Quick update on the upcoming tour:
* Helsinki stopover for 2 nights, just me for this one,
* Berlin - 5 days, both dad and me,
* Leipzig, old East Germany - 1 day,
* Nuremberg - 2 days, I don't know what there is in there except some courts, but we'll see.
* Pilzen - 1 day, brewery stop?
* Prague - 2 days
* Dresden - 1 day to smell the ashes.... When I was first travelling to Dresden, my dad told me after the extensive bombing during WW2, it was still possible to smell the smoke... I'm taking him to prove him wrong.
THE END
30 June, 2012
Photo comments
Hello from Jeju island in Korea.
I can't add any more photos again, but I thought I'd describe the previous two posts photos.
On the more recent post there are six photos, starting left to right:
- a nicely caught moment of Shinkansen (the bullet train in Japan) arriving at Osaka station.
- inside the Moomin Troll cafe in Fukuoka. Just a bit of Finland in Japan.
- in Fukuoka cat cafe, no seats left and not allowed to move a sleeping cat!
- the iced coffee with milk and ,syropu' in the Poem beatnik cafe.
- in Osaka there was this moon festival and everywhere were these wishing trees where people wrote their wishes and tied the paper to the tree. This particular tree was on the 40 floor in a Sky Garden. My wish is there too.
- this is Osaka with a big ferris wheel inside a small building, that's why so much of the ferris wheel is sticking out.
On older post there are 5 pictures:
- when Tokyo cat 'Curl' cafe was closed, I got to pat a cat for free. This is the Poet, growing in a pot plant.
- Fukuoka cafe was busy!
- As I was passing a tap in Fukuoka cat cafe, I heard a demanding 'meow', this handsome young man asked me turn the tap on, so he could have a drink.
- Osaka cat cafe was very Japanese style, with tatami mat floor and wooden elements. I also had all the cats to myself!
- Even the food in Osaka cafe was cat themed. The two sweets on the plate are called 'mochi' and they are gelatinous dough filled with chocolate or fruit or a bean paste. They are VERY addictive!
I can't add any more photos again, but I thought I'd describe the previous two posts photos.
On the more recent post there are six photos, starting left to right:
- a nicely caught moment of Shinkansen (the bullet train in Japan) arriving at Osaka station.
- inside the Moomin Troll cafe in Fukuoka. Just a bit of Finland in Japan.
- in Fukuoka cat cafe, no seats left and not allowed to move a sleeping cat!
- the iced coffee with milk and ,syropu' in the Poem beatnik cafe.
- in Osaka there was this moon festival and everywhere were these wishing trees where people wrote their wishes and tied the paper to the tree. This particular tree was on the 40 floor in a Sky Garden. My wish is there too.
- this is Osaka with a big ferris wheel inside a small building, that's why so much of the ferris wheel is sticking out.
On older post there are 5 pictures:
- when Tokyo cat 'Curl' cafe was closed, I got to pat a cat for free. This is the Poet, growing in a pot plant.
- Fukuoka cafe was busy!
- As I was passing a tap in Fukuoka cat cafe, I heard a demanding 'meow', this handsome young man asked me turn the tap on, so he could have a drink.
- Osaka cat cafe was very Japanese style, with tatami mat floor and wooden elements. I also had all the cats to myself!
- Even the food in Osaka cafe was cat themed. The two sweets on the plate are called 'mochi' and they are gelatinous dough filled with chocolate or fruit or a bean paste. They are VERY addictive!
25 June, 2012
Sayoonara
I'm really showing off my Japanese here... Not!
I'm in Fukuoka now, just about to leave beautiful Japan (I still can't transfer my photos).
But I've been around now!
*I visited 3 cat cafes - 2 in Osaka and one here in Fukuoka,
*I've been to a Finnish moomin valley cafe,
*travelled on the shinkansen twice (Japanese bullet train),
*I've been to a Hawaii Festival,
*made a special wish from a sky garden on 40 floor,
*explored an Italian neighborhood in Tokyo, haidresser street in Osaka and walked the entire length of worlds longest shopping arcade (3km),
*I have eaten russian borsch, hawaiian po, udon/ramen/soba noodles hot and cold, some Japanese dish starting with kotsu..., had japanese breakfast (I haven't even started on the Cold War and beer tour with my dad!)
