Snow monkeys in Nagano prefecture!

Snow monkey figurines.  Looked a lot like hello kitty =p

What this place really was was just a lunch stop for us.  Nagano is well known for their apples, so there are apple trees everywhere!  One of their specialties is apple-flavored ice cream, which was tasty considering it was freezing cold out.  It looked better uneaten, but this was one of those "oh shit" moments where I forgot to take a picture before I started pigging out.

Ok, back to the real snow monkeys.  So we're still in Nagano, but now we've driven deeper into the hills.  Picturesque right?  If you had shown me this picture prior to visiting Japan, I would have thought you'd be crazy to tell me this was Japan.

From the entrance to the final hot bath area of the snow monkeys was about 1.6km, which takes a good 30 minutes walk.  I made a stop motion GIF of the whole 30 minute walk, which I attached all the way at the bottom of this post.  Not including it right after this picture kind of kills the continuity, but the thing was 15megs and took forever to upload it, so it's staying at the bottom of the post!  Anyways, taking pictures every 10-15 seconds for 30 mins straight wasn't difficult at all.  I didn't mind as everything looked more or less the same until you got to the snow monkey part of the trail.

About 2/3 of the way up the trail you get to see a natural hot geyser!  The amount of steam and the force by which it was propelled out of the earth was amazing.  I was thinking in terms of jet-engine strong.  If only I had some dumplings and a really really long stick...

The first monkey I saw was really far away from the bath, and he was far up in a tree, so I couldn't get a good picture.  This is the second monkey, who was just chillin'!.



Hah, this next one speaks for itself.  I had to hurry and take the picture so that no one else noticed =p

Third monkey for the day:

And an intro to the monkey area, with baby monkey featured at the end:

And this one was the little baby monkey that was still very curious.

"Rolling down the street, smoking endo, sippin' on gin n' juice...."  These monkeys were straight G, they didn't give a crap about what you were doing.

There's a permanent webcam affixed to that post which takes hourly pictures of the bath.  It's unfortunate though, the pictures from the camera from when I was there were corrupt.  Anyways, you could grab the URL from the full-sized image to look at some monkeys!

The bath is artificial, but the heated water from that geyser up above is piped up to it.  These monkeys are just hanging out on top of the heated water pipe.

Here's the same little guy from earlier.  He climbed up to the post where I was standing, then he reached out with both his hands, grabbing onto my coat.  He was almost making a little bridge from my body to the post.  He then turned around and put his feet on my coat, haha.  If I had gotten closer he may have jumped on me, but I had to pull back because we're not allowed to touch them.  AND they've got a bunch of fleas =p

Hehe, they're monkeying around!  It was coming... =p

Remember, that was 30minutes worth of a hike condensed into a minute's worth of GIF.  Not bad, right?

This snow monkey (or macaque) was my favorite trip so far.  The scenery was beautiful, and having the chance to observe wild monkeys without any barriers was something truly special.  

My first visit to a castle, Matsumoto Castle in Nagano

On my way to my first castle, which is in the Nagano prefecture.  Nagano might sound familiar because it was the site of the 1998 winter olympics (not sure who watches the winter olympics).  So, being one of the official sites of the winter olympics means that the cold experienced in this part of town is LEGIT.  Luckily I had a full body thermal to keep me warm (although I didn't have a beanie, stupid packages from cali to japan are taking a damned long time to arrive).

So, back to this castle.  This is Matsumoto castle, which was nicknamed "Crow Castle" due to its paint job--it's mostly all black!  The castle was erected in the 16th century, and besides for minor renovations and repair (secondary to earthquake damage), it mostly looks as it did way back when.  It's considered one of Japan's national treasures.

After a four hour long bus ride, this was my view upon exiting the bus:

Lovely contrast of the red bridge on the white and black castle, yes?

I thought these were goofy.  They're just small posts, but the ones on the right were untouched, which made it look like they were balancing little snowballs.

