okay, again I am tagged by

Anyway...

The rules:

1. Post these rules
2. Each person tagged must post 8 random facts about themselves
3. Tags should write a blogpost of these facts
4. At the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
5. Go to their blog and leave a comment telling them they're tagged

well, as I just did this last journal, I will do a switcharoo and do 8 random facts about my recent trip to Japan, just to be interesting...

1. the Tokyo subway and rail system, although at first confusing due to all the intersections and interconnectivity of all the separate systems and lines, is relatively easy to navigate once you get the hang of it. Many tourists tend to stick to only the JR lines, but there are other subway lines (namely, the Tokyo Metro line) that might make it easier to someplace you're going to. For example - Ginza - there are no JR lines running to Ginza, but 2 Metro lines - Asakusa too! And, depending on where you're staying, it might be much easier to use the non-JR subways to get around as well. The hotel I stayed in Shinjuku was closer to the Metro line than the nearest JR line (well, it wasn't that far apart - about 1 station away, really). The real challenge is not the subways / railways intersections, it was more of the fact that a lot of the railway stations were rather confusing on how to connect from one line to the other. We got lost once in Shinjuku station because we went out the wrong exit (we went West instead of East - took 15 minutes to find the stupid locker we stored our things in).

2. you know, for a culture that uses coinage a lot more that we do in the US (if you don't know, the Japanese have coins equivalents for roughly the following US denominations: 1 cent [1 yen], 5 cents [5 yen], 10 cents [10 yen], 50 cents [50 yen], 1 dollar [100 yen] and 5 dollars [500 yen] coins), in all my 10+ days there, I never saw a stray coin on the ground... never - and I was sort of looking for them too. Not in the busiest of subways, not in the vastness of their graveled paths around their gardens, not even along the hundreds of people crossing one of the busiest intersections in Shibuya - not a single stray 1 yen piece. The very first day I got back here, I think I counted at least 5 cents in change scattered along my usual route to and from work... more if I was actually looking for it, I'd bet, too.

3. For a city as big as Tokyo with all it's subdistricts and whatnot, its funny that a majority of the sites one goes to visit while there are surrounding the immediate vicinity of the train stations. For example - Akihabara - the electronic city of Tokyo, a majority of the electronic (and anime shops) are within only a few minutes walking distance of its station. Same thing with Shibuya - a majority of the 'happening' places occur along a short stretch of road called Center Gai and two adjacent streets. It makes for easy exploration, but I donno, I guess I expected like rows and rows and rows of shops, so I was sort of surprised by it.

4. I'm not sure why, but all the hotels we stayed in (3 of them) all had bathrooms that you stepped up into (a good 8" or more). The first day or so, it wasn't too much of a big deal, but after a few days of us walking 10 or 12 hours site-seeing / shopping or whatever, that step into the bathroom at nite for that o-so luscious hot shower was ever so difficult - never mind the 2am 'I gotta go pee' in the middle of the nite as your legs start to lock up from all this additional walking around! And 2 of the bathrooms were rather small (the one in Hakone was rather big, actually - but I never really used it much as we only stayed there 1 nite and that nite we went to an onsen... that was nice....). In fact, the one in Tokyo had it's shower controls as a part of the sink faucet controls - there was a diverter knob on it so you could either wash your hands in the sink, or divert the water to the showerhead... and the sink tap would also swivel and fill the tub too! And I think all of the western-style toilets had bidets / backside washers too... and heated seats (that was sorta nice, actually).

5. There are a tonne of museums in Japan where you can see everything from traditional Japanese / Asian arts, to more modern Western pieces, even to an Advertising museum and a museum dedicated to the Little Prince (which was in Hakone). We could have spent nearly every day of the 10 days we were in Japan in a different museum (perhaps 2 or more, even) given half a chance and not seen the same one twice. In Kyoto and in Ueno in Tokyo, there were museum complexes with different museums all clustered around one-another that one could spend easily all day exploring. We had to limit ourselves to only those museums that were 'Japan-specific' as there were so many of them. And for the most part, it was rather inexpensive to go to them too - some were even free (like the Traditional arts museum in Kyoto where they showed how many of your 'typical' Japanese items such as fans, kimonos, prints, etc were made - we could have easily spend another hour or so there but had to leave prior to finishing all the exhibits as we got there kind of late).