Quiet life? Not for me! ;-)
Hopefully photos coming soon!
I'm in Fukuoka now, just about to leave beautiful Japan (I still can't transfer my photos).
But I've been around now!
*I visited 3 cat cafes - 2 in Osaka and one here in Fukuoka,
*I've been to a Finnish moomin valley cafe,
*travelled on the shinkansen twice (Japanese bullet train),
*I've been to a Hawaii Festival,
*made a special wish from a sky garden on 40 floor,
*explored an Italian neighborhood in Tokyo, haidresser street in Osaka and walked the entire length of worlds longest shopping arcade (3km),
*I have eaten russian borsch, hawaiian po, udon/ramen/soba noodles hot and cold, some Japanese dish starting with kotsu..., had japanese breakfast (I haven't even started on the Cold War and beer tour with my dad!)
Quiet life? Not for me! ;-)
Hopefully photos coming soon!
22 June, 2012
Radiohead
Due to a roof collapse and a death of a stage technician at a Radiohead concert, the concert in Berlin has been postponed. :-(
21 June, 2012
Photos will be come when I figure my new system...
Tokyo, ah Tokyo... I think I've seen everything and then there is Tokyo. I arrived here with a typhoon - a few hours after landing the airport closed and trains stopped. I sort of slept through it all. I woke up to the windows making a strange noise and rain pounding on the building, but the windows looked like they were going to hold and I'd be surviving, so I went back to sleep.
My first Tokyo adventure was with the toilet, how poetic I know... (but there is poetry in this post - later!) I knew to expect the many buttons, some to mask noises, some to wash after, some to massage with water. Yes many buttons on a toilet remote, but how should I flush the damn thing? It took me a good 15min to work it out and I felt like I passed some sort of a Japanese intelligence test, first of many! I've been trying to play this bridge building engineer game on my new iPhone and keep on finding out why I'm not an engineer. I'm up to lowly level 3 and stuck, that is I can't build a bridge that will survive a car driving over it. Let alone a tank, as my engineer father would no doubt want to test it with. If flushing that toilet wasn't so important, I'd have given up on that intelligence game much, much earlier.
Flushed, clean, massaged and dried, I decided to explore Tokyo's famous Love Hotels. Love hotels are 'couples' places where a pair (or more - hey, whatever swings your swing) can stay for the night or 'rest' for a couple of hours. The rooms are themed to whatever fantasy takes your fancy. Online I've seen a lot of Hello Kitty themes, but there are also fairytales, space, Hawaii, bondage kitty rooms, and so on... But as everyone knows, I am TERRIBLE at making choices, so I needed a volunteer to form my couple and to make the hard decisions. Alas, no volunteer... (I never actually asked anyone, maybe that was the problem! But when I once asked my now-ex-husband to visit a love hotel! he declined! Maybe I need a Japanese husband?) ;-)
When I was a teenager I had this fantasy of being Japanese, unfortunately I failed the choosing of parents test (another Japanese test?) and I am pretty sure I'm not. Though when I'm back here I wish I could be, again. I could dye my hair red instead of black, look ultra stylish in a cute kind of way, say 'kawai' whenever I see a cat, live in a tiny apartment (I'd have to loose 1/2 of my weight to fit into one) and get myself a Japanese husband, because ladies, I can see beauty in the men here! I saw an almost perfect candidate last night returning to the hotel from an evening out (not from a Love Hotel unfortunately). He was standing over a dog, that looked like it was sitting down, and the man was talking to the dog. When the dog started to move, I realized it's back legs were paralyzed. The man picked up the dog, we shared a smile and he went upstairs and I down the road to my hotel. He would have been perfect, if only that dog was a cat, we could have looked after it together...
So with no couple to speak off and too chicken to go by myself, I decided to switch themes completely and go to a pussy cafe... Ha! Got you there! I can just see the shock and horror on my dad's face (he reads this, don't you dad?) I meant to say a neko cafe - a cat cafe! The BEST Japanese idea ever! You pay an entry fee and order a coffee or tea and have an hour or whatever time you pay, to spend with 20 or so resident cats. Great place for a crazy cat woman, don't you think? So I set off to find "Curl up" one of Tokyo's neko cafes.
