Lost on Purpose

So things didn’t turn out quite how we expected. We fully intended to release a new album at the end of 2011; here’s how that didn’t happen.

Ashes was supposed to be like any other Lost on Purpose album – a collection of tracks we had worked on over the course of a couple years, some pretty old, others very new. I was working on the final tracklist when Jacquie suggested that it might be a good idea to choose songs that made the best ‘album’, ie songs that best fit a certain theme. She was right, and so we cut a bunch of tracks from the album and recorded some new ones that fit the theme and so Ashes was born.

We decided to work on the leftover tracks and write new ones for a second album that would be the ying to Ashes‘ melancholy yang, and when I rounded up the final tracklist in October Jacquie once again had a suggestion ready. This time it was ‘why don’t we re-record all these songs at the same time so they all have a unified sound?’. And once again she was right, especially since the songs were recorded over such a long period of time – some of the original tracks go back a few years.

So here we are. Last month we recorded drums and I’ve been playing with those tracks for a few weeks to get a decent mix together, this week I begin re-recording everything – bass, guitars, vocals, the whole works. We’re recording an album!

Somewhere along the line the track list blew up and the new album will be much more than a counterpart to Ashes – it’s looking like a 15-track monster and the demo versions (with the new drums) already sound incredible.

Now we just need a title.

I woke up and Jacquie was gone.

But somewhat bizarrely we talked on skype. So strange that since I had gone to bed she had flown partway around the world and I was now talking to her and looking at her from 4000 miles away (I just made that number up). We did everything together for two weeks straight, now she was two dimensional.

I had stayed at our Shinjuku hotel that night so that we wouldn’t have to switch hotels the same day Jacquie left, but now I was moving on to cheaper digs. I was a bit late checking out and ignored the front desk’s calls. I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything.

I headed to the station, walking past everything one last time, and this time for good. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.

Once again I took the Yamanote line to Ueno Station. I was staying just a quarter mile or so away. I followed the hotel’s instructions but as usual had trouble finding it. I finally did and found out check in wasn’t until 3 PM. I had over three hours to kill.

I decided to head East and check out the Sumo Museum across the river from Akihabara. This was old school Tokyo, and although it was as crowded and congested as everywhere else it felt very different from the areas with modern high rises.

The museum was very small but cool, with dozens of photos of old wrestlers with English descriptions and other bits of history. The best part was a tv showing a loop of various famous matches – I honestly think I could watch sumo for hours. It’s always fascinated me.

The much larger Edo-Tokyo museum was nearby and had a sword exhibit I wanted to check out. But on the way I stumbled on something way cooler – firefighter training! Over 150 firefighters were hanging out in a parking near the Sumo Museum running through drills. I watched as a group of girls shot fire hoses at various targets and performed CPR on a dummy all while shouting out official-sounding things and being timed. It was pretty cool.

The Edo-Tokyo museum was nearby but I needed some sustenance first so I stopped at a bakery next door. It was delicious – I got a pizza-esque thing and a couple other rolls and sat down to eat and write in my journal. I suddenly realized how alone and quiet I was. There was no one to talk to anymore. I kept thinking how much Jacquie would have loved the bakery.

The Edo-Tokyo museum was closed. Crap. I had seen a park just a bit to the north on a map and figured I’d hang out there for a bit to write some more and come up with a plan for the rest of the afternoon.

The park was pretty, with a shrine-looking thing, a small decorative pool and tons of flowers. Pretty much your standard park. I barely noticed a few people near the shrine as I sat down to do some writing, but right away one of them approached me. I figured they were going to ask me to take a picture of them and their friends but – for the love of god – it was HITOMI! Of all the random places… we weren’t anywhere near the New Koyo, the hotel we met her at. Jacquie and I met her our first night in Japan, randomly saw her the next day on a train, randomly saw her again the day after that walking around the streets of Asakusa, and of course met up with her for the TV show shoot. And here she was again! We couldn’t believe it.

She was with her roommate and an American guy named Bill from Boston. He was staying at the New Koyo.

Hitomi asked about Jacquie and I had to tell her she left the day before. She said they were hanging out for the day and wanted me to come with them and ‘experience an earthquake and a typhoon’. My heart jumped a bit with excitement – anything to keep my mind off how lonely I was – but then she remembered they were all on bikes. Disappointing.

We chatted a bit more and after a few minutes Hitomi decided I could ride her roommate’s bike and her roommate and her could share one. Awesome!

Our first stop was the gigantic tower Jacquie and I always saw out of our hotel room window at the New Koyo. It was still under construction and was way off in an eastern district. I hadn’t appreciated how far away it was because as we grew closer the tower just kept getting higher and higher. The thing is huge! I had no idea – when completed (it’s done as of now) it will be one of the tallest structures on earth, easily the tallest building in Japan, and even only 2/3 finished it was impressive as hell.

(I just looked it up – it’s the second tallest structure on earth!)

