Lovable Takayama

Takayama is a very lovable place. Besides having a very well preserved traditional area with small houses in town, it is also home of the Hida Folk Village, an amazing place which you definitely should go visit.


The traditional houses are quite different from the Shogun class houses or even the peasant houses from the folk village.

The morning market is mildly crowded and is very interesting to see as well. As always, lots of colors, and lots of WTH is that moments.




A great pit stop on the way to Shirakawa-go. But first, the Hilda Folk Village.

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Big Bow ... Wow

The Japanese people are different. In fact, they are so different that I can't even compare them to ourselves. And since I am blabbering about the Shinkansen, I will tell you a short story that will prove my point.
On the train, the train conductor, or the guy who checks your ticket, or the people who sell food and beverages have to move from one cart to another to carry on with their business. Each and absolutely every time they enter or exit they stop and bow. Read that again. Each and every time. No exception. Open the door. Bow. walk to the other end. Bow. Open the door. Close the door. Open the next door. Bow ... and so on. No exception. I bet they even do it when there is nobody inside there except them.

It's called RESPECT.

Restek' to that.

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Shinkansen banzaaai

For transportation from one place to another we bought the JR Pass which is one of the best things you should spend your money on when going to Japan. For most of the trip we traveled with one of these little babies:


And, yes, they go FAST...


It's not like being in a rocket ship, but it's something like:
-Look!
-Where?
-Darn! You missed it!

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How do you spell WTH in Japanese?

Here are a couple of WTHeck moments I had when arriving there ... the first ones. There are more coming up ...


The mother of all WTHs ... or is it grandmother ... or WTH is it??

sure, I'd have that ... it looks natural and comfy ... WTH is that anyway?

I kinda saw this coming, but then again ... a bunch of schoolgirls never looked so WTH before ...

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First Contact

I have a T-Shirt from Threadless with this design. I love it. I love the idea of the design, it makes me LOL each time I look at it. It's classic gamer culture and I find it a tad disappointing that nobody else seems to understand what it's about or why I like it at all ... So,I was naturally quite impressed when the guy at Japanese customs was extremely excited about it. He pointed at it and gave me a big smile followed by an OK hand sign and some happy blabbering I didn't understand.

There it was ... first contact with Japan. A funny Invaders T-Shirt finally making sense.

Later on, it all made a little more sense when I ran into the following 5 stories high buildings around Tokyo.


It was apparent that I came to the right place ...

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Jet Lag Masters

First things first, getting to Japan will undoubtedly bring jet lag along if you're not living in Asia. As I mentioned in the USA Jet Lag post flying West is very easy when it comes to fighting Jet Lag. All you have to do is not fall asleep during the flight if you land in the afternoon/evening and you're safe. Flying East however ... that was very difficult adjusting to when coming back from the states. So we prepared our plan to fight for our enjoyment. The plan was to get as much sleep as possible on the plane (even though it was the middle of the day for us) and then not sleep until it was night time after arriving.
We watched a couple of movies, got some sleep, landed, didn't sleep until night time (dizzy day), and the morning after we were fresh as daisies.

I am confidently saying that we are the Jet Lag Masters. It took 1 day of adjustment for the way there (7 hours difference), zero days when we returned. Now ... send us to Mars to prove it!

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The Golden Route

The first idea of going to Japan was actually the idea of going to Tokyo, where we would meet my good friend M. The problem is Andreea and I aren't quite the kind of people who can just hang around in one place for too long, so A started scooping around. When browsing the official japan tourism site, she stumbled upon a few suggestions and the plan started to take shape. It would have been a pity to go all the way to Japan and see only Tokyo, the monster metropolis with the biggest population on the planet. It really would have been a shame to miss all those Shogun nature and tradition beautiful moments. The route we chose would look something like this:

The source is here and I will lay out our own 12 days version of their suggestion.

