National Noodles

One of the highlights of our trip was going to be Runshi Rekishi Shiryokan, the tattoo museum run by Horiyoshi the Third, the most talented tattoo master in Japan.

We took the short train ride from Tokyo to Yokohama, armed with directions from the Lonely Planet Guide.

Trying to line up the vague directions with a confusing Japanese map outside the train station was too great a challenge for us. We wandered through a residential area for at least an hour, until I needed to pee urgently.

It was hard to give up the search, but we could still salvage the day with a trip to the Ramen Museum.

After more wandering, we decided to ignore the guide book directions and then quickly found the museum on the opposide side of the station from where we had been directed. So much for guide books.

The main floor of the museum was a big, cheesy marketing campaign, but the lower floors were transformed into a 1950's Tokyo street scene. The way the Japanese rave about their ramen noodles, I thought they'd been eating them for thousands of years, but they are really no older than the Beatles.
After sampling "small" bowls of noodles from several famous shops my stomach was bursting at the seams and sloshing around uncomfortably.

I had my fill of ramen and couldn't quite see what was so great about it.

However you feel about noodle soup, the museum is a neat glimpse into history. If you go, note that they won't let you into any of the noodle shops unless you are actually buying a bowl yourself, so be prepared to try all the same noodles as your travel mates or dine separately.

Noodle Nazis.

Some observations on Ottawa

Matt was going to Ottawa for some training, so I joined him for a long weekend to celebrate our 8th anniversary.

Here are my thoughts on the place:

lots of beautiful stone architecture

not very cheery or warm at this time of year

real bagels

impatient pedestrians lunging into traffic

parliament was much more impressive than I had imagined

they have a thing for baked beans

vibrant city core

a strangely large number of "Irish" pubs

big, fat-bottomed black squirrels everywhere


We ate at several restaurants, cafes & delis:

The Cornerstone Bar & Grill - not bad, good meatloaf, and most importantly, deep-fried snickers!

Nate's Deli, 316 Rideau St., 789-9191 - good value, terrific smoked meat on rye, lots of old people & lots of grease.


The Whalesbone Oyster House - pricey but fabulous. Sit at the bar and chat up the staff. Great atmosphere, big flavour, tiny portions. Don't go famished.

Continental Bagel in the Byward Market has real, soft, chewy bagels. The veggie sandwich with marinated eggplant was heavenly and very messy.

Chez Lucien is a fashionable pub with good burgers and tasty Quebec beers like Unibroue's Blanche de Chambly on tap.

One last note, directed toward hotels:

I give my hearty recommendation to the Residence Inn by Marriott. It's not the spiffiest hotel, but it is neat and clean and very generous with amenities, including a decent complimentary breakfast buffet. The price was great for what we got.

Novotel, by comparison, was incredibly stingy with an overpriced restaurant.

better than fireworks

The Northern Lights were phenominal last night. I've never seen them so full of life, or take up so much of the sky.

I wonder how many other pairs of eyes were gazing up at them last night?

Ginza, Tokyo

This is someone's legal home. There's power hook-up, and a washing machine and tiny garden by the door. This is in Ginza, the riches district in Tokyo. This windowless tin shack is surrounded by extravagant high-rise condos and shopping complexes.
The Imperial Detached Garden was once used by the Emperor and his family to fish and hunt ducks. It has a salt water pond fed by the bay. This was the image I had in my head of a "Japanese Garden". It was picture-perfect and felt surreal with the sky scrapers looming behind it.

Land of Plastic Sushi

Kappabashi-dori is the main street of the restaurant supply district in Tokyo. For anyone who enjoys cooking, this is window shopping at it's best.
And with some shops we definitely stuck to the windows, as it would have been very dangerous to enter the narrow isles stacked with multiple Jenga games of pottery. Our backpacks would have set off a nasty chain reaction for sure.

I bought a pair of the largest cooking chopsticks I have ever seen. They are like cheerleading batons.

Our favourite shops were the plastic food stores.

Japanese restaurants often have displace cases out front, filled with plastic versions of their dishes rather than menus. You can get anything from ice cream cones and chocolates to watermelons, to frothy beer and 3-foot long fish. I thought the forks twirling pasta, suspended above their plates were pretty amusing.

We brought home some delicious looking plastic sushi to put on our fridge as magnets.Japan is filled with unusual art in places you would never think to look. I'm not sure what this giant beetle was all about, but it sure caught my eye sitting on the front of this apartment building.

Tokyo Hospitality

At this point in my travel journal some pages have fallen out and shortly thereafter I gave up writing at all. Here is my last entry, and then I'll try to jog my memory with a few photos of my last week in Japan.

We were again searching for a restaurant down a dark street armed with 'directions', but no address or map. This one was supposed to be an 'all tuna' restaurant, and examples of menu items had really excited my tastebuds. If we had the name in kanji, it would have been easier. Everything looked so non-descript and similar on the outside. We had a strong suspicion that it was a small place we found just around the corner on a side street, but peeking inside, and making note of people's attire as they came out, we felt most definitely under-dressed.

And rumpled.

And sweaty.

And grumpy and tired from walking all day.

We gave up and decided to head back to the train station for fast food, walking on the other side of the wide street in case we found the real restaurant on the way.

We passed a yakitori stand I decided to ask the salary men sitting at the make-shift counter if I could take their picture. They thought this was hilarious and posed several times for me (unfortunately, my simple digital camera and shaky hands are not a good mix at night).

They invited us to join them and asked us all kinds of questions about how we liked Japan - in English, of course. The cook was a high spirited guy and enjoyed showing off for us. He teased us and embarrassed his daughter.

An older couple making the rounds joined us. They gave us sabisu (complimentary refreshments). We sat there and made as much conversation as possible. They all acted politely amazed whenever I used a japanese word. We ate our chicken skewers, drank sake and ate tiny bowls of macaroni salad (?).

The older gentleman kepts putting his hand on my shoulder, which I guess is getting quite fresh in Japan. The others kept scolding him and his wife cuffed him.

A Vancouverite who lived in the building above came by and promised to keep him in line. I guess this guy had a reputation!

It feels so good when the local people invite you into their world. This is the only way to travel.

Cos Play Kids in Yoyogi Park

You might think they're crazy, but they could find hobbies at lot worse than this.