We took some pictures, then since none of them had eaten yet we headed to – surprise – MOS Burger! I kind of wished I hadn’t eaten at that bakery already, but I did get a melon soda. I talked to Bill a bunch and found out that back in the US he worked in QA for the video game industry and spent a few years at Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band. He was in Japan for like five months – he said he visits every year. Later it became clear to me why – he and Hitomi were dating.

I talked to Hitomi’s roommate a bit, who I of course assumed was Japanese, so I said some things like ‘your country is great blah blah blah’. Of course she turned out to be… Russian.

Next it was the mysterious earthquake/typhoon thing. Oh man – this should be in every guidebook! It’s a free community service located in a fire station. You go in, take pictures of yourself wearing firemen clothes and sitting in a toy fire truck (obviously have a lot of schoolkids visit), watch a goofy movie about earthquake readiness, then you actually experience a simulated typhoon and earthquake.

No joke. First we donned full rain gear and galoshes and were directed into a small room with several sets of railings rising from the metal floors. The operator started the system and we were showered with water. He started by hitting us with ‘monsoon rain’, basically just a really heavy rain. Then he suggested that we hold on to the railings as he fired up the wind tunnel. Boom! Typhoon rain! It was pretty awesome, we just kept laughing the whole time.

Next we were taken to another room with a mock up of a small kitchen. The table was real but the ‘furniture’ was all foam. Bill and I were up first – we stood in the room as the operator cued up a ‘small earthquake’. It only took a few seconds before we had to dive under the table. Then we experienced a ‘big earthquake’. It was pretty intense. As you might expect there was a lot of shaking and all the pieces of furniture fell over.

We put things back together and the operator gave us one more – a recreation of the actual Kobe quake in the 90′s. It was not cool. Well actually it was awesome, but it wouldn’t have been fun to be in the actual quake. It started out with some general shaking but all of a sudden the ground shifted about a foot in an instant – it was truly jarring. The shaking got a whole lot worse after that.

We parted ways after the girls had their turn with the quakes. Hanging out with Hitomi and her friends was the absolute best thing that could have happened to me. Not only was it super fun but it kept my mind off the fact that Jacquie was gone.

Back at the hotel I was finally able to check in and see my surprisingly decent-sized room. I got some writing done and then took a stroll around Ueno. I visited the nightlife area adjacent to the train station that Jacquie and I hung out in. Big mistake. It was one memory after another. I found a ramen place as quickly as possible and ordered up a solid bowl. I thought about how far I had come since we first got to Japan – I didn’t think twice about walking into an unfamiliar restaurant and navigating the ticket vending machine (which is how you purchase your food in a lot of ramen shops).

I went home after that and finished the first Lost on Purpose vacation video. Only one more day in Japan.

This was a bad, bad day. Jacquie was leaving for the US in the early evening so we had just enough time to visit one last new Tokyo district – Harajuku. It’s the fashion capital of Japan and home to the now somewhat-famous Harajuku girls – teenage girls all dressed up in crazy costumes. But for some reason they weren’t out today.

We got Starbucks for the third day running, though we had to find a new one since the Mini Shinjuku store was closed. Once in Harajuku we saw more Westerners than any other part of Japan – I think they were all looking for the Harajuku girls too. We walked through the primary hip fashion street which looked and felt an awful lot like Melrose Avenue in LA. The only real difference was a store called Nudy Boy (I could be wrong, that’s exactly the type of store you’d find in Melrose).

The whole trip Jacquie had been craving… a watch. And finally she found just the right one in a small shop on a side street. From there we took a stroll down Omatesando Avenue, the Champs d’Elyssys of Tokyo. So it was just a wide, tree-lined boulevard with super high end designers.

We unsuccessfully searched for the aforementioned Harajuku girls in and around Yoyogi Park but all was not for naught – apparently it’s also a hangout for… hilarious greasers. There were three different crews just chilling out.

We bought a giant steamed bean dumpling from a sidewalk vendor. It was good. We stopped for coffee at a small cafe hidden in the trees.

The whole time we were trying to forget the fact that Jacquie only had a few hours left in Japan. Now it was time to go back to Shinjuku together for the last time, get packed up and see her off at Narita airport.

The walk to the subway was hard. We passed by so many things we had grown accustomed to seeing in just our few short days there – the turtle ‘sculptures’ that ended up being real, the park square with folks practicing bizarre hobbies, cocoon tower, giant garden spiders, mini shinjuku, the station itself.

We had planned on taking the Yamanote line to Ueno, and from there the limited express train to the airport. But in Ueno – the first station we arrived at two weeks prior – Jacquie saw signs for the Narita Express. I didn’t want to do it – it’s expensive – but I went along with it to appease her. I didn’t really care about the money anymore, I was just thinking about her leaving.

It was a long walk to the express platform and time was starting to get a little tight. We lucked out big time because we arrived just before the train took off and a helpful English-speaking worker told us to just jump on. Inside he had us pay the difference from the balances on our pasmo cards and we were off. And we had seats!

Well, good thing Jacquie had that idea because my memory of the limited express line was incorrect – it took way longer to get there than I had thought. The Narita Express got us there with a comfortable but in no way excessive time buffer before Jacquie’s flight. Phew.

