Asia

This past Saturday before my parents arrived I did some more shopping in Tokyo. I stopped by my favorite burger restaurant for lunch and then picked up some dress shirts. I haven’t purchased a lot in Japan but my suitcase was fairly full when I came over – hopefully everything…

One of the top sites to see in Hiroshima is the Peace Memorial Museum. As an American, it was a very interesting experience. First, the logistics. It’s open most days from 8:30 am until 6:00 pm, which is somewhat surprising since most places in Japan…

While in Hiroshima, I did a couple side trips. My first stop was to Ōkunoshima, an island about an hour west of Hiroshima. From the outside, there isn’t anything remarkable about Ōkunoshima. But after spending a few minutes on the island, you can see why it’s so…

Time has passed quickly since my trip over Golden Week. From a personal level, it’s been a fun past month. My parents are visiting me in Japan this upcoming Sunday (June 8th) and will be spending two weeks in Japan. I’ll get to spend the weekend…

On my last full day in Kyoto, I decided to head south and take a day trip to Nara, a small city famous for it’s temples. But I wasn’t really there for the temples. In fact, I didn’t really see them at all. Instead, I went…

The end of my trip was pretty busy and I didn’t get a chance to make new posts. I’m back in Fussa now and will post updates this week. On another rainy afternoon in Kyoto, I went to visit a couple temples. Rather than walk from the train station…

This Shinto shrine sits at the base of a mountain and is dedicated to Inari – the god/spirit of rice. It’s relatively large and without an admission gate, it’s free and open 24/7. Like the bamboo forest, I decided to come here on two separate days. The…

With a rainy day, I decided to visit the Kyoto Aquarium. It didn’t have very good reviews, but I found it to be a good option outside of the temples and shrines. First stop was the frog and small fish exhibit. Neat, but nothing too exciting. This…

On the western side of Kyoto is the Arashiyama district – famous for its many temples and hilly scenery. One of it’s most famous sites is a bamboo forest. Like many popular attractions, it all depends on when you visit. My first visit was on a sunny…

Sunday morning I took short trips to Fushimi Inari Shrine and the bamboo forest in Arashiyama. I mainly went to scout for taking pictures later in the week so I’ll make separate posts for them later. The rest of the day was dedicated to visiting Iwatayama Monkey…

Saturday started my golden week holiday. I left my apartment early at 6:30 am then transferred in Tokyo for the Shinkansen and finally arrived in Kyoto at 11:15 am. The train ticket cost $135. First stop was lunch. I got sushi and went with two rolls which had…

On Saturday, I start a 10 day trip to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Different from most trips I take, I’ll only be spending the night in two different locations – 6 nights in Kyoto (probably too many) and 3 nights in Hiroshima. But beyond a few…

In the nineteen countries I’ve been to this was one of my best travel experiences. My main reason for going to Nagano for the weekend was to visit the wild monkey park in Yamanouchi. Japanese macaques, more commonly called snow monkeys, are drawn to this mountain area…

Let me preface this by saying I have barely scratched the surface on learning Japanese and while I can’t guarantee that everything below is 100% correct, it is to the best of my knowledge. A year ago I knew nothing about the Japanese language. I couldn’t…

I noticed my camera sensor had some dust on it so I went into Tokyo to get my camera cleaned on Saturday. I have a 10 day trip coming up on the 26th, so I figured now would be a good time. I visited Canon’s flagship…

This park has been made famous outside of Japan mainly due to internet articles like the poorly-worded 22 Unbelievable Places that are Hard to Believe Really Exist and 21 Breathtaking Places You Won’t Believe Exist (clearly the second author didn’t agree with the first list).…

Exploring a Japanese grocery store can be an interesting experience. They take some getting used to but in reality they’re not all that different from ones in the United States. Layout and hours The layout is what I’m used to: produce, milk, and fish/meat on…

In the last week of cherry blossoms in Tokyo, my coworkers invited me to a hanami gathering. A very kind gesture on their part. So after work on Friday, we met at the local Seiyu (Japanese Wal-mart) and picked up some beer, snacks, and bento – the…

Cherry blossoms are a huge deal in Japan. There’s hundreds of thousands of cherry trees throughout the country and when they bloom, it’s a very special time of the year. Like the ones located in Washington DC, most of the trees are the non-fruit producing…

One of the things that surprised me about Japan how they prevent germs. Let’s start with public bathrooms. I’d say the 90% of public bathrooms (most common at train stations) don’t have paper towels, hot water, OR soap. I’ll go through these one at a…

I’m living in the largest city in the world and surprisingly trash is not an issue. The streets are very clean and if there’s an empty bottle on a train, someone probably left it by accident. However, the amount of public trash cans is staggeringly low. In…

So I learned the hard way that Japan does not have western-style deodorant readily available. This is not something I anticipated when I moved here and isn’t something you really think about.  It should be like finding toothpaste or face wash, right? Turns out that’s…

This past Saturday I decided to go to Tsukiji Fish Market. The most popular thing to do is see the tuna auction, but that didn’t happen for me and I doubt I will see it. For one, even though it starts at 5:15 am, you…

After checking the weather forecast, I decided to spend Saturday night near Mt. Fuji and return on Sunday. One night in a hostel costs 2700 yen, whereas a one-way train ticket costs 3000 yen, so I might as well spend a night there and make…

