I left on Thursday for my first trip to the Far East. I’ll be over here until August 3rd on business and I thought I’d talk a little about my trip, from a non-business perspective. The first really bizarre thing was getting up at 5am on Thursday morning and seeing daylight until Friday night. This was because our flight took off out of Chicago around noon and we flew high enough into the northern hemisphere to completely avoid Thursday night. I’ve mentioned many times how I wish I could just skip nighttime and sleeping, but I can tell you I’m done with that thought.
After landing in Tokyo around 3pm (1am Central time) on Friday and getting settled into a hotel, we (I’m traveling with one of the developers here at KnowledgeLake) grabbed some dinner at a place that was a cross between Asian and American food. Unfortunately they didn’t do either very well. Afterwards I tried to get to sleep around 9pm, but ended up being wide awake at 1am (my body thought is was 11am the day before) I called home and chatted with my wife for a bit.
(Atrium water garden at the Narita Hilton)
After waking up again at 4 and 5am, I finally fell into a deep sleep around 6, one hour before my alarm went off in order to catch a bus into downtown Tokyo, for our flight to Komatsu. Driving through Tokyo, I couldn’t believe how industrial and crowded (and huge) it was. Although green and clean for an industrial city it had a little too much Saturday traffic for me. The airport in downtown (Heneda) was like a sterile room. I can’t believe an airport could be this clean… St. Louis please take note.
Landing in Komatsu, our hosts picked us up and took us too lunch at what they called Japanese BBQ. I can tell you it was not BBQ by a long shot, but oh my, it may have been some of the best food I’d ever had. A little like teppanyaki although you cooked it yourself. Pork, beef, squid, and some octopus mixed with a bunch of other stuff, made a feast for a king.
After a great lunch (thanks guys!) we were taken for a tour of Kanazawa, first going to a place called Myoryuji (Ninja Temple). This is a place of worship and also served as protection for the Kawazana Castle. It was full of trap doors and pits to elude and trap enemies, as well as many convenient secret doorways for fast escapes.
Next was a visit to the famous Kenrokuen Garden, one of the best Japanese gardens in the country. Hard to describe with words, but pictures sure help. The first picture is the famous Kenrokuen Latern, the second is me in front of a statue of Prince Yamato Takeru, the third is just a great scene, and the last is a the oldest fountain in Japan. It uses the pressure from a pond higher up the hill to work and when you consider it’s hundreds of years old, it’s very impressive.
After that we strolled over to Kanazawa castle, which is about four hundred years old. These days it’s just for site seeing, but it’s worth the visit as it sits high on top a hill and actually has a mote! Yep, what’s a castle without a mote.
The bottom two pictures should be explained. The one on the left is a view outside the castle, looking at the giant stone walls on the hillside. The one on the right are small holes they used to shoot guns out of when defending the castle.
Our gracious hosts dropped us off for the evening in our hotel, and probably the funniest thing that happened all day was seeing Chris Starkey order what he thought was a cheeseburger and getting this:
I do want to say thank you to our wonderful tour guides today, without them, it would have been a very dull afternoon in deed. I hope the rest of our stay is this nice.
こんばんは
Chris
Just had a delicious Japanese dinner at place called Hacchouya. Our wonderful hosts again treated us very well as they took care of ordering as none of the menus where in English. After a toast (kampai) we enjoyed fresh soy beans, shrimp (3 ways), chicken (10 ways), low fish (sushi), gyōza (potsticker), (chicken) eggs topped with (fish) eggs and a other stuff I have no idea on how to pronounce. Photo Gallery Here.