We spent a little time looking through the shops and ate an early dinner of soba noodles and tempura. I was trying to stave off an impending sense of doom. It was weird. I couldn’t shake this horrible feeling. I did not want her to leave. I always knew it would be hard to say goodbye but I never would have guessed it would have been this bad.

We tried to find some peach candies for her to take on the plane. They were omnipresent throughout Japan but were curiously absent from the airport. At the last minute we found a solitary shop with them in stock.

Jacquie went through security and this was the last time I saw her for two months.

The train ride back was miserable.

Started off our post-birthday day with Starbucks at the Mini Shinjuku again. This time I got a creme brulee frappucino. Just keeping it real. We followed that up with lunch at a ramen stop just down the street from our hotel, where we had to order via a ticket-dispensing vending machine. I guess this is pretty standard ramen protocol although we had thus far avoided having to use them. The ramen was good. Very good.

Our plan was to spend a little more time in Ginza and check out the Sony building, then train our way to Koenji, a supposedly chill old-school Tokyo neighborhood a friend of mine had recommended.

The Sony building was a little disappointing. It’s several stories full of yet-to-be-released gear, which sounds great on paper, but there wasn’t anything ground breaking or super futuristic – it’s hard to get excited about a new digital camera model or overproduced Playstation game. They had 3D tvs that you could test out but I thought they sucked pretty hard. You had to wear 3D glasses (I already have glasses…) which were surprisingly heavy on my face. There is no way I’d want to wear them consistently. Besides, I already have enough trouble finding the remote! The picture isn’t even really 3D at all. Instead of ‘continuous’ 3D like in the real world, where you can tell the relative depth of any object, 3D tv only has a few levels of depth. There are the main actors in the foreground 3D level, crowd scenes a level behind, and the background behind that. Just three planes of 3D. Lame.

The nice part of visiting Ginza on the weekend is that they shut down some of the streets to pedestrian traffic only. And the area is ‘nice’ in a Santa Monica/Beverly Hills sort of way – not necessarily my cup of tea but fun to look at and pleasant for a while.

We were approached by a group who wanted to take pictures of us hugging for a website called – wait for it – hugs-wave.com. Hilarious. A dude took like 12 shots of us hugging rapid fire. They gave us our card and we were pretty excited to see shots of us hugging. However I’m sad to say that it’s been a whole year and Hugs Wave Vol. 2 never made it to the web.

Then we took a train to Koenji, in the western suburbs of Shinjuku. We had no idea where to go or what to do, we just knew it was supposed to have more of a traditional small town vibe… relatively speaking of course, since we were still firmly within the Tokyo metropolis.

We found a small pedestrian street lined with shops and sauntered down. At the end of that street was another shopping area, and at the end of that one was another… and then another. And then we were in the midst of a huge outdoor mall with loads of shops and restaurants and people milling about. So this was Koenji! It really did feel completely different than most of Tokyo – it was like a world removed. But still really cool. We found two ‘Mexican’ restaurants that featured… interesting tacos, to say the least.
We passed on those and ate kaiten-zushi, aka conveyor belt sushi. We had a ton of fish and when they tallied up our plates I was stunned to see the bill come up to only 850 yen! I totally did a double take when I saw that. The whole meal was around $10, incredibly cheap for Japan!

We walked around some more and saw a curious sign advertising some sort of music store. It was in the basement of a small shopping complex so we walked down the stairs to find out it was a band rehearsal space. There was a desk at the bottom of the stairs so we awkwardly said hi to the employee, stood there for a few seconds saying ‘gee… so it’s a rehearsal space, cool’, then left.

We crisscrossed through some tiny alleys and found a bar with loud, entertaining waiters. They were yelling at us to try to get us to come in… well not really ‘in’ since it was open to the alley. It worked. The place was packed and there was no English but all Japanese people seem to understand ‘Yebisu BLACK!’ and we actually used our guidebook to translate the romanji menu to words we could understand. I don’t really remember what we ordered aside from the alcohol and some yakitori, but I know we had yet another great time, pretty much the norm for Japan.

We spent some time playing the awesome taiko drum banging video game which we had been playing at every possible opportunity – and we got our highest scores yet. Great fun. Koenji is pretty awesome and felt a little bit like home – aka a bit of a hipster paradise.

We finished the night by stopping at a McDonald’s for soft cream sundaes before catching the train back to Shinjuku. It felt like three AM but it was only 11, yet some of the McDonalds customers were passed out in their seats with cell phones and cigarettes still in their hands.

It was a great last night for Jacquie. Yep, unfortunately the next day she was leaving for LA while I was staying in Asia for two more months. I was regretting that plan more and more as the time for her to leave grew near.

Jacquie’s birthday began with – what else? – a celebratory Starbucks’ coffee. Jacquie got her usual vanilla latte – I swear even these employees knew her name – and I got my rarely-usual carmel frappucino. The store was in a small shopping center called Mini Shinjuku, which was thought was a cute name until we realized it was a Mini Cooper car dealership too.

