Nerdtour 2012: Some pictures from Matsushima

The trip is winding down, now, but I’m now trying to squeeze in as much as possible. I probably won’t post anything until I get back to the US, unless it’s a short status entry. So, here are some photos from my Matsushima trip.

Enjoy!









Nerdtour 2012: Matsushima kaerimashita…

Today was a good day, even though it was long and tiring. I made it back to Matsushima, which was one of my primary goals for this trip. It was a mixed bag in some ways, as it seems Matsushima and the area was affected by the tsunami, and there were major changes in the land configuration (the bay front area, and one of the islands had sunk a meter or two, such that the high tide now washes over into the main plaza), some things that had been there for a long time were lost, like the trees in Zuiganji temple, but most remained, and a few of my personal landmarks were still there, if a bit worse for wear. I’ll post some pictures as I upload them, but for now, it’s 11:30 PM, the day started at 8:30 (actually earlier, but thereby hangs another tale).

Well,here’s one picture, more later:

Nerdtour 2012: Surf, sunset, and Mount Fuji

This will be short and sweet, Wednesday I rode the Enoshima Train, or Enoshima Densha (Enoden) from Kamakura to Fujisawa, stopping along the way to see the Big Buddha (more on that later), and serendipitously caught the sun setting on a beautiful seaside town along the way. Plus, Mount Fuji! Or at least, the silhouette of it…
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Nerdtour 2012: To see Mt. Fuji…

So, just as I have twice before, I went in search of Mount Fuji. And just as before, I managed to not see it, again!
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Nerdtour 2012: Still alive!

So, I have almost fully recovered from the Cold from Hell, wasting nearly a week in the process. I’ve been out and about to a couple of places Saturday and Sunday, and saw some interesting things. I don’t have time tonight (it’s a little after midnight, early Monday morning as I write) to write up everything I’ve done, but I can show some of the scenes from the past few days.
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Nerdtour 2012: kaze wo hikimashita…

Urgh, I’m now on day 2 of a crappy head cold. It’s a little disheartening to learn the hard way that not all Japanese care enough about the people around them to cover their faces when they have a cold. In walking through crowds to and from stations, or standing on tracks in a crowd waiting for a train, I’ve seen a lot of people wearing the “surgical masks”, to keep from spreading their colds via coughing or sneezing. Unfortunately, some people in the crowds have not been so considerate, and I’ve been standing near people who let loose with a cough or sneeze, leaving their clouds of mucus and viruses for others to walk through. It’s hard to avoid them, too, when you basically have to keep moving behind them, or have to grab the hanging straps that have been grabbed by untold others.

At any rate, it hit me Monday evening, the sneezing, the runny nose, the crappy feeling. Tuesday I stayed in the apartment until the evening, when I decided I needed to get some kind of cold medicine, and some food and something to drink. A quick Google search of the expat sites for advice, a little research with my iPhone dictionary app, and I was ready to head to one of the local drugstores ( 薬屋, kusuri ya, literally “medicine shop” ) for some head cold medicine ( 風邪薬, kazegusuri, cold medicine ). I wanted something specifically for the symptoms I had, sneezing ( くしゃみ, kushyami ) and runny nose ( 鼻水, hanamizu, literally “nose water” ^_^ ). Fortunately I was able to convey this to the pharmacist, who pointed me to a box of something that had most of the words, and double-checked with him to make sure.

So, fortified with hope, I stopped at a combini to pick up dinner and some juice and soda. Different convenience stores stock different things, but they all have a hot food, cold food, and drinks section, so I picked up a tonkatsu meal, which is a fried pork cutlet, on scrambled egg and rice, and a bottle of Kagome vegetable juice. On the way back I passed a vending machine that carried hot and cold drinks, and so I decided to try a “hot lemonade”. Sure enough, a bottle of lemonade came out of the machine, very warm. I bought two, and they were still warm when I got back to the apartment. I drank the bottles of hot lemonade with the cold pills, and as I was eating the tonkatsu, the medicine started working on my cold. I called it an early night a few hours after that, but had to wake up a few times during the night with more sneezing.

Today, Wednesday, I’m feeling a bit better, the cold is still with me but not as bad, and the cold pills are doing their job. I figure I should be back up and about by tomorrow. Hopefully I just caught the same cold everyone in Tokyo seems to have, so that I have immunity and don’t have to worry about it anymore. We’ll see.

Here’s my magic combination that seems to be working on my cold!

Kazegusuri Rangers! Fight-o!

Nerdtour 2012: Tokyo Sky Tree – No, it’s not small!

So, on a sunny but brisk, windy day, it was time for a trip to the Tokyo Sky Tree, the tallest free-standing tower in the world. Trust the Japanese to make up for tiny little living spaces by building something humongous!
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Nerdtour 2012: Apartment

I did a video walkaround of my apartment in Monzennakacho, just like the one I did of the hotel room I stayed in on Day 1. No video trickery was used to make it look smaller!
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