w00kie's ramblings

Category: japan

  • 4 days in Hiroshima

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    w00kie
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    So I’m back from Hiroshima as you must have seen in the little Twitter column on the right. Had good fun with the girlfriend, here’s a quick roundup: Friday – arrived at 4PM, saw Spiderman 3 (was kinda lame), ate Italian Saturday – went to Iwakuni to see the 錦帯橋, nice bridge, ate yakitori and…

  • Yasukuni Black Suits

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    w00kie
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    Last week was Golden Week, a bundle of national holidays all packed in the same week: Constitution day, Green day, Children’s day and the new Showa day. This last one is in honor of the previous emperor’s birthday and is a big hit among Japan’s extremist population, which I like to call the Black Suits.…

  • Not to be mistaken

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    w00kie
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    Vocabulary lesson in a bar of Shibuya yesterday: 合コン and 強姦 The first one is pronounced goukon and is a kind of group blind-date dinner very popular with the young japanese. The second one is pronounced goukan and means rape…

  • Japanese Jesus pamphlet

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    w00kie
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    Yesterday, my japanese teacher was handed a pamphlet in the train station. Normally she would have thrown it away, but knowing me and how I love such kind of stupid things, she kept it for me. Click on the extract for the full thing. It’s a Love Jesus Christ pamphlet, first time I see one…

  • Shibuya at 4am

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    w00kie
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    A friend of mine is leaving Japan tomorrow, coming back to his girlfriend in France after 1 year here. So we had a little sayonara pub crawl for his last weekend in Tokyo. We started out in 高田馬場 and took one of the last trains to 渋谷. Hopped around 5 different bars and izakayas until…

  • Shiodome 42nd floor

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    w00kie
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    This weekend, a good friend of mine invited me and his girlfriend to dinner for celebrating his yearly bonus. We went to the Oregon Bar & Grill, on the 42nd floor of the Shiodome City Center. The dry-aged charcoal-grilled steaks were extremely good, but came with just a small piece of mashed potatoes, nothing else.…

  • Not missing everything

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    w00kie
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    Maybe I missed the drunken parties under the さくら, but I still got to see cherry blossoms in Tokyo before leaving for China. Here are some photos that I took around 表参道…

  • Missing the Hanami

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    w00kie
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    This week, the cherry trees blossomed all over Tokyo and the Kanto plain. This weekend, and particularly tomorrow since today was rainy, everyone is preparing to put down the blue tarps under the blossoms and drink themselves stupid. However, I will be waking up at 5AM to take the plane to Changchun in Mandchuria –…

  • Kani-shabu

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    w00kie
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    What’s better than the snow in Hokkaido? The food of course! Every time we’ve hit the restaurants over there, it was like we were discovering a whole new level of Japanese food. Say to a Japanese person you ate 蟹しゃぶ (crab legs splashed in boiling soup) in Hokkaido and you will see them shed a…

  • Snowboard in Hokkaido

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    w00kie
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    Last weekend I took the Monday off and went with 3 friends to Niseko in Hokkaido for 3 days of snowboard. Departure 8am on Saturday from Tokyo – Haneda, quick flight to Sapporo – Chitose, then 2h30 of the most excruciatingly slow bus ride I’ve ever experience. At 2pm we were geared up and on…

  • The ASTRAM of Hiroshima

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    w00kie
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    One of the train lines in Hiroshima is called the ASTRAM. The name アストラム comes from あす meaning “tomorrow” and トラム which is tram in katakana. I was thinking of another theory but my girlfriend didn’t find it that funny… :) me: It’s the ASS-TRAM!!! *grins stupidly* 愛子: Don’t make fun of my city!

  • Huge rice scooper

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    w00kie
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    Here is my girlfriend in front of the biggest しゃもじ in the world: If you ever go to 宮島, you’ll see those wooden rice paddles everywhere. They are used to scoop the rice out of the rice cooker, at least before the wooden type was replaced by newer plastic, non-sticky ones. Souvenir shops sell big…

  • Temple stickers

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    w00kie
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    Still in 大聖院 temple, this gate was covered in these paper stickers. I don’t exactly know what they are for, my girlfriend told me it had something to do with sumo… Anyways, it looked really neat.

  • Ultraman and friends

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    w00kie
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    Taken in 大聖院 temple in Miyajima, I have no idea what they were doing there:

  • Almost dead

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    w00kie
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    So I arrived saturday afternoon in Hiroshima, it’s now wednesday evening and I’ve only started visiting today… Why? would you ask me. Well as soon as I got here I fell sick with influenza type A as they told me at the hospital on my 2nd coming… I peaked somewhere at 39.5°C and was litteraly…