Heading South Today

You've probably seen the news reports on the nuclear reactor explosions north of Tokyo. It's all that is showing on the news channels here. Pretty scary stuff, and its not even clear in Japan exactly what has happened. Was the core damaged, was it a steam explosion, is there any radioactivity leaked? And BBC News suggested that the Japanese government have censored information like this in the past, which makes you wonder what is really going on.

We are currently at Tokyo station waiting for the bullet train to Kyoto, which is many hundreds of miles south of Tokyo.

Feels like the best thing to be doing today, but most importantly, we are really looking forward to getting to Kyoto... every picture we have seen so far looks amazing. Can't wait...

Heebie Jeebies?

As we walked around the city yesterday, I kept calling out to Leanne "Did you just feel that" every time I felt a tremor in the ground. She never felt a thing and said I was either very sensitive or had the 'heebie-jeebies' from Friday. I put it down to the shakes, like you get when youve been on a boat for too long, and thought nothing of it...

However, we just learnt from the news this morning that there were 50 aftershocks in the city yesterday. That would explain it...

The tremors did seem as powerful but the key difference is that they are over in milli-seconds rather than the minutes we experienced on Friday.

iLoo v2

So we've already talked about how advanced the toilets are out here, but in the restaurant tonight there was a Panasonic one! Not a TV, not a DVD player, but a toilet! This was pretty advanced...

But then it got a bit more interesting. This was a non-English speaking restaurant, so all of the controls were in Japanese. To find the flush I had to press quite a few buttons, a bit of trial and error, and much to my shock was the rod that came out on the 3rd button I pressed!!!

Yikes!! It was like some kind of sex toy!

Panasonic, you should be ashamed!

BBQ in Ueno

We headed out to Ueno tonight to our favourite part of town. This is our last night in Tokyo before Kyoto, so we wanted to go back to our favourite place.

There was a BBQ restaurant that we walked passed last week, but weren't able to get in as it was too busy. As we walked up to the entrance, the doorman recognised us from last week and got really excited. He brought us in and shouted something really loud, and then every waiter in the restaurant shouted the same thing back.

This was one cool restaurant. You got a table with a BBQ in the centre, and a pipe above that sucked the smoke away. You then chose a selection of meats, fish and vegetables, and cook away! Love it!

We thought we had a lot to eat tonight; with chicken, beef, pork and lots of funky peppers. But a couple of girls to the right of us went all out. We're talking everything, every type of meat, fish, rice, noodle, vegetable and salad. You wouldn't believe the food they got through. And to their merit, they finished it all...

Still going to Kyoto tomorrow

We are still planning to go Kyoto tomorrow. The bullet trains still seem to be travelling south and we have just received this email from the manager of Hotel Mume in Kyoto:

Dear Mr. Andrew Keleher,
 
Thank you very much for your kind e-mail, and I am glad to tell you that we are absolutely fine here in Kyoto.

It is too sad to see the enormous damage by the earthquake in the northern part on the news, but we have not been affected at all, although we feel awfully sorry for the people in the north area....
 
I am terribly sorry that this awful thing has happend during your vacation....
But still, we are very looking forward to welcoming you to Mume tomorrow.
 
Please have a safe trip!!

Hisako

Traditional Japanese Wedding

In Yoyogi-Koen park there is a shrine called 'Meiji-jingu' and after arriving in Shinjuku, we headed there. The park was really peaceful with a huge walkway surrounded by massive trees. It was a stark contrast to the chaos we left behind in Tokyo station and much needed after yesterday.

We walked around until we came to the shrine. It was a lot bigger than we expected and when we approached the entrance a group of girls dressed in traditional Japanese kimono were coming out. We thought perhaps there was some kind of function going on but it wasn't until we went through the entrance that we saw the bride and groom and realised it was a wedding!

The bride was dressed in the most beautiful white kimono and had a small group to help her around. We had heard from our guide, Yasushi, that a traditional Japanese kimono can cost around £40,000 to hire because of the number of people it takes to dress the bride and help her around. It was amazing to see it but just when we thought it couldn't get better, we turned around and saw a procession of some sort leaving the shrine itself...

We soon realised it was another wedding! With one couple gone, another were just leaving the shrine in procession. The bride had the equivalent of bridesmaids and a lady to hold an umbrella over her to protect her from the sun.

It was so beautiful to watch the wedding procession on such a gloriously sunny day and in such contrast to yesterday. All of the hope and happiness of a wedding, it really did make us feel happier and reminded us of our own wedding day and why we were in Japan in the first place. Despite what has happened, we are here to celebrate our wedding and seeing that ceremony today again reminded us how lucky we are...

After the wedding, we both felt more content and continued on our walk through the gardens, feeling more chilled and happy.

Ghost Town

We headed out of the hotel this morning into the main street by Tokyo station and were completely shocked by the immediate change in atmosphere. Usually such a buzzing and vibrant place, the main street felt so quiet and empty. The crowds outside of the station from last night, the queues for the taxis, and the seas of people looking for a place to stay had all gone. Hopefully they had all got home. From the news reports this morning, it looked to have been a long night. But the trains seemed to be running again.

We headed to our local 7-Eleven, where we go every morning for bottles of water. However it was closed. It hasn't been closed since we've been here, even at 2am in the morning. We kept walking and finally found a supermarket, but there wasn't a lot we could buy. The shelves were all bare, with nothing by newspapers and soft drinks in stock. We brought some drinks and a local newspaper and headed out.

Tokyo seems to have coped really well with the earthquake from an infrastructure perspective, the buildings are still standing and there's no major damage to the centre. However, it feels like yesterday has taken the wind out of this buzzing city. The odd person that you do pass in the street gives you a smile, but the excitement and passion has gone from their eyes. Tokyo feels really flat today.

Still shocked by the quietness of the city, we walked into the main train station. Inside the station was extremely busy and there seemed to be a lot of people still waiting for a train home. People were sleeping in the waiting rooms and there were large queues at the JR Tours office for the bullet train. One thing that really stood out was that despite the crowds of people waiting to get home, everyone was still queuing patiently. Even in the subway platforms, everyone formed an orderly queue. We could do with this on the London underground!

We decided to get a train to Shinjuko where there is a large park and shrine. We favour open spaces at the moment!