Day four was pretty good… why? BECAUSE I WENT TO TOKYO DISNEY LAND! I think that’s pretty damn cool for the sheer fact that I’ve never been to any Disney Land anywhere before, the closest I came to going to a theme park of the sort was in North Carolina at Carrowinds (which have the best roller-coasters too) so this was certainly a treat. It wasn’t cheap, but I think it was worth it at 10,000 yen for a two-day pass to Tokyo Disney Land and Tokyo Disney Sea. Since both locations are located in Chiba, I had to make the trek via car for about two hours which from place to place in Jaapn, isn’t that long of a trip. As you can see, we passed by the famous Tokyo Incinerator.

Finally after arriving at the hotel (Tokyo Disney Resort), I checked in and got ready for a full day ahead of me (it was only eight in the morning, needless to say I was in the car for quite some time already). The Mighty Poz ready for action.

I don’t think the other guy waiting for the bus was too happy about having his picture taken.

Walking through the gates of Disney Land amazed me, I never expected it to be such a spectacle. When I think of Disney Land, I think back to the park gates of Wally-World from National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation… bland, borring and cheap… not Disney Land!!! The gates along probably cost a quarter of a million dollars, alone. After doing some walking around, I decided to take in one of the rides called Space Mountain. Honestly, when I was walking through & in the line-up, I seriously thought that they had copied entire rooms from the video game ‘Half Life’, it was uncanny!!!

A short while later, I figured it was time for lucnh so off I went to find the themiest (is that a word?) restaraunt that I could find in the park… I think I found it, as you can see!

The only downside is that the burger was close to twenty dollars… and not very good. Oh well, that’s big business at work! On the upside, the burger did taste fairly decent, even though I could buy about ten of them for the same price back home in Canada or about six at the same price in a typical McDonalds in Tokyo.

Now this guy just seems to constantly pop up at random places with the stranges expressions on his face.

When I first got to Disney Land, I had assumed it would be a fun-park for little kids, but as mentioned, I couldn’t beleive the kinds of entertainment available. The shows were much more mature than I had thought they would be. This next little shot is of one of the ‘Latin’ themed song & dance’s that I saw. It may look a little goofy, but it was very well choreographed and very impressive, plus the women dancing were… well… yum! There were two main singers, a caucasion male & Japanese female and the strange thing is that the white guy didn’t look, not did he even sound latin so I couldn’t help but chuckle.

Yea, I don’t think so.

I DEFINITLY don’t think so.

So day three finaly rolled around and to my surprise, I was doing fairly decently in spit of the jet-lag I had to endure. My eyes were cleared up, my nose was still a little stuffy from the different air, but I was doing allright (and up at a decent hour too!). My first point of business was to head out shopping, but how could I resist taking a picture of this monstrosity…. oh well, at least it delivers what it promises!

So off shopping I went. I must say to anyone considering going to Japan… BRING MONEY! You will need it, trust me on that one. This little MP3 player for example has 6gb worth of space in it’s tiny little body and boasts upwards of 50 hours of play-time using it’s internal lithium-ion battery or using an external lithium (which it comes with too!) up to 150 (if effectivly doubles the physical size). Price? About $300, cheap by comparison to what is generally available in the North American market.

While walking through one of the shopping centers, I stumbled across this childrens store. Japanese enjoy making anything and everything cute, this store’s name is by no means an exception to that rule.

Back to Japanese technology again, it’s truly impressive to see all the different items that are available these days overseas. Take this cellular phone for example. It’s inexpensive ($50 on a one-year contract), and is ideal for young children or the elderly that cannot grasp or simply do not want to deal with all the gizmos and gadgets that modern cellular phones have. Pre-progam in 3 numbers, or simply dial straight out, plus it’s a lot more appealing to the older audiences compared to the Motorola Firefly that’s presently available through Cingular and Rogers Celluar Systems in Canada and the United States.

On the evening of the third day, I wanted to take a stroll through Sakuragicho, one of the more-so ‘cool’ districts of Yokohama (and close to where I picked up my shoes!) so off I went. I even made it out so far as the Muscle Art Show (it’s not as homosexual as it sounds, basically it’s people showing off what they can do such as skating, weight-lifting and acts similar to Circque De Soile). Out there is where I was able to nab this little photo, sadly I forgot to add in the ‘night’ shot setting so please excuse it’s darkness.

After a very VERY early morning (for me that is, don’t forget that I was still just a little jet-lagged… my first day back in Japan and what-not), I figured it was time to do some shopping but not before giving my girlfriend a big morning hug… as you can see, she’s a little rough around the edges before her morning coffee.

Off I went shopping in the district of Center Kita and then Center Minami (Center South and Center North in English). My first stop was a keitei (cellular phone) shop to look for something that I could use both in Japan and overseas. Sadly my first option, the Sharp 903SH with a 3.2 megapixel camera was not available at the time, so off I went. Along the way, I still managed to find quite a few very interesting models. It’s just a damn shame that the crappy North American companies such as NexTel, Cingular, Rogers, Telus and Bell won’t release any (even semi-) decent phones to the populace. Yes I know these run on different technology, but in my opinion, the generic silver flip-phone is out of date, borring as hell and as ugly as a horses ass.