Catching trains in Tokyo is another intelligence test you have to pass. It's not that it is a crazy complicated web of lines that only have English directions in small letters sometimes, or that it's so crazy busy that it scares an introverted extrovert such as me, or that I've heard all these stories about Japanese men molesting women on trains (there's even a name for it -chikan). No, my problem was that there are at least 4 different types of trains, all requiring different tickets. Now, while I had day tickets for 3 types of those trains, when I got to the neko cafe train station, I found out I didn't have the right ticket. The man controlling the entry and exit of potential lawbreakers such as myself, called me over and was saying something in Japanese (I think, he was mumbling and wearing a face mask!) and I'm assuming he wanted me to buy a ticket because he had the type I was missing from my collection. At that moment I realized I had no yen left... What's a foreigner to do with no ATM in sight? What's a ticket man to do? He let me exit for free. If he spoke some English I might have proposed marriage, I was so happy that I could go pat a cat (after finding an ATM)!
Before we enter the cat heaven, a little lesson in etiquette of neko cafe (cat brothel?)...
* before entering you have to remove your shoes and wash hands with disinfector
* any cat has a right to refuse to play with you
* no waking up of sleeping cats
* no BYO toys
* no picking up cats, they will come to your lap if they want to
* if a cat scratches you, a band-aid will be provided but no refund and if you punish the cat in any way, you die!
I was ready to meet some cats!
Back to 'Curl up'cafe...
It was closed.
I could see movement of cat-like shapes through the frosted glass, but in a typical cat fashion they ignored me and didn't open the door.
When the cat's away, the mice play... Or something like it... But I have successful cat cafe sessions planned for Osaka and Fukuoka, where I have already thoroughly researched the neko cafe industry. In fact, first Japanese neko cafe originated in Osaka!
Then, a miracle happened or poetic justice to be precise. I saw a cat and got to pat it for free! Gorgeous Mr Poet was sleeping in a pot outside Poem cafe, which has been there since 1966, as I found out. I broke etiquette and rushed to pat the sleeping poet. He didn't even stir. I asked the waiter about the place and I think Poem cafe was a beatnik cafe in the 1960s, but I could have misunderstood what "brack!" while pointing at the clothes, was meant to convey. I enjoyed my iced coffee with the kawai little milk and liquid sugar pots. I almost swiped the cute pots as a memento of my experience, but Mr Poet woke up and looked at me like he knew I was up to no good. To prove him wrong, I left without a souvenir.
PS After my bullet train trip to Osaka and the number of snorers around me, I'm adding a 'no snore' clause to my Japanese husband search.
PS2 And all around Tokyo the are men wearing the "Intergalactic" Beastie Boys or Japanese construction worker uniform! I keep thinking I'm seeing MCA! Watch the video for my view of Tokyo!
My first Tokyo adventure was with the toilet, how poetic I know... (but there is poetry in this post - later!) I knew to expect the many buttons, some to mask noises, some to wash after, some to massage with water. Yes many buttons on a toilet remote, but how should I flush the damn thing? It took me a good 15min to work it out and I felt like I passed some sort of a Japanese intelligence test, first of many! I've been trying to play this bridge building engineer game on my new iPhone and keep on finding out why I'm not an engineer. I'm up to lowly level 3 and stuck, that is I can't build a bridge that will survive a car driving over it. Let alone a tank, as my engineer father would no doubt want to test it with. If flushing that toilet wasn't so important, I'd have given up on that intelligence game much, much earlier.