The pictures are clickable.  This one should be readable once it's all loaded up.

Because Matsumoto castle is not built on a hill, there were numerous areas on each side of the building which allowed for bow+arrow and musket defense.  These elongated windows were intended for archers to take down advancing troops from afar.

And this stubby window was used with those musket-looking guns instead.

A view from the main keep into the moon-viewing room.

Look at that sum'bitch, it could shoot golf balls!

The castle was deceptively cold as there were windows all over the place.  Oddly enough I didn't see any areas for fireplaces either. They didn't mention how the occupants kept warm.

The stairs in the castle are unlike the normal stairs you'd find...hell, anywhere.  They vary in steepness, with some steps nearing about 8-10 inches in height, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're faced with 10-15 of them, you're practically staring at a tilted wall with mini ledges.

This is the roof of the tower, with me looking directly upwards, showing the dedication to the goddess described in that last picture.  It's supposed to be the reason why the castle is still standing to this day!

This was the warning posted at the TOP of the steepest stairs in the whole castle.  Note, AT THE TOP, as in, you've already made it to the top.

The big overhang that one does not see, thanks to the graphical warning picture being located in the wrong place.  I was met with a largely wooden resounding fuck you as I bashed my head into it.  "Fucka you," is what it would have said if it could speak.

The room below, the moon viewing room, was my favorite room in the whole castle.  One can imagine that at night it would really offer a beautiful view of the night sky.

Sorry about the white balance, my camera phone is slow to adapt.

Thanks to michelle for finding these on zappos.  They're PVC shoe-covers that I slipped over my keep's.  Allowed my feet to stay dry AND they provided extra grip.

Menacing, pretty?  It's like the trent reznor of freaking castles.

It was so cold out that I didn't have good control over my own facial expressions.  In my head I thought I looked a lot cooler with the blade in hand.  Hah, stupid cold weather.

Calories in liquid form please!

Quick quip here.

The Japanese don't like to drink their calories.  Yeah, there are coffee shops, but coffee is coffee, I don't really see it as a dessert-type of drink.  There are no Jamba Juices, no Half and Halfs, but most importantly, no AU green tea shops =(

I definitely miss my AU green tea and my pink boba.  There's this one stupid store that makes things even more difficult:

They sell cell phones, though.  *Shakes fist.

On a brighter note [PUN], I'm starting to think that the lack of green tea is allowing my teeth to regain their prior-to-discovering-how-tasty-green-tea-is shades of whiteness.  Well, it's either that or my bathroom mirror's fluorescent lighting is playing tricks on me.


-edit - I haven't had a chance to add in all of this past weekend's updates, but it'll be done by tomorrow!

First taste of real Japanese sushi!

Well, it took a while to get enough recommendations from my patients to finally settle on a good, local spot for sushi.

Here it is:

Hell if I knew what the name was or meant =p  It's not too far off of base, it's just a walk down blue street down to the local yokosuka chuo train station.  It's right underneath the station.

Anyways, it's one of those conveyor belt type of sushi places where the food that's being served is being hauled right by you on a teeny little conveyor belt.  Watching the food go by reminds me of waiting for your luggage at the luggage claim.  My favorite part of the whole conveyor belt thing is when it makes sharp 90 degree turns!

Split scallops for 3ish dollars!  All the plates are color coded, and the color codes and the respective prices are are on the menu underneath my plate here.

I have a terrible food name memory, and I forgot what this fish was (maybe some sort of tuna?), but the important thing is that I remember it was super tasty.  This sushi place is just like any average mom and pop sushi place back home, meaning that it's not a uber high end chain (nobu) or a super well-kept secret (sushi wasabi).  BUT, the sushi still did not disappoint.  As you can see, the cuts of the fish are relatively large, and if you were back in socal at your average kabuki's expecting fish this size, you could damn well EXPECT the quality to be shit.  It'd probably be super firm, too fishy to the taste, and probably served at room temperature (blech!).  But here, none of that was true.  You had fish that was a large cut (almost double the size of the fish served at sushi wasabi) AND was tasty (if sushi wasabe was a 10/10, this place would be a 8/10, at about a fifth of the cost)  Not bad for your average sushi place!

