On weather and traveling

Current location: Sapa, Vietnam

I arrived in Sapa yesterday after riding my motorbike through some pretty amazing sceneries in the north-Vietnamese highlands.
There were hardly any clouds in the sky and at 1600 meters the air was clear and pure.
On my way up the mountains I saw some of the rice terraces and little villages that so many come here to see, and why I decided to come here on my way to Laos.
I checked in to a hotel and decided to take a shower and a nap before going out to explore the town.
45 minutes later I woke up and went to my balcony, only to see that a thick mist had rolled in, hiding the mountains and the next building from view.
I wasn't too worried, if the weather would change so fast, surely it would be nice and clear again in no time.
How wrong I was.
The fog wouldn't let up, and as I checked the weather forecast online, I found out that it would only get worse for the next few days, with a thunderstorm heading in.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, for I'm not on a two week holiday with ten more destinations to see before my flight home. I could just sit the bad weather out drinking coffee and reading or playing games, but as it happens, my visa is once again running out. On Sunday I need to leave the country.
The town of Tay Trang sits on the border of Vietnam and Laos, and is only a days ride from Sapa, but as the weather is going to get rough, I'm going to give myself at least two days, so I don't need to hurry.
In preparation to the weather I bought a weatherproof riding outfit, spare parts for the bike and plastic bags and a rice sack for my backpack.

So what I'm saying is, sometimes traveling can get rough, and sometimes you simply don't get to see what you wanted to see, and that's okay. You can't win them all.

Here's where I am (supposedly):

This is what I see:

All I need is a 9mm pistol with no ammo, a length of pipe
and a handheld AM/FM-radio.

If you get that last reference, kudos to you, if not, you need to play more video games.

Back in the game

Current location: Hanoi, Vietnam.

Being in China meant being under the "protection" of the Golden Shield, and in case you didn't know, sites like blogspot and facebook are on the blacklist. While I was able to get around the censorship at times, it wasn't really for long enough for me to post anything. (Also I was just plain lazy.)
But now I'm in free Vietnam, where people are allowed to google words like 'freedom', 'Tibet' and 'Dalai Lama', without getting their connection cut so I guess I have no reason not to start updating the blog again. (Aside from my laziness of course.)

I'm going to cover the whole of China in a single post sometime soonish because I have the memory of a goldfish, and what little I remember of China is fading fast.

I might have some trouble posting pictures from China though, as I can't access them at the moment for some reason. I plugged my portable hard-drive in and it started making rather disturbing crunching noises, and while I can open all the folders on the drive, most of the files are "inaccessible". I just hope it's not a head crash, because that would mean I'd have to say buh-bye to almost 3 months worth of pictures and video.
Equipment can be replaced. Memories can't.

Kyoto & Osaka

Current location: Beijing, China

Damn. It's been almost a month since my last post. And as you can see I've made my way across the sea and up to Beijing. I guess time flies when you're having fun, huh?
To business:

They call Kyoto the cultural capital of Japan. Osaka I've heard being described as Tokyo's little brother on crack.
Bet you can't guess which one I liked better.

I went around the mandatory sights in Kyoto, and while the temples and shrines are kinda cool, once you've seen two or three, you've seen them all.
Kyoto wasn't all boring though. I did meet new people and had tons of fun.
I went on a crazy fishing trip with friends, blasting through the night on motorbikes. I led a beer-fuelled expedition in search for a bar in the wee hours in a city where everything closes shortly after midnight. I rented a bicycle and spent hours riding through the different neighbourhoods, getting lost as usual.
Having spent a couple of days in Kyoto I took a train to Osaka, where I met up with some friends I had made in Tokyo, and spent a weekend exploring the nightlife, which I must say is easily on par with that of Tokyo.

