orange_smaug (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
orange_smaug) wrote2008-01-12 11:36 pm
orange_smaug) wrote2008-01-12 11:36 pm
Entry tags:
Japan was fun :)
Hope everyone had a happy [insert winter holiday as appropriate]!
And now I'll spam you with pictures! Some parts might actually be interesting if you know what the hell Arashi is.
We were there for 3 tour days, starting at Narita airport and taking the bottom route southwest, then headed northeast along the top path.
Umi Hotaru means 'Sea Firefly', and the location is named for fluorescent marine animals found in the area. They built an underwater tunnel there to connect the peninsula to the larger body of the island (see map above) and make it more convenient to travel between the two places. This is actually a picture of these weird dog statues at the point where the road goes underwater.
Just had to put this here, there were these weird cabbage flowers all over the place. Kinda neat looking though.
Insert lots of temples, I'll put up pics if anyone actually wants them. Not that anyone wants the rest of them either, but this post is an excuse to talk about the next set...
...because when we got to Odowara Castle, it was actually on the same day that Matsumoto Jun of the pop group Arashi was filming something there :D. If you've watched the Hana Yori Dango jdrama, he plays one of the leads. They were filming at the gates and wanted us to go around and use another entrance, but our tour guide managed to convince them to let us go through them during a break so that we would get a chance to see them. We didn't actually find out until afterwards what the filming was for though, so we weren't really on the look out for anyone famous. Our tour guide was rather disappointed about that, she's a big fan of his XD.
Just outside the first gate, that's some of their equipment.
The dude on the left is gesturing for me to stop (didn't realize it until afterwards), so you get no pictures of the actors or set itself :(. Here's a picture of a horse though :D.
Another equipment shot.
Their changing tents, the one on the left is for guys, the one on the right for girls.
Here's a picture of the castle itself, just to prove that I didn't only take goofy pictures.
One of our dinners had us dressed in yukata and eating off of one of these. This actually wasn't all the food they had planned, there was also rice, soba noodles, sashimi, a whole fish for every person, and probably more that I'm forgetting.
The food was so good during the tour, I gained enough weight that my clothes actually felt tighter when we finally left Japan XD.
Kurotamago, or Black Eggs. The shells turn black from the special cooking procedure (geothermal mud pots, I think) but they don't taste any different from normal hard-boiled eggs, honestly XD.
The Diet Building looks pretty neat.
That's the Asahi Beer building, and the turd-shaped yellow blob is actually supposed to be beer fragrance rising off of a cup of sake or something. Wonder if whoever thought of that got fired XD.
TORO.
Wii Fit in the wild in Japan, truly a miracle :o.
This is a huge ferris wheel next to the Toyota Museum. I'm pretending it's the ferris wheel from Honey and Clover :).
Another shot from its base, it's ginormous. We didn't have enough time for a trip though :(.
The last few pictures are crappy because we were on a moving bus, and I forgot to turn on the night picture setting until partway in.
Rainbow Bridge at night.
Fireworks near Rainbow Bridge! Our tour guide said we were really lucky to see them, she'd never had that happen to her while leading a tour before :).
Crappy shot of it, but the same ferris wheel looks really cool lit up like this at night
And that's it! After Japan we went to Taiwan to visit relatives, and one of them was a four year old cousin who, for some reason, really latched on to me. Smart kid, but also a holy terror, likes to glom on to peoples' legs and not let them leave when it's time to XD. He called us last night, told us he had the train set up (kid loves trains, has a billion vehicle related toys) and asked if I could go over and play it with him. How do you explain how far away America is from Taiwan :(? We only go back every two years though, so he probably won't even remember me by the time we're visiting again XD.
And now I'll spam you with pictures! Some parts might actually be interesting if you know what the hell Arashi is.
We were there for 3 tour days, starting at Narita airport and taking the bottom route southwest, then headed northeast along the top path.
Umi Hotaru means 'Sea Firefly', and the location is named for fluorescent marine animals found in the area. They built an underwater tunnel there to connect the peninsula to the larger body of the island (see map above) and make it more convenient to travel between the two places. This is actually a picture of these weird dog statues at the point where the road goes underwater.
Just had to put this here, there were these weird cabbage flowers all over the place. Kinda neat looking though.
Insert lots of temples, I'll put up pics if anyone actually wants them. Not that anyone wants the rest of them either, but this post is an excuse to talk about the next set...
...because when we got to Odowara Castle, it was actually on the same day that Matsumoto Jun of the pop group Arashi was filming something there :D. If you've watched the Hana Yori Dango jdrama, he plays one of the leads. They were filming at the gates and wanted us to go around and use another entrance, but our tour guide managed to convince them to let us go through them during a break so that we would get a chance to see them. We didn't actually find out until afterwards what the filming was for though, so we weren't really on the look out for anyone famous. Our tour guide was rather disappointed about that, she's a big fan of his XD.
Just outside the first gate, that's some of their equipment.
The dude on the left is gesturing for me to stop (didn't realize it until afterwards), so you get no pictures of the actors or set itself :(. Here's a picture of a horse though :D.
Another equipment shot.
Their changing tents, the one on the left is for guys, the one on the right for girls.
Here's a picture of the castle itself, just to prove that I didn't only take goofy pictures.
One of our dinners had us dressed in yukata and eating off of one of these. This actually wasn't all the food they had planned, there was also rice, soba noodles, sashimi, a whole fish for every person, and probably more that I'm forgetting.
The food was so good during the tour, I gained enough weight that my clothes actually felt tighter when we finally left Japan XD.
Kurotamago, or Black Eggs. The shells turn black from the special cooking procedure (geothermal mud pots, I think) but they don't taste any different from normal hard-boiled eggs, honestly XD.
The Diet Building looks pretty neat.
That's the Asahi Beer building, and the turd-shaped yellow blob is actually supposed to be beer fragrance rising off of a cup of sake or something. Wonder if whoever thought of that got fired XD.
TORO.
Wii Fit in the wild in Japan, truly a miracle :o.
This is a huge ferris wheel next to the Toyota Museum. I'm pretending it's the ferris wheel from Honey and Clover :).
Another shot from its base, it's ginormous. We didn't have enough time for a trip though :(.
The last few pictures are crappy because we were on a moving bus, and I forgot to turn on the night picture setting until partway in.
Rainbow Bridge at night.
Fireworks near Rainbow Bridge! Our tour guide said we were really lucky to see them, she'd never had that happen to her while leading a tour before :).
Crappy shot of it, but the same ferris wheel looks really cool lit up like this at night
And that's it! After Japan we went to Taiwan to visit relatives, and one of them was a four year old cousin who, for some reason, really latched on to me. Smart kid, but also a holy terror, likes to glom on to peoples' legs and not let them leave when it's time to XD. He called us last night, told us he had the train set up (kid loves trains, has a billion vehicle related toys) and asked if I could go over and play it with him. How do you explain how far away America is from Taiwan :(? We only go back every two years though, so he probably won't even remember me by the time we're visiting again XD.