Kyoto Days 1 and 2 with Bob

the Ryokan we stayed at was pretty good, they really catered to the traveler.

the room after we had our way with it.

bob had to wash clothes in the sink cuz he didn't bring enough. They never dried because it rained so here he is blow drying them.

Bob hasn't done any kind of physical exercise since about 2 years ago when he almost died scaling the great wall of china. I mean literally, at a desk for 2 yrs straight. so that is how out of shape he is. his glasses have fogged up from sweating so much.

watch out for monkeys, but we didnt see any

is that little one covering his balls?

whats up with these mirror-like things?

whats up with these straw sandals

bob can't ride a bike for more than 2 minutes without being winded, seriously 2 minutes. He was pretty super tuckered after this 15 minute ride.

then we rode the shortest train ever, 1 car, to the Arashiyama area in western Kyoto

i like this shot.

another example of japanese giant baby men.

I wanted to try the CardioLife product because i've never seen a heart defibrillator vending machine before.

walking around the arashiyama area of kyoto, through the bamboo groves and all of the sudden there is a train station.

geta sandals. there are even crazy ones with one tooth in the middle that guys walk around on.

Mie days 1 and 2 summer 2010

fast forward 2 days later and its 7 am in the morning after a long long night of drinking and karaoke for my classmates sayonara party and we have to ride the bus to Mie prefecture to Fumika's house.

the guy on the left is using the sleeping hood properly, bob is not.

tea fields. first time i've seen tea fields.

the school girls in fumika's super small town have to wear these baseball helmet like things.

just another reason why fumika's mom is awesome. she is a school teacher and some of her students drew pictures of their dog or something so she put them inside the actual dog house!

this guy is something, not a mudskipper but what is it? its on the tip of my tongue. anyway i wore a towel with this guy on it around my head all day at the beach.

Gotenba Beach in Aichi prefecture. we were supposed to be clam digging but the tide was in so we couldn't so we just dug a hole.

fu-balls parents drove us there and then bounced out and went shopping.

another reason why fu-ball's mom is awesome, she is curious and inquisitive

tons of fools gold or something in the water that day.

what's going on with the ocean here where you can scoop all of this out of the sand?

the haze lifed and when we turned around 3 hrs later this thing almost slapped us in the face.

get that spicy mustard "Ame-li-kan doe-gu" FuFu Bob's Ultraman Drink Kamenlida!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this is a super prize winning picture in the arena of brotherhood because this might be the bobbest picture of bob ever taken. fu-balls has a higher quality pic on her big camera so i can't post a detail shot until i get it from her.

by the time we got home from the Onsen in Mie (we went to the most famous onsen (hot spring) in Mie prefecture where I saw Bob's balls (more affectionately called bobby bits) and he saw mine for probably the first time in 20 years) there was this super super awesome self making sushi roll dinner ready for us. salmon, tuna, various meats, blue cheese, various veggies, pruchetta (what am i trying to say? i mean that paper thing italian pork stuff), those awesome chicken cutlet things with cheese and bitter leaf inside that fu-balls mom makes, and clam miso soup were all there.

Fu-nutz mom grading. Another reason she is awesome is cuz she is a real person and dislocated her arm after being tipsy and trying to get out of the tub.

Bob's Tokyo Beginnings

Since Bob is taking a little bloggy break I will sneak some of my posts in. So for those that don't know here are Bob's vitals:

Name: Bob Age: 26 Blood Type: none, he's a robot

Occupation: Math Education PHD canidate at some college in Colorado

Height: 5'11" maybe? Weight: 155 lbs (up 15lbs from eating meat according to Bob)

Origin: Canisteo, NY by way of Seoul, S. Korea

Special Abilities: Vegetarianism (does that count?), Analyzing the fun out of anything, Teaching, Math, Socks with sandals.

Interests: Basically everything that i'm not interested in. Except movies we loves movies.