Day1-2:Tokyo - A short quickie contact with the monster
Day3:Takayama - A very nice small traditional city would do nice
Day4:Shirakawa-go (night in Kanazawa) - Traditional villages don't get better than this
Day5:Kanazawa/Kyoto - Another small city pit stop on the way to Kyoto (they've got a Geisha district so yaay :P )
Day6-8:Kyoto - The temple monster, this should be very interesting.
Day9:Nara/Tokyo - Temple pit stop this time on the way back to Tokyo
Day10-12:Tokyo - A few more days to explore the wild side of Japan

The golden route is set ... let's proceed...

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Back from a parallel Universe

HA! And we're back! Japan has been A M A Z I N G ! It's a so totally different place. It's fascinating and I will blog it all here, giving tips and tricks, photos, info etcetera...

Here's the Table Of Contents I laid out:
* The Golden Route
* Jet Lag Masters
* First Contact
* How do you spell WTH in Japanese?
* Shinkansen banzaaai
* Big Bow ... Wow
* Lovable Takayama
* Karate Time
* Go 2 Shirakawa Go
* Little house JR
* The Golden Tea
* A couple of Kyoto temples
* The House of GOLD
* Zen Gardens, Great Food
* THE Rocky Zen(?) Garden
* A Thousand Orange Gates
* Big Budha, LOTS of Deer
* Tokyo Basics
* Pachinko is the work of Satan
* Pillow LUV
* Drift King
* M & J
* Hachikō ...
* Dinner in Space

Finally completed. Enjoy!

First episode

Them God Damn Romanians killed John Dillinger

If you haven't seen Public Enemies, I don't think it's much of a spoiler that John Dillinger doesn't outlive the ending credits. However this may come as a more serious spoiler: It's those God Damn Romanians again. They're all over the movies ... running brothels, sucking blood, petting dragons, and mostly doing whatever lousy dirty business must get done in that movie. If I'll ever get my hands on of those ...
Anyway, back to the movie. It's another slow paced but very well done Michael Mann movie. The hand camera filming is there. The ear blasting shooting is there. It's Heat and Miami Vice all over again, and I can't say I didn't like that, although this seems even slower paced.

Acting is great, everything is great ... if only it weren't for them God Damn Romanians ...

Clio RS 200 Drive

I had a meeting last night with the new Clio RenaultSport 200. It was a real pleasure and I feel like sharing.

First things first, the driving position is perfect. Although I would have loved to test the recaros, which I found amazing in the Clio 197, the standard seats were absolutely superb. You get a deep driving position and very very good lateral support. The steering wheel is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the car. The gear shift ... top of the class with short and extremely precise travel. So, it seems we have all we need for a perfect drive, so let's take off.

I don't like hammering down a car the first time I get on board. I like taking the time so that we get to know each other before proceeding to a more intense relationship. So, I had the opportunity to get to see this in action as a normal every day drive car. It's such a lovable car at low speeds. It's not harsh, and it feels very comfortable. The seats are very comfy and it really is an easy car to drive. But enough is enough, and here we ... GO. Downshift, hammer down, and wheeeeee, the car MOVES, and it's a real pleasure to hit the GREEN shift indicator telling you GREAT JOB, keep it up! It's definitely not a breath taking acceleration, but if you get a good launch off the line, the car will keep you planted in your seat and give you a mild kick in the back on each gear change all the way up to 4th, where we kinda ran out of road. And then another one of the major highlights of the car came into play. The brakes ... which have absolutely amazing stopping power. They work so effortless. 90Ks/h and it just ... stops.

But, mind you, it's not all flowers and sunshine. The car I drove didn't come with the cup chassis and I really feel like it needs that. It felt a tiny little too woobly and understeery. I was expecting it to be like the lightweight planted lightning boxer, but you can feel the weight of the car, and it's not featherweight, for sure. The engine is great, but you really got to work together if you wanna make the relationship flourish . Below 5k RMP, it's flat, and even afterward you have to really push to make something happen. As I said, though, a good launch will keep you in your seat, so it's all just a matter of putting that revo where it should be and keeping it there.

As some may have noticed, I didn't blabber too much about how the car looks. The car looks great in person, but I still prefer the old 197 look although the differences are not that noticeable.

Probably a long term relationship where we would know each other much better would prove to be much more rewarding. I loved our brief affair and hope that maybe we will meet again ... but this time I hope it brings it's cup chassis along for the ride.