We decided to spent the afternoon walking around Shibuya, the mega-busy shopping and entertainment center. The famous ‘crossing’ is there, where hundreds of people cross a massive intersection every walk signal.

Lunch was first on our list and just as we were starting to worry that we wouldn’t find a suitable birthday spot lo and behold a Shakey’s appeared in front of us. For some reason pizza sounded like the perfect option.

The Japanese Shakeys had the same all you can eat lunch special as the US version, so we paid our yen and grabbed our plates. Unlike our Shakeys the pizzas come out like clockwork, at least one new pizza every two minutes. And these aren’t your standard pepperonis and supremes. We couldn’t figure out what they hell they were putting on some of the slices, but others were awesome combinations featuring corn, marshmallows, egg, seaweed… some had tiny little dried fish, all sorts of peppers and seafood, it was a total smorgasbord. I literally ate like thirteen slices.

We worked off our calories walking around the Shibuya streets, then hung out at a music store and played a little guitar and keyboard. I found a super cool distorted organ sound and we jammed on a nice progression together.

Back at the hotel we got a little r&r and planned our evening.

It began with a mad dash to the Park Hyatt Shinjuku. I had gotten preoccupied with trying to correctly fold Jacquie’s cloth bag that I bought her in Kyoto and didn’t notice the clock passing 7:30. The Park Hyatt charges a 2200 yen cover just to sit in the New York Lounge on the 52nd floor after 8:00, so we had to hurriedly throw on our nice clothes and run down the street to make it in time. I think we got off the elevator at 7:58… and they promptly told us that once the band started playing at 8:00 we’d have to pay the cover charge anyhow.

Damn. 2200 yen per person is over $50. And the drinks were at least $13… for a bottle of beer. I had to spend a minute mentally overcoming my cheapness and go with it – it was Jacquie’s birthday after all, and the Park Hyatt (where Lost in Translation was filmed) was way up on her to-do list. So we stayed.

And it was awesome. The views were incredible – Shinjuku has the tallest collection of buildings in all of Tokyo – and the band was hilarious! Ok, not really hilarious… it was an American jazz trio that killed… but after a couple songs a female vocalist joined and if you’ve seen Lost in Translation you’ll know what this means – it. was. exactly. like. watching. sausalito!

I drank a Sapporo and Jacquie was finally able to order a Manhattan – appropriately so given that we were in the New York Lounge. I had a nice time pretending to be a high roller for an hour… oh yeah, you better believe we took our time with our drinks!

We had had such a good time the night before – and the food was so good – that Jacquie wanted to eat at the same izakaya for her birthday. This time we got a table and ordered tons of skewers, more of the best kimchi ever, and plenty of beers and sake.

After dinner we went around the block to Big Echo, a karaoke chain. We rented a room for an hour and had such a blast that we booked a second hour and ordered more sake and an Asahi Black (not quite as good as Yebisu Black).

The karaoke was hilarious! All the songs were midi based so you could change the pitch at will. We rocked out to mostly Weezer songs and 80s hits, and I threw down an Elvis impression on ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love’. The on-screen visuals were pretty incredible too – usually some weird love story vignettes featuring big-haired stoic 80s American dude and a girl.


We had an absolute blast. By now, between drinks at the Hyatt, the izakaya, and karaoke we were pretty drunk. We tried to soak up some of the alcohol with delicious ‘soft creams’ from McDonalds on the way back, but as soon as we got back to the room Jacquie insisted on making me a shinjuku (read the last post for an explanation).

It was one of the most fun nights ever. But hey, don’t take my word for it – Jacquie said it was the best birthday she’s ever had.

Time to head back to Tokyo! Our shinkansen train was at 1:30 PM so we had some time to kill in the AM – we had planned it that way since, frankly, we loved Kyoto so much we wanted to spend as much time there as possible while still avoiding the Tokyo rush hour.

We had a relaxed morning in downtown Kyoto (after returning our much-loved bikes) where we ate pastries and drank coffee at a Choco-Cru, a cafe that we later learned was part of a large chain. I told Jacquie about her birthday gift so we went back to the fabric store on Shijo-Dori and she picked out her favorite cloth. I tried getting some cash at an atm but for some reason it wasn’t working, so we ended up talking with an employee to get that sorted out.

After that we walked back along the stream for the last time, grabbed our stuff from the ryokan, took the bus to the train station and spent the rest of our free time wandering through the Isetan department store in the station’s basement looking for bento boxes to eat on the train.

The trip back was nice although it was way too foggy to see any part of Mr. Fuji. My bento box was tasty but the Suntory Black drink I had purchased was basically just diluted black coffee. I was hoping for a taste sensation. I spent the time getting mostly caught up on my journal, which was huge.

And then we were back in Tokyo. Crazy. We felt like pros jumping right on the Yamanote line to Shinjuku and our new digs, the New City Hotel. It was a decent place and our first 100% real hotel room – in other words it was a normal size, albeit sans a/c.

