zondag 3 april 2016

Today is the last day in Japan. Right now the final hours, which i choose to spend in the airport.

As usual I had nothing planned. The things I did have planned got cancelled. So no sakebar and no meeting Manami... 😦

I had to help out a friend in need but will not zoom in on this by his request.

I did however meet a girl who invited me to 'a glow in the dark meet at sakuralane' event. This turned to be awesome..
Unfortunately the pictures are blurry because of the nightly hour.



There is plenty more, but I am deadtired and feel the after holiday blues already..
I will list some more pictures to give you a sense. It will be updated when I'm at full capacity. Rest assured, the last days were great.

awesome people..

Great views..
New.. York?

 and penisses ofcourse 😁😁

Thanks for tuning in so far. Finalisation may or may not follow. I hope you enjoyed being part of my trip!

X
Nicky

vrijdag 1 april 2016

The holiday is nearing it's end...
I booked a capsule/sauna hotel for the last two nights, drove around some more in Tokyo and finally returned the bike.
I almost got a fine in that last hour driving because I crossed an orange line in front of a policecar. When he realised I was a tourist and saw that I had a drivers license (which he did not check...) he let me go. Gommenasai!! Arigatou!!



Also... japanese people sleep everywhere.. Even in the onsens or relaxing couches,...

and at any time during the day. This is 2 pm.

So after all the driving and walking around heavely packed I decide to enjoy the sauna to relax my muscles and then go to Yokohama to meet Mary again. The woman I met a week earlier. At night Yokohama is very beautiful...



She showed me around the shops and explained much of the local foods in a grocery store. Also this store had a crazy amount of belgian beers. Like 8 or 9...

the best part of it all: it had brewdog, one of my favourite beers. It is an exclusive London beer. That is even hard to find in London, not at all in Belgium. But I guess a random Japanese grocery store is no problem.... haha

I went back to the hotel early because I was exhausted. Many days of little sleep...

Tomorrow I will meet my japanese friend again to go to a sakebar with over a hundred kinds of sake!!

Yopparai  😆





Kawaga

Because this guesthouse was so great it is the only place so far that I booked a second night. The view but also the hosts made me want to stay. I got free food several times (even at a local supermarket where I only bought one drink...).


I present to you one of the final pictures I took of this wonderful region. The nature here is overwhelming.

So as planned the day before I would go back to Tokyo by taking a detour in Kawaga. Here I would meet my guide for the day. I was a few hours late though 'cause I got a mail saying my flight to Brussels was cancelled...
After some back and forth mailing i got a flight the same day to paris. Booked Thalys and all was well again!

So onto Kanagawa!
My Japanese friend had taken the time to think of a nice route to take to see some very old and authentique housing. First we had to drive there though..


Then we saw some old-style japanese houses dated from 1850-1910.


 women wearing traditional kimono's. It is considered very sexy in Japan.

traditional soft icecream based on potatoes. It tastes great!



traditional restaurant where I had Udon curry with shitake. Udon is a sorta slow cook pasta in hot soup with added flavour


and ofcourse Sakura - the famous spring cherry blossoms

At the end of the day my guide wanted to thank me (?) so he gave me a bottle of sake he acquired in Okinawa. Which is a southern japanese island many kms away. 
Arigatou gozaimasu!!

At the end of the day I needed to find a place to sleep. The japanese friend had to work real early, so that was no option.
It turned out to be a very expensive night. For some odd reason over 90% was booked according to booking.com

Luckely I had found some company... 😆





woensdag 30 maart 2016

Epixx

Hello and welcome to another day of great Japan experiences.

Featuring today: The great mountains north of Tokyo.

So you saw the wake-up view. Well rest assured the day did live up to that expectation. I followed advice from the guesthouse owner to go to a shrine up in the mountains. About 600 meters higher in just 20 minutes...

 On my way to the top!

Beautiful views!!



I also came across a few animals!

a chimp!

a japanese goat or deer so I am told

and a peculiarly looking beetle 😀

On to some culture! Up the mountain was a beautiful and famous shrine with an 800 year old tree that is believed to possess great power. When I touched it I could feel it pulsing strongly (then again I am a treehugger..)


it's a shrine yo. 