6. When we went to Harajuku, we went to the bridge right in front of the entrance to Yoyogi park (it's where all the goth-lolita and cosplayer kids hang out on the weekends) and I was expecting this huge area and I'd see like gaggles of them all flocking around and just doing their thing (well, whatever they do). But in reality, the bridge area isn't all that big, really - and there weren't that many there (but that might have been due to the time, we were there before noon, maybe they aren't early risers?). In fact, there were more tourists with cameras taking pictures of the few 'regulars' who were there. Okay, yes, I was one of those taking pictures, but not as determinedly as some of the others were. But what was sort of creepy where the older Japanese men who seem to go there regularly and take pictures of them - who seemed to have portfolios of images of all these (mostly) girls in EGL or cosplay... shudder... I mean, what draws the line between fan and stalker?

7. For the most part, there are 2 things you can almost always easily find in any sizable Japanese area: 1. convenience stores and 2. vending machines. And the Japanese do really mean 'convenience' in their convenience stores... I mean, within a 5 minute walk from both the Kyoto and Shinjuku hotels, there were at least 5 convenience stores - all carrying pretty much the same things (just about as bad as the ABC Stores are in Waikiki). But the things you can buy there: everything from your typical drinks and snacks to full on bentos and curry; stationary and pens; and oddly enough, if you're a business man on a day-trip, you can even buy new socks, underwear, and shirts too - even business card holders! In fact, about 80 to 90% of the stores stock is some type of food / drink related item (where I'd estimate the US convenience store is approximately 30 - 50%). For a while there, we subsisted on a lot of food purchased from convenience stores (the day we got into Shinjuku, our dinner was from one of them - curry rice with chicken for me, and bread and bree with some fruit for my better half!).

Vending machines are also very numerous - it seems that every few feet there is a vending machine selling either cigarettes or drinks (sometimes, even beer too). There was even one reportedly selling hot soup & fishcake in a can in Akihabara (for all the otaku who needed that cheap means of sustenance so they could spend the rest of their money on anime / manga goods or the nearby maid cafes). The funny thing is, when I was last in Japan say... what, 15 years ago or so, there seemed to be a lot more variety of good sold: batteries, whiskey, and even porn - but I guess with the advent of the (over) population of convenience stores and the like, the need for those types of machines may have declined. And too, it seemed sorta weird that for the most part, all vending machines and convenience stores had the same prices for items. So, a soda would cost relatively the same no matter where you bought it: train station, on the Shinkansen, vending machine, or convenience store.

8. things we found strangely missing in Japan:
A. Trashcans - for a country as clean as it is (and Japan is very much so; nary a stray piece of anything could be found anywhere we went), you'd think that there'd be a lot more trashcans. Throughout the entire 10 days there, I don't think I saw a single one. One time, we had to give our trash to a shopkeeper (where we bought some foodstuffs from to have lunch) because there wasn't anyplace else to toss our trash.

B. paper towel dispensers - to go along with the whole no trashcan thing, most toilets didn't have paper towel dispensers, either. To dry your hands after you washed them, you had to use your own handkerchief (hence you know know why there are a lot of them available in Japan, too). It's not so bad if you're wearing jeans and it's in your back pocket, but if you're wearing like khaki shorts and it's in your front pocket (and you reach for it wrong), it looks like you had an accident

C. for such an on-the-go society, there was certainly a lack of places to actually sit down. I mean, very few seats in the train stations, or the parks, or anywhere for that matter. It was almost like a game for us looking for them and when we did find them, it was like we had to sit down just because we found one. The major exception to it was the Imperial Palace park in Tokyo, but it seems that most of those benches were not for sitting, but for storing items for runners who'd leave their things there (only in Japan one could leave a bag unattended for any length of time and find it still sitting there when they got back).

whew...

and I tag anyone who's interested in going to Japan!

[edit]
and yes, that's me and the Eva-01 unit at the Tokyo Anime Center changing fisticuffs