Kamikaze Canuck

In 6 short hours, my flight leaves from Tokyo back to Canada.  Just want to thank everyone who read this blog.  Your comments are what kept me writing.

A few quick thoughts about Japan.

Things I will miss:

1) Onsen and Sento (public bath houses).

Sento

Apparently I had never cleaned myself properly before, because when you leave an onsen after scrubbing yourself Japanese style (taking a facecloth and actively scouring every inch of your body for extended periods of time), you feel more clean and fresh than ever before.

2) The Food and drink!

Ramen shop

Typically, when Canadians think of Japanese food, they think of sushi (or more specifically, sushi rolls).  After 5 weeks of being here, I have eaten sushi rolls ONCE.  One time.  Why?  Because the culinary arts in Japan are so diverse that sushi rolls are not popular here.  The foods I will miss are:

– Ramen (Noodle bowls served in a broth made of whoknowswhat.  Pure heaven.   You slurp ramen to show the cook that you’re enjoying the meal.)

– Okonomayaki  (Japanese pancakes grilled right in front of you.  Includes cabbage, seafood, and a sweet brown bbq sauce.

– Takoyaki (breaded octopus balls)

– Sake and Shochu (the local brews)

3) Bowing. Strangely enough, I’ll miss bowing to people when I appreciate something and I’ll miss people bowing to me.

4) Mutual respect. Not that we don’t have mutual respect in Canada, but when you meet a Japanese person, there is a palpable amount of underlying mutual respect.  It’s hard to explain.

5) Heated toilet seats. Wait til you try one…..

6) Public transportation. The spiderweb of fast, efficient transportation in this country is pretty damn handy.  Wanna be in Osaka?  We have a 350 km/hr bullet train leaving for there in 5 minutes.  Hop on.

Bullet train

Things I will not miss:

1) No public garbages. Anywhere!  Packing around an empty  starbucks cup for two hours gets a little old after 5 weeks.

2) A lack of sarcasm. Don’t try to use it here.  They will not get it.

3) Getting kicked out of places for having a tattoo. I have a half sleeve tattoo which caused me a few problems here.  Tattoos are associated with Yakuza (Japanese mafia).  They are really looked down upon.  I was kicked out of 2 public baths in the last week of my trip!

Another observation.  I made friends with quite a few Japanese businessmen.  I typical day for a Japanese businessman would look like this.  Get up early and work 12-14 hours (many times they aren’t “working” all that time, but in Japan, the employee can not leave work before the boss.  Ever!), then they are expected to go to the local Izakaya for drinks with fellow employees.  They get “Chris Green smashed” then stagger home (if they make it home.  I’ve seen many businessmen passed out on the sidewalk beside their breifcase) to lay beside their wife.  The next day, they do it all over again.  If you look at the Japanese businessmen on the subway, they look like zombies.  Societal pressure force them into this unhealthy lifestyle and molds them into working machines.  No wonder they all drink and smoke like the world will end tomorrow.

Again.  Thank you for reading my blogs.  It’s been a lot of fun writing them.  Domo Arrigato Gozeimus!

The instructions printed on my train ticket explaining how I get to Beppu ~ "Beppu is transfer considerably by all means at station" Gotta love Japenglish.

After relaxing in the hot spring town of Beppu for the evening, I hit the road again.  With the corniest song ever (Genesis – Easy Lover) blaring through the headphones of my ipod, I smiled patiently until eventually I had hitchhiked my way back to Fukuoka.

This completed the loop of Northern Kyushu (shown below).

The loop of Northern Kyushu. A distance of about 350km. All but 30 km were done by hitchhiking. FINISHED.

Back in Fukuoka, the beloved Softbank Hawks were taking on their rivals, the Hiroshima Carp in preseason baseball action.  $50 got me a ticket 2 rows behind the backcatcher.  As I was hoping, it was absolutely awesome.  Even if you’re not a baseball fan, the fervent passion that the Japanese show for baseball makes the atmosphere at the game electric.  Here are some pics and a quick video of the game:

This pitcher was consistently hitting 96 mph on the radar gun.

"Cabrera". Obviously not Japanese. Players come from all over the world to the Japanese League to make it big. Including Tom Selleck.....

After the ball game, I bummed around Fukuoka for one more day and packed my bags for the 4th largest city in Japan, Nagoya.   A 3 hour bullet train ride put me into Nagoya near supper time.  To quote the great philosopher Johnny Cash, “I’d just hit town and my throat was dry, I thought I’d stop and have myself a brewwwwww”.   I stumbled into the nearest pub, and although I didn’t find the dirty, mangy dog that named me Sue, I did make friends with the owner of the place.  Over a meal, a beer, and a couple games of darts, Shiochi, the bar owner took a liking to me.  He insisted that he show me his favourite izakaya (Japanese style pub) in town.

So off we went.  Like a scene out of an Indiana Jones movie, we wound our way through narrow back alleys until we made entrance into an old, tiny, seemingly abandoned wooden building in the middle of nowhere that he called “Mamas”.  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

"Mama's". Shoichi, the bar owner, is in the front of the pic.

I got the feeling they weren't used to seeing foreigners here.

"Mama" is on the left. A large woman with attitude that I'm sure, thinks she is black.

Shoichi, insisted that he pay for everything.   This was another night I’ll never forget.  Having booked no accomidation for the night, I payed $15 for a booth at an internet cafe and hit the hay….

