Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Tuesday, October 23 (Japan Time)Greetings from the Shinkanssen! That's the bullet-train that runs from one end of Japan to the other. Actually, I think there is more than one set of tracks, but whatever. Ginger and I have been train riding fools so far this week. This is my first time on the Shinkanssen. The rest of the trains have just been the mass transit lines in Tokyo.
It's nice to sit down finally and rest my feet. As I told Ginger earlier today, "My dawgies are tired!" We spent the majority of the day in Ueno at the Zoo. She and I have gone on several zoo dates in the US, and we had always wondered what animals foreign zoos would house. 
Would they find commonplace animals from the US so interesting as to make them zoo-worthy? Would the gigantic squirrels of South Bend make it in? What about the possum - ugly and abundant in my home state of Kentucky - would it amaze the Japanese? Well, I'm happy to report that there were indeed animals indigenous to North America in the zoo, but not our squirrels or possum. 
They did have both bison and beaver. If you think about it, both of those animals make a lot of sense. I can't think of any other animals in the world that compare to either one. One Japanese girl was very intrigued by the bison, reading the sign and saying repeatedly, "Ohhh! Bi-SON! Bi-SON!" The bison also seemed intrigued by the girl, responding in kind by turning its back to her and creating a nice, steamy pile. Ginger and I also shouted upon seeing the familiar animal, only we both shouted "Tatanka!" unsolicited by the other. It was a bonding moment. Thank you, Kevin Costner.
We saw a lot of new animals, too. I had never seen a giant anteater or an aardvark before today, nor had I seen an armadillo. Apparently the animals with "a" names had evaded me all my life, but no more! Ginger thought it funny that I had to travel all the way to Japan to see my first armadillo when they're rampant in the central southern states. There were a ton of birds, including a lot of beautiful cranes, ibises, owls, and eagles. Some of the other animals we had never seen before included the ring-tailed cat, red panda, flying fox (basically a huge bat), and a bird called the Cock-of-the-Rock, which looked like it was donning an Elvis hairdo.
Quick aside: this train is seriously hauling. I'd guess we're doing somewhere between 100+ mph, easily. And the ride is very smooth.I got to try some more traditional Japanese cuisine today before leaving Shinjuku. We went to what basically was a Japanese fast food restaurant, only it's more mom-and-pop style. What makes it fast-food-like is that the menu is a window display of all the dishes they cook with numbers by each. When you go inside, you walk up to a vending machine, put in your yen, press the button with the number you want, and it gives you a ticket. You then hand the ticket to the person at the counter and they make your dish and hand it to you. Ginger is fascinated by these restaurants and wanted to take me to one since I landed.
Oh, I still haven't told you what I had - udon noodles in a beef broth with beef and onions. In case you don't know, udon is a thick noodle made of buckwheat and is quite tasty. Top it off with a refreshing Coca-Cola purchased at one of the thousands of vending machines in lining the streets of Tokyo, and you have a tasty meal.
Now we're on our way to Osaka for the next three days. Our original plan was to go to Kyoto, but when you don't book your hotel until the day before, sometimes you have to change your plans. Especially here in Japan, where it seems like people must live in hotels, or the tourism industry is doing great. Hotel searching last night was actually the only time I thought I might say something mean to Ginger. It wasn't her fault - I was tired from a long day of walking and we were trying to book on the hotel lobby computer, which had an English/Japanese keyboard. The worst part -- the space key was shortened to create two new keys that switch to Japanese, but not back to English. So mid-sentence or Google search, your word were suddenly replaced with Japanese kanjis. Once we gave up on the hotel search, I tried to write an email to my parents and gave up in the first sentence. 
The next morning I find out that the hotel has free internet in the rooms, but you have to ask for a kit. Awesome. I am my own worst enemy. Nevertheless, the last hour of our stay was enough to find a room at the Ramada Inn in Osaka. We're hoping that a hotel with a western name will have a few more comforts of the Western life, namely a bed that's not so firm.One more thought on the Shinkanssen -- it's not so much designed for tourist travel as it is business travel. Most of the passengers appear to be business-men and women. There's also no room for luggage. Well, at least no dedicated room. There's a luggage shelf above the seats that's really only suitable for for backpacks or small carry-on luggage, but there's no space for large suitcases. Luckily no one has a ticket for the third seat in our row, so that's where my bag is. Ginger fit hers behind the last row of the car. I'm not sure why they didn't design the cars to have a luggage space, since the Japanese seem to have most other things pretty well thought out. I guess they don't get a lot of tourists on the trains. Oh well. If that's the only issue we run into all week, we've got it made.
Labels: Animals not named AniMal, Ginger, Japan
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