zero airplane just like the ones that bombed Pearl Harbor and were famous for the Kamikaze pilots. They also has a WWII era artillery gun that had tons of battle damage on it, there were at least 20 places were it was hit with gunfire or worse. This is what I did on my Monday. I just got down soaking in the sauna and cold pool in my hotel, I think I'm going to go out for a little bit tonight but not to late I want to get an early start tomorrow.

Leaving Korea

Leaving Korea was an experience all in it own. I had about 35 people show up to one or both parts of my going away party, we had 28 people at the Tomato Brau and a few more who just came to the Psycho Bar. It was great to see everybody for one last time but also surreal. We started the party at 7pm, I finished all my last minute packing around 6 and then facebooked for the last 40 minutes that I had high speed Internet. (I'm addicted to Internet...) We were at the Tomato Brau until after 11pm eating but mostly drinking the all u can drink/eat buffet/micro-brewed beers. Then I went back to my apartment and picked up my bags. I managed to get everything in my 5400 cubic inch backpack with a decent amount of room but not weight to spare, in Australia you can only have 20kg of bag weight, mine is 20kg exactly. I also have a small carry on backpack with a few books and electronics in it for the plane ride plus I need it to carry around while traveling. I walked in and walked out with the bags leaving the keys in the mailbox. We then went to Psycho Bar and had a great time at my regular hangout until 3am when I drunkenly got on the bus and headed of to airport in Incheon near Seoul.

At Incheon Airport I got flagged by customs because my foreigner card was expired by two weeks and it took me an hour to get it settled,　it didn't cost me anything but in normal Korean inefficiency I had to have 4 different people stamp my ticket or passport and none of them were anywhere near each other,　but at least it was all free and as usual they were polite enough to have a young English speaking Korean help me and since he was younger than me he was ultra respectful. If you card is expired make sure your at least 3 hours early for your flight,　you'll get through but the line at immigration which I skipped thanks to my Korean escort had a 2 hour wait, so make sure you are respectful,　bow and smile to the customs guys and they will let you go ahead as long as you have a white face or a English speaking country's passport. This brings up another important thing to remember in Korea, always smile,　bow and wait and you will get what you want,　it just takes patience. If your rude or or making a rude face they will not receive you well,　lucky for me I was blessed with a smile that can open almost any door. Also when possible deal with a person who is younger than you as they are required to treat you better.　Goodbye Korea!