My plan was to spend a few days in Kyoto and Osaka before continuing towards Hiroshima and Fukuoka to take a ferry to China.
Having learned from my fuck up in Russia, I started my research on the ferry and on the visa early, and found out that the easiest way for me to get a boat and the visa was at Osaka, so I decided to skip western Japan and submitted my visa application. This meant that I was stuck in Kansai for a week. Luckily that week happened to coincide with the Daimonji-festival, so at least there was something interesting going on.

Fushimi Inari, check. Next.

The Golden Pavilion, check. Next.

Ryoan-ji kare-sansui zen garden, check. Next.

Kiyomizu-dera, check. Next.

Gion by night.

Kamogawa and riverside restaurants in Kyoto.

Hidari Daimonji.

Funagata.

Osaka castle.

Attacking Osaka castle, ninja style!

Osaka seen from the top of Osaka castle.

Osaka castle moat.

What's missing from this picture?
Answer: Nothing.
Alcohol and vintage video games, what else could you need?
Space Station in Amemura, Osaka.

Mt. Takao, Mt. Fuji & Kamakura

Current location: Kyoto, Japan

 After a week of fear and loathing on the alleys of Kabukicho I decided I needed some exercise to clear the fumes out of my head.
Mt. Takao stands 599m tall and is an hours train trip away from Tokyo, being an ideal place for me to sweat out some of the Sapporo beer I'd been chugging for days.

So I checked out of my manga-kissa early, took the train to the base of the mountain and started to climb the main path up. There was no end to the surprise of all the pensioners when they saw me climbing the mountain that early in the morning and I received many an "ohayo!" and "konnichiwa!" along with a puzzled look.
On the way down I encountered hordes of kids on a field trip from the kindergarten, and my "konnichiwa" was responded in near harmonious chorus.

Having gained the necessary mountaineering experience at Mt. Takao I decided to tackle Mt. Fuji.
So a couple of days later I took the last bus from Tokyo to the 5th station, to climb the mountain during night in order to catch the sunrise at, or near the summit.
The weather forecast was ominously predicting thunderstorms with a probability of 70%, but being a hardened mountaineer I thought I could take a little rain.
When I reached the 5th station, I could see it had rained not too long ago. The clouds hung low and the mountain was out of sight. But as I started my climb in the dark, the skies started to clear, and after some hours of climbing I had no more need for my headlamp, as the stars and the moon were illuminating the path.
At +3000m my heart was racing at 200 bpm after every five steps, and since I was only wearing a t-shirt and a thin wind stopper at 5 degrees Celsius and sweating like crazy, I was pretty cold.
It took me 9 hours to reach the top, with an hours stop at the 8th station to refuel and rest.
The sun was shining during most of my descent, but about an hour before I reached the 5th station the clouds started to roll in. Not 20 minutes after I reached the safety of the 5th it started to rain like hell, with thunder accompanying the downpour.
Climbing Fujisan was tough but definitely one of the most rewarding tasks I've ever undertaken.

The day trip to Kamakura was my bid to try and beat some culture into my head. But I'm no culture-vulture, nor am I really interested in history, so I went through the motions, checking out the "must-see" temples and shrines, snapping pictures as I went.
At the end of the day I decided to check out the beach, which made the whole trip worth while.
I happened to wander into a beach bar named Little Thailand, so I sat down on the beach with a cold Chang-beer in my hand, listening to Thai pop-music and watched the sun sink behind the horizon, having travelled, for a moment, through a rip in the fabric of space-time, to a little island in the Gulf of Thailand.

The main path to the summit of Takao-san.

The tengu of Takao-san

I took one of the more off-roady paths down.

Sunrise somewhere between the 8th station
and the summit at Fuji-san.

My climbing stick with the brands of
visited stations.

Entrance to the summit.

At the summit I rewarded myself with a can of ice cold Kirin.

The partially snow-covered crater.

Entrance to the... Uh... Don't-Remember-Which Temple at Kamakura

The Great Buddha of Kamakura.

Kamakura beach

Chok dee!

