August 20, 2008
I return Saturday barring any calamities such as fires, earthquakes or floods.
RE calamaties: I've been sick, I got gigged on a rail ticket and I may have fractured my heel, though it is better today than at any time the last 3 days.
I have never seen so many bats in my life.
Niigata/ west coast plans foiled by flooding/rains.
Monkey Island plans foiled by rain/storms.
Weather has been wonky due to the near miss Typhoon.
I found a particularly surly looking cat....
...but mostly it's been non touristy sights between Tokyo and Youkuska....and the things tourists overlook.
There are a lot of interesting and odd little things one finds when one walks for 4 hours through lower middle-class Tokyo neighborhoods.
Tonight I'm going to try to take the sleeper car to from Ueno to Kanazawa.
Pics very slow to upload in this crash-happy web-cafe machine, only have a few minutes left.
Everyone stay safe!
UPDATE: Rail pass doesnt work on sleeper cars....but I got on a sitter car and arrived in Kanazawa after 7 hr train ride....no Hotel vacancies. Today we learned to check for big sports events and peak tourist seasons in our destinations. 
I am on a coin operated computer at the station (!) checking for touristy things....and I think I found a bath house....so I'll at least be a clean tired & incoherent Ken.
Kanazawa is off the beaten path....no bullet train stops here. However, this was one of the 3 most important cities during the Edo period. It is also one of the 2 big cities spared the bombings during WW2 as it was out of range of the B29s (Kyoto was spared by presidential decree and the insistance of the Navy). Thus the the Edo era stuff is still here...this should be a cool stop.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
07:38 AM
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Post contains 305 words, total size 2 kb.
Sorry you're having such a bad trip.
I do have to say there's one thing you're looking at the wrong way: The Bats. In China the word for "Bat" is the same as the word for "good fortune" or something like that. (Look, I was severly jet-lagged at the time, cut me some slack!) So according to the Chinese they're very lucky creatures, and they build them into the architecture EVERYWHERE! I think we first noticed this in the Summer Palace but we really did see similar designs ALL OVER China.
So maybe your over-abundance of Bats was SUPPOSED to be an omen of good fortune to come... and you turned them away! Silly fanboy.
Have a safe trip home though!
Faith
Posted by: Faith at Wed Aug 20 07:52:13 2008 (HCcHe)
Oh I have no problem with the bats, I think its neat that there are so many here.
The trip has by no means been a disaster by any measure, I've quite enjoyed myself and learned a lot...It's not the trip I planned, but has been really interesting....it's just been interesting in...interesting ways at times.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Aug 20 18:33:20 2008 (gbE23)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thu Aug 21 11:11:58 2008 (+rSRq)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sat Aug 30 23:23:00 2008 (+rSRq)
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