Coming to Japan there were many things that I was prepared for ahead of time: the relatively low-carb diet, riding a bike to work, and even the compactness of my 230 sq. ft. apartment. But something I underestimated was the difficulty in talking to people.…

I wanted to post an update on my trip to Japan. It’s been about two months since I moved to Japan and I have about three more months to go, so almost half way there. As expected, it’s been an interesting experience. One thing I…

I’m convinced there is something wrong with Japan’s timezone. Right now in early March, the sun sets at 5:30 pm. Not too bad, it’s winter right? Tokyo has roughly the same latitude as Raleigh, North Carolina so you would expect them to get the same…

If you’re not familiar, Golden Week is a week in late April and early May that has many close holidays in Japan. Most companies give their employees the week off. At JTEKT, we get from Apr 26th to May 5th off. Since I booked my…

We met at work Saturday morning at 6:30 am to carpool for the ski trip. The only problem was that I didn’t have a way to get there so I had to bike. I left my apartment at 6:00 am and got there 20 minutes…

Well it took me about a month, but I finally managed to get a good picture of the Tokyo skyline. My first few attempts weren’t that great. I first tried the observation deck at the Bunkyo Civic Center. It’s free to take the elevator to the…

Over the weekend Tokyo got 10 inches of snow, with Fussa City collecting closer to a foot of snow! I’ve experienced snow like this when I lived in Rhode Island, but 12 inches in 24 hours didn’t happen very often. It was an unusually high…

Near the Yokota Air Force base there is a sushi restaurant called Sushi Santa. From my apartment, it takes me 3 minutes on my bike. Inside is a sushi bar that can seat at most 15 people. It has a family atmosphere, where the chef…

My first stop on my trip this past weekend was to Matsumoto Castle. Getting there was a bit of a challenge. I left my apartment at 6:30 am, went into Tokyo and then took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagano. I then grabbed a local…

I booked my lodging and this weekend I’ll be taking a trip to Nagano Prefecture. I’ll be leaving from my apartment (near Hachioji on the map) to take the bullet train from Tokyo to Nagano where I’ll be spending two nights. On my way back, I’ll…

Yesterday was an interesting day. I bit the bullet and bought some cooking supplies and made my first meal since I arrived in Japan two weeks ago. My extremely small kitchen was finally put to use. At noon, I went to meet a coworker in…

When you arrive at a train station, you’ll see the ticket center. It will often have a large map overhead that has all the train stops in Japanese Kanji. The red arrow indicates where you are and the numbers indicate how much it will cost to…

Saturday I decided to find a different gym and do some shopping. I did more research online earlier in the week and found out the Gold’s Gyms in Japan have squat racks. The closest one to me was located in Hachioji, 30 minutes away by train. Looking up…

This past week has been mostly meals with coworkers. I haven’t gotten a lot a time to myself so far, but plan to go into Tokyo this weekend. On Wednesday, the 15th, we ate at Dohton Bori, a cook-it-yourself restaurant. The food is served to…

Well it was bound to happen eventually. On my way home from work yesterday, I was biking along the main road in the area. It’s two lanes wide on each side with a raised median, but there’s a generous sidewalk where the bicycles ride. I…

The first few days of work have been interesting. About 5 people in my office speak English (including me) so it’s been fun trying to learn as much Japanese as possible. Google translate has become my new best friend. I had to draw a picture…

Similar to yesterday morning, I woke up well before the sunrise. I don’t normally sleep in, but now I can’t sleep in past 6:00 am. I had free time this morning so after doing my pull-ups in the park, I set out to explore Fussa…

I didn’t have to work today (Saturday) which was a welcome surprise, so I set out to explore Fussa city on my bike. I rode down near the train station and parked my bike in front of Mister Donuts. Not knowing if I had to…

Despite just arriving, I didn’t have any problems falling asleep on Friday night. I stayed up until 12:30 pm on my computer and woke up around 6:30 am. For breakfast, I went to 7-Eleven as I don’t have any pots or pans yet. Not entirely…

After meeting Saki, we quickly bought train tickets. The airport is on the far east side of Tokyo and we had to pass through Shinjuku (red dot) in order to get to Fussa Station, where my apartment is located. I was going to stay in a hotel for…

Too long, didn’t read: Long travel day, United 747 is not recommended, arrived in Japan My flights got changed again, the sixth time in 36 hours. The flight out of Greenville was cancelled again so the remainder of my flights were cancelled. It was assumed…

I was originally going to fly out Tuesday at 7:00 am. That didn’t happen.  Due to the weather, United has allowed passengers to change their flights without incurring fees. Good thing because in the past 24 hours, I’ve had 5 different flights to Tokyo that have…

I finally moved everything into my 10′ x 10′ storage unit on Saturday with some much needed help. Besides moving sofas down two flights of stairs, it went pretty well. One of the good things about a one bedroom apartment is it’s hard to accumulate…

Things have been picking up quickly. First off, I’ve started to build a custom Google Map with the location of my apartment, work, and other notable landmarks to get myself oriented. Between that and the bird’s eye view in Bing Maps, I have a pretty…

In picking where I wanted to live, I decided to stay near Fussa which is on the western side of Tokyo and close to work. It is also home to a United States Air Base, Yokota Air Base, so there’s a good amount of Americans…

In early January, I’ll be moving to Tokyo, Japan for six months for work (I consider anything longer than 3 months moving rather than traveling). I work for a Japanese bearing company and my main assignment will be understanding how bearings are designed, manufactured, and…