My room

Big Gulps eh?  Well, see ya later!

Over the last few days I’ve been doing a ton of hitchhiking here in Japan.   I haven’t really elaborated on what it’s like to hitchhike here so I’ll give it a bash.

Me hitchhiking on the Yamanami Highway in central Kyushu.

Firstly, I embarassingly have to admit that hitchhiking is one of most mentally challenging things I have ever done.  Without hesitation, I have skydived, bungee jumped (the highest in the world), white water rafted, etc.  NONE of that compared to the resistance I felt in my body the first time I took a deep breathe and put my thumb out into the air.  It’s a vulnerable feeling that I can’t really describe.

Nonetheless, I did it.  And the last three days (of hitchhiking) have turned out to be 3 of my best in Japan.  I’ll start from the top.

6AM my alarm clock started buzzing in my Kumamoto hostel.  With a quick look at the map, I decided that the best course of action would be to take a brief 20 minute train ride into the countryside where I could easily access a highway to begin my hitchhiking.

I walked 3 or 4 kilometres to find a suitable spot to stand, and put out my thumb.  The look on the faces of the Japanese drivers in passing cars was one of utter disbelief.   Hitchhiking is completely unheard of in Japan.  No one hitchhikes.  I was undoubtedly the first hitchhiker they had ever seen.  “How do they know what it means when someone is standing on the side of the road with their thumb in the air?”, you ask.  American Movies.  That’s the only reason they know what the wierd white dude is doing on the side of the road.

20 minutes later, a big white van came to a screeching halt.  “Doko made?”  the drivers asked while popping his head out the drivers side window.  “Aso ni ikitidais” I replied.  He motioned for me to get in, and we were off.  His name was “Massa” and he was a 30 year old security camera maintenence man who was on his way to work.  Super cool guy.

Massa

After getting to Aso.  I explored the famous Aso Volcano.  They bill it as “the only active volcano in the world that tourists can look down safely”.  How safely is debatable.  A few years back the volcano hiccuped and killed 3 tourists standing 2km away.  Here are the pics of my trip up to the volcano:

The couple I hitchhiked to the volcano with. He was a retired business owner in the pulp and paper industry and she was a teacher.

Comforting

These are the concrete bunkers we were instructed to run into if the volcano erupted. Also comforting.

The volcano.

After that,  I took a bus back into Aso, the town where I was staying.  I wanted to try raw horse meat (the delicase in this part of Japan) so I walked down to the local butcher and picked some up.  While at the butcher shop, I struck up a conversation with the butcher, who also happened to play guitar.  He asked me if I wanted to go to the local onsen (hot spring) with him that night.  Sounded like a good time so I accepted and it turned out to be a ton of fun.  While we were BSing in the hotspring, Yoshi (the butcher) told me of how he moved to Los Angeles at the young age of 19 to find fame as a rock and roll guitarist.  He spent 7 years playing the clubs in Hollywood and is still personal friends with many of the guitar greats in the world that he met while living in the US.  Among others, he is still close friends with Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbournes long time guitarist), CC Deville from Poison, and the guitarist from Ratt (can’t remember his name at the moment).  My jaw hit the floor.  He was personal friends with some of the guitarists that I grew up idolizing.  How could this be?!?!  I run into this guy in a butcher shop in rural Japan???  How random is that.

Zakk Wylde

He then invited me to his house where he has his garage set up to record music.  We sat in his garage and jammed for 5 hours.  5 HOURS.  This guy was a world class guitarist so it was a real treat for me.  I was like a kid in a candy shop.   Here is a video of us jamming to Blue Rodeo’s “5 Days In May”:

After exchanging gifts with Yoshi (a must do in Japan), me getting horse jerky and him getting Canadian gourmet tea, we said our goodbyes.

My gift of horse jerky. It was much like beef except maybe a bit better…….. (kidding Grandpa Goodings. Don’t disown me for saying that)

I still can’t get over how fun that night was.  Something I’ll always remember.

On the road early. 6:00 AM, February 24th.

The next morning, I was on the road hitchhiking by 7 AM with aims of reaching Yufuin by Midday.  Here are some of the people I hitchhiked with to get there:

Hitaya: A professional tennis coach.

The Isaka’s: She is a Japanese teacher, and he teaches business at a local university.

Kaisaka: A professional driving instructor

Onward and upward.  I rolled into the next town, Yufuin, at exactly noon today and after visiting a local onsen, I’m now primed to walk into town and do some exploring.  Stayed tuned for further updates…….

After leaving Nagasaki I spent nearly a full day hitchhiking, and ferry riding to reach my destination of Kumamoto.  A man and his aunt graciously pulled over to give me a ride.  The dude who picked me up had just returned from 5 years of studying in Spain.  We spent our time interlanguage chatting between Japanese, English, and Spanish.  His semi-senile aunt in the back seat had no idea what was going on.

Arriving in Kumamoto, I strolled into a tiny pub/restaurant and met some new friends.

My new Kumamoto gang. Nakamura-San (on the right) has bought my drinks at the same tiny pub for the past 3 nights!

The day:  I was off to see the 3rd largest castle in Japan, Kumamoto castle.  I also came back at night to check out the night view with a few peeps from my hostel.  Here are the pics:

Kumamoto Castle

Samurai’s still hang out at the castle. He was cracking jokes about the whitey (me) to the crowd.