The Japanese are, if nothing else, quite creative with their products and with their advertising. Take this ad that’s hanging in the train/subway. It’s not just made of paper, but it’s actually made partiall of bubble-wrap! You know, if someone were to use this in America, some jack-off wanna-be gangster would take it and destroy it… thankfully in Japan people have a little more respect (to the power of a few hunded) for other people and their belongings.

I decided to take a nice walk through a few of the areas including Mizunokuchi and Yoga, both are fairly upclass areas and Yoga actually features the Tokyo University of Agriculture. This shrine was just outside of the entrance – it’s interesting in Japan because it’s December the 10th, but the leaves are -just- turning color.

One thing that I noticed about most of Tokyo, Yokohaham, Chiba and Kawasaki is the different styles of houses. When most people think of Japan, they think that people live in the capsule-hotel style of buildings and teeny little rooms. While space is at a premium, there are always many very nice houses available, such as this little cobble-stone lane which has teeny little houses. If you have seen pictures of my house, you could compare… the houses in these pictures are 1/2 the width of my home in Canada, but each cost upwards of $750,000 Canadian.

Did you know that during the Christmas season, the most popular restaraunt to dine at (and take-out) is Kentucky Fried Chicken? No fooling! Christmas dinner? Chicken. New Years Eve Dinner? CHICKEN! Hell, most Japanese have never even tasted turkey. Now that’s just sad. Here’s a nifty little shot of the Colonel all dressed up with no-where to go.

Way back in the day when I was living in Yokohama (in late October of 2004 to be exact) I decided it was about darn time to buy a new set of shoes, perhaps a paid that would feel somewhat comfortrable and did a good job as standard walking-shoes. I searched high and low but sadly to no avail until a friend of mine, Mami Michikawa, took me through some of the more scenic regions of Yokohama & into a shoe store called ABC Mart. There I looked through all of the shoes, but unfortunatly for me they had nothing my my size (Japanese size 29) until the young woman’s eyes lit up and remembered that there was one package that her manager had set aside for himself… a brand-spanking new pair of Nike Air For One running shoes. I’m quite sure I paid too much, but it’s Japan, what do I expect?

Here is a good shot of what my shoes would have looked like before and what they look like after a year and three months later!

I couldn’t help but add this last little image in – it’s my favorite food available in Japan… TAKO-YAKI!

Well I figured it’s about darn time that I do an actual play-by-play update as I used to do while living in Tama Plaza (Yokohama). Back then I did a day by day effect telling where I’ve been, what I did and even once in a while included a few photos to boot. Since I haven’t given you folks a GOOD update, I’ll do one (or a few) right now as I’m sitting on the airplane flying back home. Although you’ll have to scroll down, you’ll certainly be able to see most of the trip. If you can’t find the other entries, never fear as I’ll be putting them in the “Pozzy’s Travels” section, as per usual. Enjoy!

December 8… 7:30pm…

Into the shower & groom myself for a lovely trip abroad. First to the Saskatoon Diefenbaker Airport to catch a flight to Vancouver and then off to Narita Airport in Chiba/Tokyo for my business trip to Yokohama. The night was like many others as I just couldn’t get to sleep no matter how hard I tried. I think it was around 3:30am when I finally dozed off which made for a very short night.

My bags were packed up with a bit of clothing and a LOT of gifts for friends, old co-workers and some other special folks in Japan. I was ready to go as far as I was concerned. The night before I had finished writing a Geography exam and I promised myself I would do as much studying as I could while in Japan for my Political Studies exam which was to take place the next morning after I returned to Canada… sadly I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to (still covered 50-some of the 100 sheets that I had printed off the night before, so I didn’t do toooo badly).

The flight between Saskatoon and Vancouver wasn’t too horrible, we were served a crummy breakfast and the fat businessman next to me wouldn’t stop complaining about his wife and son. Sorry sir, but when you have breath like a mule, it’s hard to keep the conversation going face to face…. only a couple hours later we touched down in Vancouver and to my surprise, it wasn’t raining…. instead it was INCREDIBLY foggy.

Thankfully I didn’t have too long to wait before my connecting flight to Narita Airport was to take place so I grabbed a quick lunch from Burger King which was served to me with the thickest East Indian accent I had ever heard. A short while after we boarded the plane and took off for Japan. I was lucky to sit next to a nice young Japanese lady by the name of Kimi who worked as a travel agent and was just recently in Vancouver on a busienss trip at a conference. As we took off we both looked over to see a beautiful sight – the tops of mountains peeking out of the clouds – the elevation was roughly 1400 meters at the top of the mountains (hills?)

A couple hours into the flight, we were served dinner… I had the choice between fish or beef and I’m still not sure which one I was served.

Two borring movies and many dull news reports later, we were in Narita. I took the first bus to Yokohama and couldn’t figure out why people were staring at me… I was only white after-all and there’s thousands of foreigners in Japan… turns out that my eyes were incredibly blood-shot & I looked like a heroine addict.

So I went to bed.

Just a thought….

What if the only reason that camera-phones were invented was for governments to spy on their citizens by viewing what’s going on in their camera…….