Hiroshima is a town that everybody knows of. We went to the peace park and museum. There is numerous monuments to the A-Bomb sufferers. We saw paper crane monument that I remember learning about in primary school. The museum went thru the before and after the bombing. There were personal artifacts there that stated who they belongd to. Most of it were high school students that were out at the building demolishing sites on the day. There is a mound in the park that stores the ashes of unknown victims of the bombing. Today they are still identiflying them and passing them on to any family. Once again another good museum at the low price of 50yen. I had to do a double take when I saw the price cause it is basically AUD$0.80. If Aussie land did museums at Jap prices I would go more. Our city map stated there was a "Dogey Area" so we went to investigate. It was just nightclubs & girl bars.
Beppu was next. The interwebs described it as Japans Las Vegas without the gambling, only sex. Beppu has alot of hot springs, think sooz said 600, which a guy started to promote to bring tourist to Beppu. Its a seaside summer town and we didnt see many whities. On the first night outside a department store, a lady stopped us to get Sooz & I to take a photo with her, crazy.
We went to a african safari park and got to ride in a "rino"bus and feed animals along the way. We feed sheep, goats, deers, lions, elephants, giraffes, bears, biason and zebras. Also eagles but not deliberatly. We also fed small monkeys in another cage. There was a cat & dog salon. The dogs were just small yap yaps and there was a variety of cats. You payed 300yen and you could play with the cats. They also had a lion cub there. It was sad because it was in a small area with only a ball to play with and it was scared. I sat there for a while and it got use to me. We started to play. Of course there was a window between us but it was still cool.
We than visited some hot springs, like hell valley/rotorua type places. Lots of sulphar, steam and hot water/mud. One of them also housed a crocodile farm.
Our next stop was a sex museum. Now we were just standing on a corner trying to get our bearings when a guy came up to Justin and started showing him a brochure and discount tickets for something. It turned out to be the museum which was handy. Now I will use the term museum loosely. It was more a private collection of asian pottery, statues and animal penis's. There was movie entertainment, life size models and an action model but I will not go into that as parents are reading. Pictures will not be published in album.
A major highlight was our hotel room, it was huge! We had 2 rooms the same. All had double beds and plenty of moving area. We actually all got to hang out in a room together with room to move. The hotel had a hot spring bath too. Sooz & I tested it out. The water was very hot inside, we went outside as was a little cooler but still could only stay in for 5min.
Nagoya was our first of "one day-ers".
We visited the Toyota Technology & Innovation Museum. Like all jap museums it rocked. We learnt that "Mr Toyota" is actually "Mr Toyoda" and he was a weaver not a car salesman. He had a weaving factory and did alot of R&D into machinery for the factory. After reaching a point he started to become interested in the development of the motor vechicle. He flogged off his weaving machine business for 1million yen to europeans and went into cars. He was pretty cool cause in all his work he did his own R&D and setup all types of departments so he could get all his own answers. Anyho, the museum started out about the weaving and we were like wtf! Showed machinery from spinning wheels to todays equipment. You can make some of the equipment work by pushing button.
We skipped one area about metal forging to see trumpet playing robot, not as fun as Asimo (Shaun says it is the lamest robot ever!!!!!!!!!!).
So we are wondering when the cars came into it and went into the next section. Gave all the back info on the development of Toyota. Us girls were ahead of the boys and we went up a set of stairs. I had been thinking that this wasnt as much info as the weaving when turned a corner and went OMG. There was a room about the size of a footie field and like a workshop. There wasnt a large range of vechicles, just some key models, trucks, forklift, corolla, corona, celisor, celica, crown. There was all the equipment needed to make a car & its parts, like the weaving, you could press buttons and make them work. There was a 2500tonne press that made alot of noise and conrods. There was a fax machine in a glovebox and we got to press a token and you could use a drill press to turn it into a keyring.
There is a "scitech" area too. We played in a wind machine and lifted a engine using leverage. Unfortunatly it was closing time so we didnt get to play much. Hours and hours of fun for 500yen.
Thurs: got up lazy heads and went to science musuem that normas/simsons have been. lots of cool interative educaation toys. saw 3d movie about space in jap so no understanding. wore cool big 3d glasses :) wandered over to tokyo bay for dinner and views, very nice looking at rainbow bridge against tokyo skyline.
Fri: hit disneysea, so much nicer than disneyland, prob cause new old fashion. we had to wait 30min for one ride, all the rest were only 5min, 10min. why u ask? because it was pouring with rain :P i dont think it stopped once, would lighten off to a drive. nothing like being on a rollercoaster with raindrops the temp of ice pelting your face, fun! Thankfully our 500yen brollies & raincoats kept us mostly dry.