Flushed, clean, massaged and dried, I decided to explore Tokyo's famous Love Hotels. Love hotels are 'couples' places where a pair (or more - hey, whatever swings your swing) can stay for the night or 'rest' for a couple of hours. The rooms are themed to whatever fantasy takes your fancy. Online I've seen a lot of Hello Kitty themes, but there are also fairytales, space, Hawaii, bondage kitty rooms, and so on... But as everyone knows, I am TERRIBLE at making choices, so I needed a volunteer to form my couple and to make the hard decisions. Alas, no volunteer... (I never actually asked anyone, maybe that was the problem! But when I once asked my now-ex-husband to visit a love hotel! he declined! Maybe I need a Japanese husband?) ;-)
When I was a teenager I had this fantasy of being Japanese, unfortunately I failed the choosing of parents test (another Japanese test?) and I am pretty sure I'm not. Though when I'm back here I wish I could be, again. I could dye my hair red instead of black, look ultra stylish in a cute kind of way, say 'kawai' whenever I see a cat, live in a tiny apartment (I'd have to loose 1/2 of my weight to fit into one) and get myself a Japanese husband, because ladies, I can see beauty in the men here! I saw an almost perfect candidate last night returning to the hotel from an evening out (not from a Love Hotel unfortunately). He was standing over a dog, that looked like it was sitting down, and the man was talking to the dog. When the dog started to move, I realized it's back legs were paralyzed. The man picked up the dog, we shared a smile and he went upstairs and I down the road to my hotel. He would have been perfect, if only that dog was a cat, we could have looked after it together...
So with no couple to speak off and too chicken to go by myself, I decided to switch themes completely and go to a pussy cafe... Ha! Got you there! I can just see the shock and horror on my dad's face (he reads this, don't you dad?) I meant to say a neko cafe - a cat cafe! The BEST Japanese idea ever! You pay an entry fee and order a coffee or tea and have an hour or whatever time you pay, to spend with 20 or so resident cats. Great place for a crazy cat woman, don't you think? So I set off to find "Curl up" one of Tokyo's neko cafes.
Catching trains in Tokyo is another intelligence test you have to pass. It's not that it is a crazy complicated web of lines that only have English directions in small letters sometimes, or that it's so crazy busy that it scares an introverted extrovert such as me, or that I've heard all these stories about Japanese men molesting women on trains (there's even a name for it -chikan). No, my problem was that there are at least 4 different types of trains, all requiring different tickets. Now, while I had day tickets for 3 types of those trains, when I got to the neko cafe train station, I found out I didn't have the right ticket. The man controlling the entry and exit of potential lawbreakers such as myself, called me over and was saying something in Japanese (I think, he was mumbling and wearing a face mask!) and I'm assuming he wanted me to buy a ticket because he had the type I was missing from my collection. At that moment I realized I had no yen left... What's a foreigner to do with no ATM in sight? What's a ticket man to do? He let me exit for free. If he spoke some English I might have proposed marriage, I was so happy that I could go pat a cat (after finding an ATM)!
Before we enter the cat heaven, a little lesson in etiquette of neko cafe (cat brothel?)...
* before entering you have to remove your shoes and wash hands with disinfector
* any cat has a right to refuse to play with you
* no waking up of sleeping cats
* no BYO toys
* no picking up cats, they will come to your lap if they want to
* if a cat scratches you, a band-aid will be provided but no refund and if you punish the cat in any way, you die!
I was ready to meet some cats!
Back to 'Curl up'cafe...
It was closed.
I could see movement of cat-like shapes through the frosted glass, but in a typical cat fashion they ignored me and didn't open the door.
When the cat's away, the mice play... Or something like it... But I have successful cat cafe sessions planned for Osaka and Fukuoka, where I have already thoroughly researched the neko cafe industry. In fact, first Japanese neko cafe originated in Osaka!
Then, a miracle happened or poetic justice to be precise. I saw a cat and got to pat it for free! Gorgeous Mr Poet was sleeping in a pot outside Poem cafe, which has been there since 1966, as I found out. I broke etiquette and rushed to pat the sleeping poet. He didn't even stir. I asked the waiter about the place and I think Poem cafe was a beatnik cafe in the 1960s, but I could have misunderstood what "brack!" while pointing at the clothes, was meant to convey. I enjoyed my iced coffee with the kawai little milk and liquid sugar pots. I almost swiped the cute pots as a memento of my experience, but Mr Poet woke up and looked at me like he knew I was up to no good. To prove him wrong, I left without a souvenir.
PS After my bullet train trip to Osaka and the number of snorers around me, I'm adding a 'no snore' clause to my Japanese husband search.
PS2 And all around Tokyo the are men wearing the "Intergalactic" Beastie Boys or Japanese construction worker uniform! I keep thinking I'm seeing MCA! Watch the video for my view of Tokyo!
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