In one of the vending machines – in case you didn’t know, you can find a vending machine pretty much anywhere in Japan – we discovered white grape soda and soon after mixed the world’s first Shinjuku drink.

Shinjuku:
4 oz cheap sho-chu purchased from a Don Quixote store while filming Japanese TV
4 oz hotel water
2 oz white grape soda

They tasted amazing, duh. I was really trying to work through the bottle of sho-chu so we (read: I) could stop lugging it around.

Then we headed out in search of food. It was great being back in the crazy neon-ness of Shinjuku, where we had hung out on our second night ever in Japan. We walked through piss alley first, I guess for nostalgia’s sake (if you can be nostalgic for something that happened a week prior), then backtracked to a cool-looking and busy yakitori spot. As usual we scored big. It was great. We sat at the bar and ordered a multitude of meat skewers that were cooked by an old man whose grill was open to the street outside – with the flames and tongs and his general demeanor he looked like an old-school swordsmith. Yes, I want to be him when I grow up.

Not only was the food fantastic, the place also served the best kimchi ever (in Jacquie’s opinion, and she’s been eating Korean BBQ since she was 5). We also ate fried rice balls (onigiri) and I ordered ‘orange drink’, which turned out to be Hi-C in a bottle! Great vibes all around (don’t mind me talking like a guy who hangs out in drum circles on the weekend).

After filling up we went out in search of the famed Golden Gai, a stretch of tiny – and I mean tiny – bars our friend Alexander (from the Japanese TV show) had mentioned. It’s located on some Shinjuku backstreets, behind a shrine, and once you find you know you’re there. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

An entire block is cut into several narrow alleys housing probably 20 different bars per alley, each with only 5-10 seats. That’s it. It’s like a magazine stand, there is an incredibly variety of themes and styles for any type of person. Too bad there’s nothing like it in LA… or perhaps the rest of the world for that matter.

The downside of the small size is that most places don’t want tourists. The owners are looking for a pleasant clientele and an intimate atmosphere, and I guess a couple non-Japanese speakers are just dead space. Alexander told us he was literally asked to leave by a couple different places. So we walked forever, carefully choosing a friendly-looking place (and working up the guts to go in) owned by a decent fellow who looked lonely as he played flamenco guitar.

He asked if we spoke Japanese, then asked if we understood ‘cover charge’ and told us it would be 1300 yen each. F that. Such is the Golden Gai. In the end we consulted the guidebook and went to a recommended, tourist-friendly spot (but not one that advertised ‘tourists welcome!’) called The Albatross. It was really cool and seemed just as traditional as the rest, even a little like Ishimaru Shoten in Kyoto. I drank beer while Jacquie unsuccessfully tried to order a Manhattan and ended up getting… something else. Maybe a beer, but I couldn’t remember when I wrote this journal and unless she happens to still remember (it’s a year later now) we shall never know.

Anyhow, after downing those we ordered one of the house drinks called a Nipponesque (maccha liqueur and cream) and then there was something else too… I guess it’s appropriate that I can’t really remember stuff while we were drinking. It was a nice time all in all.

We walked to our new home and realized it was now officially Jacquie’s birthday! At least it was in Japan, it was still Oct 14 in the USA. We were also perhaps a little too amazed by a super cool building we later found out was appropriately called ‘The Cocoon’.

We had a big itinerary planned for our last full day in Kyoto. I wanted to see the Golden Pavilion and Nijo Castle (since it was on the way), and Jacquie was up for visiting the bamboo forest way out in the western part of town. It looked like a lot of biking according to google maps but I figured we could handle it.

Jacquie was feeling pretty sick so we tried to take it easy, but that’s not easy when you’re biking around. She was flagging on the way to Nijo Castle so we stopped for coffee. I’m not much of a coffee drinker but that morning I realized how much I was going to miss this (somewhat annoying) ritual when she left… Jacquie was flying home to LA on the 17th while I was staying to travel through Asia for two more months.

The coffee shop/bakery was just across the street from Nijo Castle, and Jacquie said it was the best coffee she had yet had on the trip… so good that she got a second cup. We bought a couple awesome looking pastries on the way out that we ate once we got inside the castle grounds. And man were they outstanding, especially the bacon one with a cream cheese filling. Do yourself a favor and stop by Cafe Colorado next time you’re in Kyoto.

The castle was super cool in construction but mostly underwhelming in presentation. You were limited to just walking around the old stone grounds and virtually all the interior rooms were roped off, so it was just a lot of looking at stuff. The best part were the ‘nightingale floors’ – the wooden planks of the flooring rested on steel rods in such a way that when you walked on them they squeaked in a musical way, like a nightingale I guess, to presumably warn the inhabitants of ninjas.

We took off to the North and the Golden Pavilion, a must-see. It really is stunning, considering that it’s a… golden pavilion, and it’s surrounded by a large pond dotted with tiny islands, but once you move on to the surrounding grounds it gets underwhelming and super touristy.