That last one was praying mantis shrimp, I believe.  That one definitely sounded cooler than it tasted. This variety of fish is very dense in its meat.  Not a fan.  I'll stick with the sweet shrimp.

All in all, I wish the average sushi places at home were like this.  Good and cheap.  My whole meal was 1600 yen, around 19-20 bucks.  One look at the fish served here and you know it's done right.  You can almost see the freshness (I've always described it as a very fine glistening texture to the fish, where the fish looks moist throughout).

The next sushi place I'll be going to is a 100 yen per plate sushi place.  I hear it's pretty popular.  Maybe Wednesday...

Last leg - Asakusa in Tokyo

More temples!  Today was much more about absorbing the ways of the Shinto than it was goofing around in hot spas.

The story goes like this.  Two fisherman were out doing their fisherman thing when one day they reeled in their catch, only to reveal that there was a small (I forgot, maybe 1x1inch) golden symbol of guan yin, the goddess of mercy.  That's the same god that mom has in the top of her mantle thing, the main female god.  Anyways, news spread of their finding, and it was determined that the symbol was sacred.  So this temple gets erected for the sake of housing the brothers' finding.  As a tribute to the brothers, they were also given their own temple.

Here's the main temple, the Kannon do, which houses the symbol.

I kinda bummed that I forgot to take a pic/video of the cleansing process required of visitors before entering the temple, but it goes like this.  There is a round fountain with little ladles sitting atop the thing.  You're supposed to pick up the ladle with your left hand, fill it with fresh water from the fountain, then pour it over your right hand to cleanse you of spiritual impurities?  Repeat with your right hand.  Then you fill up the ladle and you take a sip of the water, only to spit out the water into a water reservoir surrounding the fountain (it's classier than I make it out to sound).  Lastly, you fill up the ladle again, and angle it vertically, allowing the water to run down the handle, purifying it.

Inside the main temple is like a super-sized and super-golden version of mom's alter.  I couldn't find the little symbol thing the fisherman found.  Some stories mention it to be some sort of statue, so maybe my tour guide got the story wrong.

This is the Hozoumon gate, which is south of the main temple.  In the background to the left, you can see the Tokyo Sky Tree, which is the tallest communication tower in the world, and the second tallest structure in the world after the one in dubai (the one in dubai is almost 200meters taller!)

Five story pagoda.  We weren't permitted entry for some odd reason.

This is the iconic Kaminarimon gate, the thunder gate!  This is the main gate that leads to the temple.  Flanked by the gate are a bunch of stalls where food/toys/trinkets are sold.

The golden building there is the Asahi HQ.  It's built to look like freshly-poured beer.  Note that weird golden horn thing.  No idea what that was.

I've never seen such large puffer fish!

And here is a 3d image I compiled.  It's a picture of a tempura-fried green tea and red bean pastry thing.

Anyways, click on it to make it full-sized.  If you can cross your eyes voluntarily, cross them until you get the third image in the center and p00f, there's your 3d pastry.  If you can't cross your eyes voluntarily, sit about 2 feet away from the monitor, point at the center of the whole picture with your finger, then follow your finger as you move the finger closer towards your eyes.  Once your finger is somewhere between the screen and your face, you'll notice a third image forming right behind your finger.  You'll have to use your peripheral vision to notice.  So, once that third image is looks to be complete, take your finger away and concentrate/squint to clear out all the details.  There you go, 3d pastry.

That's it for this week.  Next week I'm going to Mt. Fuji.  Unfortunately I can' climb it due to the poor weather.  Typical climbing season runs from mid July through August.  Attempt to climb any earlier or later and you_will_die due to the really piss-poor weather conditions.  Damn shame I'll have to leave by mid =-May, I wanted to climb it too.