Japan

Tokyo

Current location: Kyoto, Japan

Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ueno, Asakusa, Akihabara, Odaiba, the Yamanote-line, the underground passageways, the parks, the temples, the shrines, the people, the buildings, the arcades, the manga-cafes, nomihodai, the bars, the pop-culture, the underground-culture, the counterculture and a hundred more things in this city deserve their own posts, and the following rant will not come close to making justice to the many faces and nuances of this behemoth among cities.
The sheer volume of stories and my lack of poetic talent forces me to reduce this to a mere account of the time I spent in Tokyo. And I must confess much of that time was spent downing drinks and making new friends all around the world. But I don't think time spent getting wasted is time wasted, but then, that's just me.

I spent three weeks in Tokyo, two more than I had planned, but as I'm not in a hurry, and really bad at planning, that didn't really matter.
The first week I spent doing touristy stuff, visiting old favourites and places I hadn't visited on my first trip to Japan a couple years ago, and doing my thing getting lost in the largest urban area on the planet. But the thing about getting lost in Tokyo is that there is something outrageously interesting behind every single corner, and in the end you're never too far from the closest train- or subway station.

The downfall of my itinerary was when I was introduced to Kabukicho. Now the word "red light district" will have you thinking of strip clubs, prostitutes, gangsters and drugs, and while I must admit a large part of the allure of the district is that special vibe those kind of places have, I wasn't attracted to the town by the carnal pleasures it had to offer, but simply because it had the best nightlife I had encountered in a loooong time.
I say nightlife, but like Tokyo itself, Kabukicho NEVER sleeps, so when would I stagger out of one bar as it closed at 6 am I could continue my binge at the next one that had just opened, catering to those like me, who think too much is never enough, and that there are only two choices, go hard or go home.

This might sound rough, and it is, but if Tokyoites know how to party, they sure as hell know how to bring that beaten, broken, alcohol soaked body back to life.
24/7 bathhouses, capsule hotels and manga-cafes serve as safe havens for the weary and provide the body and the mind with rest, relaxation and free (soft) drinks to get rid of the bastards hammering your brain with tiny sledgehammers and the lizards that are always just out of sight.
I got to know these places quite well, as after spending a week at a friends place in a luxurious high rise in one of the fanciest parts of Tokyo, I suddenly found myself walking the beat with my backpack, somehow so distracted from the reality of my situation that I didn't even try to find a hostel to stay at. Must have been all the shiny, pretty lights. Or the jaeger...
Aaanyway, a night at a manga-cafe is cheaper than most guesthouses, and besides internet, TV and all the manga in the world you get shower and free drinks. Many people actually go to these "manga-kissas" just to sleep.
Another favourite for catching a bit of shut-eye is the JR Yamanote-line, a train that runs a full circle around the centre of Tokyo, so you never need to get off. Some people buy the cheapest ticket and get on the train to read manga, as the trains have air con, a luxury many cannot afford.

Now before you start sending me the numbers and addresses of your local AA-club, I want to point out that I did do stuff in Tokyo and the surrounding areas besides trying to find the meaning of life at the bottom of a pint, but I will cover those adventures in another post, as this is starting to drag on, and I already used my potato joke.

This is what I woke up to every morning for a week.

A river under a highway? Sure, why not.

The foot of Tokyo Tower and a conveniently parked lambo.

The building I was staying in as seen from Tokyo Tower. (Yeah, the tall red one.)

The headquarters of Asahi and Tokyo Skytree.

The view from the top of the Skytree.
(Fuck that film on the glass that ruined all the pictures I took.)

Entrance to Senso-ji-temple in Asakusa.

I don't get the hype about Shibuya crossing.
I mean, we have one just like it in my hometown, Turku.

A street level view of Shibuya crossing.

Kabukicho, home to restaurants, bars, clubs, hosts and hostesses,
love hotels, yakuza and ME!