After seeing the shrine and awesome tree I found an onsen and went naked.
That's right! Onsens are pretty much like wellness in Belgium, but they emphasize on hot baths rather then sauna.
There I met a nice guy, we started talking and ended up eating lunch together.

Hot sobasoup with mountain vegetables. Very tasty and unique to this region!
After a good talk he suggested to guide me around tomorrow in an authentique town on the way back to Tokyo. Perfect!!

Here are some final shots of a great day that ended in a typical dinner at the guesthouse.

japanese pancakes!!!

And top things - a romantefied version of an onsen for girls

Mhmmm... 😈




dinsdag 29 maart 2016

Back to ryukan

So the next morning I wake up late (which is rare for me in this country) and decide to followup on the advice the owner of the ryukan gave me the day before.

Turns out it is a 2h15m drive, with backpack on. But I'm feeling sharp! 

The first hour is just highways, very exhausting. But luckely the sun is bright, again no hypthermia, thank God!

The second part is amazing. Mountains everywhere.. I take a small pitstop after 1h30m driving to get some 'breakfast'.
In this country convenientstores have very tasty plastic wrapped food!
I got a cheese bacon sandwhich and omelet (yes plastic wrapped..)

When I drove on.. this:


It was a very sweet ride. As I got nearer to my location, my expectations kept rising. There was only one guesthouse/hotel in the area so this could go many ways...

So finally I arrive. I rode past it at first because it is hard to notice from the outside. I go inside, pay 3000¥ (like only 23€..) and get to see my room...
He explains to me that I am the only guest today so I get the best room!


And this is why it is the best room. This is the view from my window:


I was amazed by the beauty I ended up in...

Next I went back into town for food. In a small shop on the way to thesupermarket I met a nice lady who gave me some free food when I only bought one drink. She was so kind..

Back at the guesthouse the owners offered me some of this:

tasty squid with sojasauce

So we shared food and drinks and we had some good talks. They asked a lot about my profession and were enthousiastic about my working methods. They said Japan needed psychologists like me. I felt flattered!  😀

The next morning I woke up to this:


Thats the view from my bed.. 😃

Okay thats enough for today. More soon!!

turning sadness around!

This day was all wrong..

I looked up a hostel and another and another. Everytime when I got there it turned out I could not park my bike and had to wait real long for check-in.

So from 11 to 14 I wasted time looking for a place...
I guess not planning in advance will sometimes lead to this...
The I finally found an ok place. I parked my bike illegally because appaerently thats the only way to get rid of it (you can't even park in garages for cars....) and went for some food because check-in was not happening within the next hours.

I got a chickensteak, 'cause it sounded cool. Then I found a meeting app called Stout. The first girl that spoke to me was very direct. She asked for my facebook right away and then my skype.
Once we were on skype she wanted a videocall asap. Next thing she asked was "can i see your cock". At this point I feared a con, this was very strange...
So expecting her to leave I asked for something in return. She got fully naked right away....
This is where I realised something was not right. I twisted the conversation into -work hard, get some. And suddenly she gave up....

I'm glad I realised it was probably a con and didn't end up in blackmail situations....
Nice nakedness though 😅😉

Then when I finally got to my hostel I felt sad. Like a bit depressed.
Maybe because I missed Vicky, maybe just random sadness. It was annoying anyway...

So I asked for advice from people I met while being here.
Someone came up with the lumeous idea to search for Asahi dream. This is, according to her, a great seasonal beer.


So I started walking and find it in the very first store.... So much for a challenge...
Awesome beer though! I really enjoyed it.
I walked on and ended up in a traditional japanese restaurant. i made sure I had a conversation with every guest there 😆😆
It was great fun and they had awesome sake which came in a cup in a small crate.
They fill it up and let it overflow into the crate. you basicly get 2 shots 😁



Afterwards I went back to the hostel. I Had a talk with a fillipinean girl, a japanese girl and a belgian girl all trough chatting and voicing. It was very nice!
I felt like the whole experience was meaningful to me. As if I had made some steps towards a brighter future... Eventually I fell asleep.
My sad day turned into a glorious one. I was so happy...

back to Tokyo

So the next day I got up real early and took the shinkansen back to Mishima, where I left my bike. On the way there I made this awesome picture.