We left the pavilion and checked our map. Arashiyama, the area where the bamboo forest was located, was way off to the west – pretty much a straight shot down a nearby road. So we biked. And biked. And biked. We crossed a major road and looked at the map – and we were still nowhere near Arashiyama. We were starting to not have fun and Jacquie was sick and mega tired. We looked at the still-distant western mountains and joked (sort of) that we’d have to bike all the way there.

Uh, we did. It was brutal. Jacquie needed energy so we grabbed a small meal of food – it was a real-life video game health pickup.

The bamboo grove was a little underwhelming at first, but the deeper we walked the bigger the bamboo got and the darker the path became. It was a peaceful way to cool off from our marathon ride.

Jacquie took the lead on the way back and pushed herself. She killed it. We had fun riding through the random neighborhoods and got back fairly quickly. We were probably spirited along by the thought of what was waiting for us – ramen! This bowl was special because it came highly recommended – my friend Mike had studied in Kyoto a few years prior and it was his favorite place. I ordered the shoyu (soy sauce broth) as instructed while Jacquie pointed at something else (there was no English). My current 2011 ramen knowledge thinks Jacquie may have ordered tantanmen (Chinese-style ramen).

Mike was right – it was damn good ramen. I ate every last drop.

Back at the ryokan we crunched some numbers and realized we rode 18.5 miles! Killer.

There was still some riding to do as we had to visit the train station to get our reserved seats for the trip back to Tokyo the following day. After taking care of that we had a blast exploring the uber cool station – there are nooks and escalators galore, and eventually we cruised up something like eight escalators in a row and found the skyway, a suspended walking platform high above the main station floor.

Next we walked across the street to Kyoto Tower, but this time we only went partway up to the Sky Lounge, a ‘cool’ blue-lit bar with nice city views and predictably expensive drinks. But they had Yebisu Black. Classy.

We rode back to the ryokan but stopped at a convenience store on the way. Jacquie got some candy and I got a super oishii Crunky (it’s the brand name, seriously) ice cream bar. It was fun riding and eating at the same time. So all in all we rode a bit more than 18.5 miles that day, our last day in Kyoto.

We were really liking Kyoto with its small town feel and gorgeous mountains and streams.
After skyping with my Mom to wish her a happy birthday we walked to the bike rental place but found it temporarily closed – it was just a guy who sat in his shop with his dog and practiced guitar while renting out bikes in Kyoto. Pretty cool life. So we grabbed breakfast at a modern place up the street to kill some time, then got our bikes and set off on the lonely planet temple trail.

Jacquie was starting to get sick so we paused at a random shrine for a bit. It was a lot cooler than expected, so it’s kind of crazy to think of how Kyoto’s hundreds of temples got built. I mean how many do you need?

We pushed on to the North Higayashima area and the highly recommended Nanzen-Ji temple. It featured a huge main gate and a pleasant walking tour, but the best part was the ancient aqueduct that we followed into the wilderness. I thought an octorok was going to pop out at any moment, but thankfully we spied a power mushroom in the forest. There was an enormous black and yellow spider hanging out in its web too.

There were a lot of cute schoolchilden on a field trip, a few of which said ‘hello’, and once we replied every single one started shouting ‘hello!’ and ‘thank you!’ as well.

It was lunchtime so we rode south into town a bit and ate at… a Japanese restaurant. I had udon noodles and some sushi which was excellent as always. You really can’t go wrong with the food in Japan. Well, maybe you can if you order the blowfish.

Next up were the top two temples on my wish list – the first was Fushimi Inari, a relatively unknown temple in the distant southeast. It had a wooded path lined with hundreds of shrine gates and was near to the second, penultimate temple – Nintendo Headquarters!

I guessed at the route and we rode deep into blue collar neighborhoods far from the city proper in a semi-industrial district. I really had no clue where we were going as the lonely planet didn’t have a detailed map of the area, but we did find a temple in roughly the correct location. I asked an old man if we were in the right place (hopelessly trying to pronounce ‘fushimi inari’ in Japanese), and he seemed to understand and pointed down the street, giving me several sentences’ worth of unintelligible instructions as well. We rode in the direction his finger indicated and searched the nearby neighborhoods (which had turned white collar), but since it was starting to get late we gave up our search and just entered the temple we had found.

We walked in right as the sun was setting and magic hour struck to discover it was Fushimi Inari after all! We found it! I have no idea what that old man was telling us…

However, immediately after celebrating a man on a scooter pulled up and gave us the international sign language for ‘we’re closed!’. Foiled! We snapped some quick photos but the shrine gate walk will have to wait until another trip.

We took off to find a bridge across the nearby river. There was a lot of construction around but we managed to pick our way through it, and the views from the bridge were far more than worth it. Storm clouds were brewing and that coupled with the sun shining horizontally in the late afternoon sky made for some striking scenes.

