Harajuku

While up in Tokyo over New Years, my buddy Erin and I headed to Harajuku (a shopping area of Tokyo for teens and people in their early 20s) to see what was going on.
We wandered down a side street and passed what I thought was just a group of punks, but Erin recognized one of the guys as being Kid Yamamoto. Kid is a very famous Japanese fighter from Pride (a fighting circuit somewhat similar to Ultimate Fighting in NA).
We chased him down and asked if we could take a picture. He seemed reluctant, but allowed us to anyways. I think he was pretty surprised to be approached by foreigners. Apparently he's a bit of a bad-ass in the ring, but fortunately for him, he was smart enough not to try any moves on us. I would've felt guilty having to embarrass him in front of his friends ;)

Mime in Tokyo

While we were wandering around near Yoyogi station in Tokyo, we came across this mime standing out front of the station. He would stand still and only moved when he wanted to mess with the tourists after someone had thrown cash in his cup. The outfit was incredible. He looked just like a statue. It was pretty cool, although, personally, I would go nuts standing there all day like that.

Japanese Cartoon Characters

While walking around Tokyo last month, I came across a toy store that had human-size statues of many of the most popular Japanese cartoon characters.
I took pictures of two of them, as these two are merchandised in just about every way you can think of.
The first one, Doraemon (no idea what it means), is a blue cat. The second one, Ampanman (Red Bean Jam Bread Man), has friends that are all different kinds of food.
Kawaiiiiiiiii! (really annoying expression used by Japanese women meaning cute)

Nikko

Nikko is a tiny little town about 2 hours north of Tokyo, famous throughout Japan for its shrines, the most famous one being Toshogu. My buddy Erin and I made a day trip there while I was in Tokyo over the New Year's holidays.
The first picture is of the famous monkeys, "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil," which is just inside the entrance of Toshogu Shrine. Nikko is also usually a good spot to see Japanese monkeys, however we didn't see any.
The last picture I took inside one of the shrines. Someone had made a tiny snowman and what I think is supposed to be a rabbit.

Yanaka Cemetery

I spent the week leading up to New Year's in Tokyo. While wandering around the northeast part of the city (north of Ueno), I came across this huge cemetery which was basically deserted.

Christmas Party

We had a Christmas Party yesterday for the kids at our school, as well as some of the kids that Trevor teaches on his own.
We took them to a small amusement park, perched on a hill overlooking Okayama. The kids all had a great time, and Trev, Sara and I kept getting hauled onto rides with them that they weren't big enough to ride by themselves. I must've been on the roller coaster 10 or 15 times.
After a couple of hours of rides, we got everybody together (about 40 kids with about 30 parents), and we had the kids make some Christmas trees, followed by some cake that my Japanese boss's sister made. After that we played a game, and then Santa (aka Trev) made a visit and gave everyone presents.
The three boys in the first picture with Santa, Tomotaka, Kosuke, and another Tomotaka, are in one of my Monday classes together. The girl on the merry-go-round, Haruna, is in another class of mine.

Tottori

For Dad's last weekend in Japan, we first went to Matsue and then on to Tottori, which is about 2 hours north of Okayama on the Japan Sea.
Tottori is famous throughout Japan for its sand dunes, which were pretty nice.



Tottori is very popular with Japanese tourists, and there are men at the dunes with camels that you can either ride or pose on for pictures. It's really popular for the Japanese to sit on the camel with the little Middle Eastern hat (I don't know what they're called) and pretend they're Lawrence of Arabia. I think it was about $20 for a short ride or $5 to sit on it for a picture.
In the picture below, you can see a rack with what I think are cuttlefish (a type of squid) on it. It was in the sun spinning very quickly to dry them. It really stunk! In the souvenir shop you could even buy squid-flavoured ice cream. No, I did not try it.

Koshi byo

When Dad and I were in Nagasaki, we went to this Confucian Shrine, which is owned by the Chinese government.
The style is considerably different from Japanese shrines, being much more intricate, and you can also see a lot of yellow, which is rarely used in Japan.