Sat: another rain/drizzle day. went to tokyo dome city for this cool looking rollercoaster that was mixed with a shopping centre. closed due to weather. bup bow. walked to akihabara for the boys to scope out old consoles came back with a r33 gtr toy car to add to collection.
Sun: 11hrs/3 train rides to Sapporo. Woke up after the first couple of hours to find 2 tipsy boys, after 11hrs 2 drunk boys and by time arrived and eating dinner 2 worse for wear boys. at dinner we kept on feeling like we were still moving on the train. it snowed all tonight, we were all excited and amazed.
Mon: all woke up after bad sleep. dry air has dried out our throats and we cant sleep well. plus double beds a little on small side. shaun & i got a humidifier and works wonders. I made the bed extended by adding our rooms chairs. all solved except i am sick. i spending the day sleeping. shaun walked around and experienced ice on sidewalks, he now has some straps he puts on his shoes that have spikes in them. justin & sooz go shopping and justin suceeds in getting his favourite shows. We have all decided that -3deg is freezing and that we need heat bubbles to walk around in.
Tues: the punishment that is skiing today :) our instructor shaun took us thru basics and we practiced with all the newbys. we decided to try the beggineers run. getting off the lift is scary but this one dropped you off in a straight line. the one in vic gave u 3mtrs before you had to turn. all good, NOT. in vic the begineers run was graduly at the start. this one went BAM down the hill u go. off my boots they went! i walked down to a softer slope and did my dogey slow ski from one side to the other until the next steep slope came along and than walked. repeated this about four time till got down the bottom never to go up again. shaun finished his second run shorty after i got down. Sooz & I swapped forr sledding, snowman building and snow angels, much safer. shaun & justin did 2 runs before coming back frozen. it had been snowing all day and visability got pretty bad at times only being able to see about 10min in front of u. temp got down to -7deg by the time we packed up. great value for this death deflying package, 5400yen each got us return bus ride (90min each way), ski hire & lift pass.
heaps more pics here >
There is currently a tv show on advertising a charity shirt of a japanese half naked chick to save the children WTF!
We thundered our way around Disney yesterday, im pretty sure all reading and have been to disney by now so wont bore you. Stupid us went on Splash Down at 8pm, at the front of the train, in freezing temps :)
Today we went to Nissan factory in Oppama. They took us into a conference room and had a factory outline brochure and toy gtr each. I had sudden fear that they thought we were media. Ran us thru factory & Nissan statistics, 1100 cars/day, avg age of employee is 401 Then we got a tour of Factory 2, they built the Note, Cube & Micra in this factory. We got to walk on the floor along the assembly line watching the cars getting trimmed and final inspection. There was so much happening could not keep up. We got driven around the whole complex which covered 1.8 million sq mtres, they have their own port. There was 40 GTR's & lots of Z's ready for shipment to US. It was really cool.
Went in to Yokohama. The weather started getting bleak. There are lots of new cool buildings. The place was a bit empty and was so much more spread out than other Japan towns that it felt odd. We went on a rollercoaster that went into a pool. There were a lot of G's which was a bit scary as well as rides not being built for our body shapes, no room for legs :P
FYI, if you didn't know,here is where we are uploading the pictures. We have only done two days worth so far as its been so busy. but I promise theyre will be heaps up soon :)
http://picasaweb.google.com/shaunorman
we went to disneyland today and are heading off to yokohama tomorrow (wednesday) to go to the nissan factory.
so stay tuned. :)
Hi all, we are here, justin and sooz r on a train somewhere.
Shaun & I had a surprise stop in Mayalasia after KL, Kota Kinabalu. It was a scheduled stop but did not show up in our flight plan. Smaller version of KL airport, there for an hour. I bought a top, perfect for a resort trip or in my case, Future Music Festival.
Arrived 30min early, customs was easy peasy and on the train quickly. Long trip thou to Akasaka, Skyliner to Ueno, subway to Tameike-sanno and switch to Akasaka. We thought we had missed peak hour but bam bow, we had not. We were halfway in the carriage with peak traffic in the carriage, those who know, not good when u have suitcases. A gentleman helped pave a path for us to get out at our stop. Thankfully he was able to get back on the train before it left.
After flying since 2am friday morning, bed was looking very good but we made a quick stop at Pizza Hut for perfect pizza. Sleep ahhhh.
Awake and its saturday. We are travelling to our apartment in Ikekuburu. All good, just a day of wondering. Tomorrow ice hockey game.
tata all
p.s. our toilet in the apartment has a basin on top so when u flush, water comes from the tap so you can wash your hands. The water than flows into the toilet tank for the next flush. How green!