We came across Jujo Station – our landmark – and circled the blocks where Nintendo HQ was supposed to be (according to my memory). It was not a particularly nice area, and it didn’t look promising. Sure enough we found nothing. I was pretty disappointed – google maps, while normally one of the most impressive programs ever, had failed us several times already in Japan. But maybe it wasn’t all gmaps’ fault… Jacquie offered to turn on her iphone’s data roaming and do a search, which I told her not ot bother with. She did anyhow and within 20 seconds she had the route to Nintendo HQ displayed. We were only a few blocks off!

Yes I am that big of a nerd. Unbelievable! I checked the #1 shrine in Kyoto off my list and we had fun taking pictures of each other in front of the surprisingly dull and drab light grey building. I didn’t get a chance to say hi to Miyamoto though.

We then headed due north to go home and stumbled upon a nice mall directly south of Kyoto Station. We decided to investigate.

We spent a lot of time in the grocery store checking out all the weird fish options and studying the massive beer aisle. We bought a ‘small’ variety, including a baby can of Asahi. Who drinks that thing? Well, apparently Jacquie. I got a normal sized can of the revered Yebisu Black. I then secretly bought a birthday card for Jacquie.

We got a pumpkin flavored macha smoothie at a nearby store before heading back to the ryokan, although we stopped at the bike rental place to extend the rental through the end of our stay in Kyoto.

We drank our beers as we planned our dinner at an area Jacquie had read about directly the north. We had ridden through that spot earlier in the day and it looked awesome – just tons of tiny alleyways lined with stores and restaurants.

We rode out in the night and parked our bikes, then started walking. There was a lot that looked good so it was hard to pick a place and even harder to see inside so we would know if it was full of people or a dead zone.

After a few blocks we reached an area where alleys kept splitting off of other alleys We chose one at random and peeked in an open door to find one of the tiniest, craziest-looking bars ever. It was incredible.

There was no way we could resist. We walked in and at first I couldn’t even see the bar due to the low light and its resemblance to a small desk in size. 1920′s swing music was jumping from the speakers and the bartender was really cool. We got some drinks and soaked in the vibe. This place was awesome. The bartender asked us where we were from and we started talking to him and the guy next to us, who spoke fairly good English.

The vibe was too fun. We ordered more drinks and got some bar snacks, including two rounds of fried cheese. Some new people showed up and a friendly girl started talking to us too. She ended up offering to take the picture above.

During a lull in conversation, at the height of the craic (to borrow an obscure Gaelic term), we heard a woman’s voice speaking from outside the nearby open door and glanced over just in time to see a geisha walk past. That was it for me – this was one of the top 3 bars I had ever been to, easy. I know geisha dress has been commodified for the tourist industry, and so it’s very, very rare to encounter a ‘real’ one. Who knows, maybe the girl we saw was just going to a costume party. But it looked pretty real to me.

If you’re even in Kyoto, please go to Ishimaru Shoten. Address is in the top right.

That night, riding home through the dark and narrow Kyoto alleys, along streams with Jacquie behind me, that’s why I took this trip.

After checking out of our hotel we said goodbye to Osaka and took a quick and easy 15 minute shinkansen ride to Kyoto’s famous train station. It is indeed amazing, a modern marvel of massive arcing ceilings and exposed steel. We asked for directions and eventually ended up on a bus that was not built to transport two people with a large amount of luggage, but we made it to our stop ok and walked across a tiny picturesque bridge to find our ryokan. A ryokan is the traditional Japanese inn you’ve seen in movies with tatami mats and sliding paper doors. Ours was a Ryokan in name only; aside from tatami mats it was pretty much a hostel like any other, with washing machines and public bathrooms, but for the first time our room was (relatively) huge! It came with a robust wi-fi connection too, which was big plus since I had recently signed up for a flickr pro account after learning that my memory cards were waaaaay to small to store all the video I was taking, so I had a lot to upload.

We set out to explore and found a bike rental place on the corner of the main road renting for 500 yen per day – an unbeatable deal. We rode to the downtown market and walked through the stalls selling fresh foods and lots of… shoes. We ate at First Kitchen, a chain restaurant, where I had a superb double bacon burger with a fried egg on top that was only surpassed by my melon soda.

Jacquie loved a shop that sold big squares of cloth that were meant to be tied in a sort of origami fashion into a purse or other feminine container-type stuff. I decided I would buy her one for her upcoming birthday.

I read Memoirs of a Geisha several years ago, which was largely set in the Gion district of Kyoto. I liked the book quite a bit because you could really feel the history, so it felt pretty amazing to finally ride through Gion along the banks of the Kamo River. What else I would rather do with my life I do not know – that bike ride was one of the pinnacles of the entire trip.

Biking in general is the absolute best and I hoped to do much more of it on my trip (I ended up getting a lot more biking in than I bargained for, especially in Yangshuo, China).

We headed north along the river for a bit, then rode pretty far south before cutting over to the train station area, which sits across the street from Kyoto Tower.

We had to see how it compared to Tokyo Tower, so we rode up to the very top and took lots of photos of the surrounding city. Kyoto is very, very different from Tokyo. There are relatively few tall buildings and the entire city proper is surrounded by mountains on three sides, which themselves hosted literally hundreds of temples. The tower had several telescope/binocular things that were super high powered – they were exactly like the wildlife spotting telescopes guides use in Costa Rica. The clarity and distance is insane.