Instead of staying there I decided to drive all the way back to Tokyo to cheer up Vicky. This german girl I met my second night in Tokyo, had been sick for almost her entire holiday. I felt sorry for her and decided to take her for a ride on the bike. On the way to Tokyo I passed by Mt. Fuji again, it was much nicer then the picture above but I was on the highway so no pictures.. 😯.
We went to Ueno park where I got to see the Sakura much better.




There was a spring event as well. So it was crowded, lots to eat (i had hot potato with butter and salt.. yummy). There was even an orchestra, and you could stand in line to play maestro! There was also a lane with marked places like parking lots but for.. people.
You could claim your parking space and sit for drinks, food and social conversation.



Because she was so happy that I came back for her, she booked us a ryukan.
Which is basicly a very traditional japanese hotel. No furniture, and special matrasses to sleep on. It was very good, I was very grateful. So once again I had girl company. No complaints!


Her previous relationship also went south. So we had a lot to talk about. It turned out te be a great evening of talking and sake.

I should also mention the bikeride was a lot more fun. It was much warmer, so I did not freeze. I really enjoyed the ride.
Also, I finally understand why japanese people speed so much on highways and less in cities. All highways demand toll and thus are expensive. A result of this is that they do not give tickets for speeding here. You pretty much drive as fast as you like.

Rules dictate that you drive 60 or 80 km/h on highways. The reality is everyone drives 100-120 km/h. Like it is in miles.... 😂

And thus I conclude another day.


zondag 27 maart 2016

Japanese wedding

Taa ta ta taa
Taa ta ta taaa

Ofcourse the ceremony is nothing like ours...

So this saturday I ended up at a wedding. Thomas, a guy I met years ago during our first interim jobs, is getting wed to Haruka, a japanese girl he met in India. (Or another country... I forgat.. sorry T.)

It is a total coincidence I was in Japan when he is having his wedding. By texting him for sleepovers I got invited 😆

So. The wedding!!

The wedding started at 2.30 in a waiting room. Which was basicly sitting uncomfortably at a table till all guests arrived.

Then the ceremony started. It all happened at a shrine decicated to the emperor.
The couple was placed in the middle, familt and friends on the side. There was a lot of getting up and sitting down, japanese mumbling and a 'band' that played the flute in a most horrendous way. 😂

At some point there was like a traditional dance and the ritual drinking of a sort sake and a fish-tasting string to be shared with the one next to you.

 don't mind the baby being murdered there...


The ceremony was concluded with the vows. Then outside of the shrine candy was tossed at the young ones and lots of grouppictures were taken.




Then taxi's drove us to the hotel for dinner. I met some very nice (and pretty) japanese girls in the taxi. They were very friendly and seemed single. I later found out they were married. But in Japan only the one befriended to the couple get invited. Sorry spouses!

The dinnerpart is very similar to our western traditions with a lot of american influences. Like cakecutting and the pouring of champagne on a champangeglass mountain. The surprise act was a cabaret band entertaining the guests. There were many speeches and some tears. Thomas lost his father to cancer...
All the western guests were overcome with emotion, the japanes seemed untouched. The grandparents showed it later in the form of gratitude and the sharing of drinks.




It was a great dinnerparty. Felt good to talk to belgians and share my love for japan.

Troughout the day Haruka had many outfits:




The dinner stopped at pretty much exactly 21.00. At which point the wedding was over. All the western folk stayed and went downtown for a karaoke party. The japanese folk went home... very odd habit if you ask me.

Karaoke in japan is in private rooms unlike in Belgium. Usually interesting for couples because it is dark and private...
But with this big group of friends it was amazing. Lots of beer and highballwhisky, food and laughs. Still being sick my voice was worthless but that did not stop me 😆



At the end I lost the group. Bought some drinks for a few japanese guys. They were overwhelmed by this 'kindness' and simply didn't understand it. Had some more talk outside with random people and took a cab back to my capsulehotel. Even though it was well in the night I had some wellness to relax and have a good detox 😂

And thus a very busy day with loads of new experiences come to an end.