Languages: Only English Previous Experience: Trips to various US locations, Trip to Paris, 1 month stay with brother; Jason Raish in Beijing, China

i fogot to take a pic of bob when he got here and was awake so i guess this will have to do. Poor guy was all tuckered out after 27 hrs of travel from the godforsaken lands of Albany to Seattle to the land of the rising sun.

we saw firemen in training under the bridge where the bartenders practice their cocktail shaker shows, kids play baseball, homeless guys live, if you want a complete sentence then sorry to dissapoint

the bounty bob brought me from the US. everything exploded in the plane. I have eaten all of this and have learned that its bad for you in large quantities. I mean yea for course i knew that but it took 2 years outside of the US to really realize how gross it is.

This is AKB 48, a pop music group. A mega concept by some perv producer who is probably rich now. He took 48 school girls ages 15-18 or something like that from each of the 48 prefectures or watever the 48 geographical divisions of japan are called. Would this fly in the US? presenting 15 yr school girls in swimsuits for all to oggle (child pornography is legal in Japan)? As a dude it makes you so confused because......

they present this.....and then........

they present this............ what's a red blooded guy supposed to think?

Also this is the ANA airlines commercial i was talking about Bob. This is 2 minutes with a horrible song but they play a 30 second version on the trains with a parting shot of a close up of a super cute girl in slow mo and it leaves you thinking two things:
1. This is an airline commercial, who is this supposed appeal to?
2. God I love Japan's sexist advertising (if you are a red blooded guy)

Nara and more Osaka - POSTED BY BOB

I do not know if any of my coffee shop friends are reading this blog, but I found this coffee roaster in Nara. I thought it was pretty cool and is definitely more ghetto than the one at Uncommon Grounds.

So Nara is famous for a lot of things, but mostly deer. They are everywhere and they are all wild. They do not mind people and are almost completely domestic. Seriously these deer are everywhere. I am surprised there are not hundreds of deer lying dead at the side of the road. These deer own this town.

There are these vendors all over the place selling some sort of crackers for tourist to feed the deer.

Instead of buying crackers to feed the deer this guy brought a bag of old lettuce.

Jason likes to be a jerk every once in a while and here he is being a jerk to this deer. To be fair though these deers are kind of jerks. When you start to feed them they just start rubbing up against you to get more crackers. When this happens deer just start flocking around which means there are places where there are literally hundreds of deer in a small area. The deer are mostly tame, but I actually saw a girl, about 20 yrs old, get kicked in the back. She did not get kicked hard and she was fine, but it was kind of shocking to see. The girl was squatting and fell over and surprised a near by deer.

This is the largest wooden structure in the world. It needs to be big because it holds a huge Buddha statue.

These pictures do not really capture how large the Buddha is. Jason has pictures of me standing in front of it, which gives it some scale.

This statue was outside of the huge wooden structure and was pretty creepy. You are supposed to put money it the box at his feet and the rub him. You then rub a part of your body that is sore and it will make it feel better. I rubbed by baby legs and it might have worked, but I do not think so.

Giant bell. Jason and I are not really impressed by giant bells. I get why they are cool, but they are just kind of "meh" to me.

Here is me at my grossest. The ice cream on the left was a sesame flavored ice cream and the orange one is melon. They were both good, but I preferred the melon.

Nara is filled with little temples and shrines and it nice running into them and just wandering around.

Here is Jason feeding one of the deer in Nara. After a day with the deer we headed back to Osaka.

This is Osaka-Jo which is a castle in the middle of the city.

Crooked picture of the Osaka-Jo.

View from Osaka-Jo.

This is a better shot of the castle. There is a museum inside, but it mostly fun for the whole going to a castle and seeing how difficult it must be to attack this without gunpowder or airplanes.

More Omelet rice from Nara.

'

This is my first time getting Ramen in Japan. It is really good and so much different from what American think of as Ramen.

Another view from Osaka-Jo. I guess I am really bad at ordering the photos because they are always out of order. I am not as good as this blogging thing as Jason.

Jason has to hold my hand and take me all over Japan because I am a giant baby and he still needs to work at the same time. Here he is doing stuff on his laptop on our way back to Tokyo on the bullet train. A bullet train is just a really fast train that goes between Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto. What would normally be a 6-8 hour bus ride was only a 2 hour train ride. Pretty convenient, but also pretty expensive. This is the end of this leg of the trip. From here on out will just be Tokyo.