The temple in the above photo looks close but is actually a few miles east of the tower, and after spying it we biked our way over. Called Kiyomizu-dera, it’s one of the most popular tourist spots in Kyoto. Yet somehow we couldn’t find it at first, and spent time checking out a much smaller temple that we thought was Kiyomizu. On a whim we followed a narrow path behind the temple that ended up winding through a large cemetery (which you can see just below the temple in the photo), before leading to the actual temple.

It was cool seeing the buildings that we had viewed from the tower up close. We passed on paying to walk around inside main temple complex and just hung around outside for a while, watching the Kyoto light up as night came. We walked back down through the cemetery in twilight and rode home to return our bikes. We recharged in our room before heading out for a very late dinner in Gion. It took a while to find an open, yet non-expensive, non-prostitution-related restaurant among the tiny back alleys, but we ended up finding a pretty cool traditional place with recessed seating and screen doors at each table so you could eat in privacy. The food was excellent, especially chicken cooked in some sort of skin (maybe dough) and a superb pizza, which Jacquie didn’t like because of a healthy amount of mayo as a topping. More for me! At one point they had to send over the English speaking guy to tell us they were out of kimchi.

Our first day in Kyoto was a big success.

Somehow we (mainly Jacquie) kept getting bitten by mosquitoes, even in an a/c hotel room. But at least our prayers had been answered and the rain had stopped, so it looked like a nice day ahead of us in Nara, one of the ancient capitals of Japan roughly 40 minutes outside of Osaka. We reached the town without issue and ate a teriyaki MOS Burger (I would kill for one of those right now) at the Nara station. We thought about renting bikes but the streets were still wet from an early morning rain and we didn’t want to get stuck.

We set out on the long stroll through the small town towards the lonely planet ‘walking tour’ route, pausing at a temple for a moment but couldn’t figure out what it was. We continued on and saw a feature unique to Nara – the first of several dozen tame deer. They were awesome, just like big dogs, and vendors were selling stacks of wafers to feed them. We’d walk through a crowd of people and suddenly you’d see a deer in the center of the road begging for food. Hilarious.

Watch out for Knock Down!

We finally found an awesome garden mentioned in the guidebook. It sounds boring but it was actually kind of inspiring – I now want to terraform the land like that garden. It was the ultimate hid and seek location, with tiny hills, small gazebos, artful hedges, a water mill, a lake with miniature islands, not to mention the scenery was a painting from every viewpoint. It was only missing a cave.

We continued on to the main event, a giant temple that is literally the largest wooden building in the world. It was built without any nails. I don’t get it either. The temple gatehouse featured two of the coolest statues I’ve ever seen. Hands down. They were carved from wood a couple hundred years ago but they looked just like super huge, super detailed manga characters. Frankly I don’t know how they’re not as famous as that David thing in Florence. Totally impressive.

There seemed to be some sort of holiday happening because outside the temple gates were over a dozen small marching bands that took off on parade one by one. We weren’t sure where they were headed but it was cool watching everyone cheer them on. Now all the trouble we had finding a hotel for the weekend was beginning to make sense.

Jacquie’s feet were really hurting bad by this point so we didn’t go inside the temple to see the giant bronze buddha, and she sat on some steps nearby while I ran ahead to a subtemple with a beautiful view for a few minutes.

Then we randomly splurged on an assortment of Mister Donut treats. I thought for sure they would be some of the best donuts I’d ever eaten but they were actually very disappointing. I think the Japanese have a different idea of what a donut should taste like.

On the way back to the station we kept running into the marching bands as they paraded through town. Pretty cool. And then I heard a familiar melody from several blocks away. No… could it be?

Sure enough a Super Mario band was heading our way! I was ecstatic. I started shooting video immediately as several Luigi’s, koopas, squid-hatted drummers and a drag queen princess peach paraded by while blasting out the SMB World 1-1 theme! That totally made my day. Check out the video.

Back to Osaka, we tried to give Kita a second chance and decided to walk all the way there since it was such a nice night. As usual, we got a little lost, but eventually we stumbled on an area full of small restaurants and pubs and realized this was the real #2 nightlife area in Osaka! We never even came close that first night.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find a place that felt right, especially since many of them were already closing up. So we rode the subway back and enacted Plan B – just find something close to our hotel.

We walked around for several blocks but kept getting stymied – too expensive, too crappy, too weird. Finally – FINALLY – a seat opened up at a normal-looking gyoza bar. Good thing too, because that place was awesome! Easily the best gyoza I’ve ever had and the food and drinks were phenomenally priced. It felt like the Japanese version of Ye Rustic, my go-to wing and beer pub in my hood. We ate a ton; beers, sake, gyozas, salad and two bowls of rice. We left satisfied and very happy.

It was the perfect way to end our time in Osaka. Tomorrow it was on to Kyoto!