Travel Yoda Map

Finally an update to my greatly neglected but not forgotten Blog.

So if you've ever traveled with me it's likely that you've seen my Travel Yoda. For the uninitiated whenever I travel I carry around a little metal Yoda and take pictures of him at the place I'm at. Sorta like a travel gnome but even cooler.




So far I've managed to bring Yoda to nearly everyplace I've been. Unfortunately the pictures don't always turn out and Yoda is often a blur, but the effect is there.

The point is I finally got around to whipping up a map of all my Travel Yoda pictures. For the most part the specific locations on the map are accurate to where the picture was taken but sometime I just had to guess.

In theory the map should show up underneath this text. However if it doesn't work you can see the map and all it's glory at:
http://www.panoramio.com/map/?user=2124143#lt=30.6111245&ln=8.167262&z=16

Enjoy!

Montana and Seattle Road Trips

So far this year I’ve done a good job keeping my travel blog up to date. With that in mind I’ve got some catching up to do for the month of August.

Last August I did two road trips into the United States. The first one was Aug. 3-6 on a road trip to Montana. On that trip it was me, Warren, Travis and Richard. There we saw Glacier National Park and went to White Fish and Missoula.

The second trip took place Aug. 25-26. Dave, Brad and I did an intense all night drive to Seattle to check out the PAX convention.

Here’s a bunch of quick thoughts on my trip. This one’s pretty short but I really wanted to get something on the ol’blog.

The United States of America

Considering how close we are and how much culture we share, it was surprising how different the USA is from Canada. Not that the differences were large ones, it was more a ton tiny little ones that sort of added up.

Some obvious differences were the availability /cheapness of booze, miles per hour instead of km per hour and availability of new products (such as the infamous Dr. Pibb).

Perhaps more striking though is how different each state was from each other. Sure I only went to Washington State and Montana, but they both one had completely different characters. More than you expect for States that border each other in the same country.

One thing that always got me about the States are the huge civil structures that make up the road systems. The overpasses and bridges are mystifying in their size and ambitiousness. It would have not been fun to be around when they were first being built but now they make driving a much more pleasant experience.

Montana

It doesn’t take you very long to realize that Montana is a Red State. The billboards displaying the Ten Commandments and ease of access to guns tip you off pretty quickly.

That being said it’s still a pretty cool place. Glacier National Park is pretty awesome/treacherous drive that everyone should do sometime.

White Fish also introduced me to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. At the bar it cost $1.50 a pint. That’s a sign that it’s going to be good quality. However, as bad as the stuff is, the tap which we bought it from must have had special powers because it hit Travis and I like a rock. All it took was one to go from being happy-go-lucky hiding from Richard and Warren so I could stay out later to falling on rocks and using all my will power to make it to the bathroom.

The whole justification of our Montana trip was so Travis could get some turn tables cheaper in Missoula. We succeeded in this task and I am now gifted with hearing Travis mixing pretty much every night. Good times.

Seattle

The drive to Seattle was a hardcore one. Seattle is 15 hours away and in order to avoid taking vacation time Brad, Dave and I took turns driving (though an extremely caffeined Brad some how managed to drive nearly the whole way going to Seattle).

Seattle is a pretty chill city. It’s like Vancouver but smaller and American. Another nice bonus is the fact we were able to walk around and see all the major sites in a day. Seattle also contains a bar filled with pin ball machines making the city 100 times cooler.

The reason that we went to Seattle was to attend the Penny Arcade Exposition or PAX. For those of you not in the know, Penny Arcade is a video game themed webcomic and the convention was good times. When I first walked in I got so over stimulated that I must have had some kind of a seizure running about seeing all the cool things scattered about.

The USA is pretty cool place to do a road trip in. With the ridiculously strong Canada dollar I’ll probably be making my way down there very soon.

Tokyo, Japan

By the time I left Singapore I had been traveling with Kiran and Richard for over a month and a half… and Danny for like 4 days. However, all good things must come to an end and our group was split up for our final destination. Kiran and Danny went to Brunei while Richard and I went to Japan.

Richard had already been to Japan in January but he had gone with his family on a tour group. So he was excited to see Japan from a different angle.

We were in Japan from June 21st to June 25th and we spent the whole time in Tokyo. Trust me, 4 days is barely enough to even scratch the surface of Tokyo. It would take several lifetimes to fully explore the city,

The Most Populated City in the World

With 35 million residents, Tokyo is considered to have the worlds largest population. However, you wouldn't know it by how smoothly the city is run

It's actually a very interesting juxtaposition one sees a lot of in Tokyo. On one side Tokyo is crowded and the culture is super flashy, while on the side the people are quite civilized and everything is quite orderly.

For example, take the metro system (which, by the way, is one of the most extensive metros I've ever been on). If you get on during rush hour, the first thing you're going to notice is how crazy busy it is. Everybody is shoved together like sardines in a fashion similar to Mumbai. However, the second thing you'll notice is how politely the Japanese people squish each other. They actually line up to get on the train and let people get off before filing on. When in the train people don't even talk (even on their cell phones) in order to minimize the discomfort to others.

As expected, the people in Tokyo are extremely polite. Us Canadians have nothing on Japanese politeness. One uniquely Japanese trait is they tend to give each other a little bow for most transactions such as greeting, partings or anything involving money.

A event as plain as buying something from the 7-11 can involve you receiving 5 bows from the cashier.
1: A greeting bow when you walk up to the till
2: When you give them the items to ring in
3: When you give them the money
4: When they give you the change
5: A final bye bow as you take your receipt.

I noticed by the time I was leaving Tokyo I was giving everyone a little bow for most things.

Food

I am a big fan of Japanese food. Sure if you're a finicky eater in Japan you're screwed but if you can get over how odd most of it is, it's good eating.

My personal favorite Japanese food was Ramen. Ramen is a term applied to noodle houses that can be found all over Tokyo. Walk in order your meal (which generally consists of noodles mixed with something like an egg or vegetables) and fill up for less than 3 bucks.

The seafood is defiantly where you get the crazy stuff. Take for example one meal which consisted of prawns, 4 kinds of fish (salmon being the only one I recognized), crab and seaweed all served raw on top of rice. It was awesome. I felt like I had defeated the ocean and was now devouring it.

Even MacDonald's got into the crazy seafood act and offered such delights as a shrimp burger (I wasn't a huge fan).

Snacking and caffeine hits were also super convenient in Japan. If you were to lazy to go to one of the 7-11-esque stores you could find at every street corner, you could just go to one of the millions of vending machines scattered throughout the city.

We even had a chance to try some authentic Japanese sushi. It was good stuff and affordable.

Best of all, it was possible to get kebabs! It was the best moment of my life leaving the bar to see the streets filled with kebab stands.

I think I'm having a Seizure

It's a stereotype that Japan has a zany pop culture filled with bright colors and madness. Well I can officially confirm that it's all true and I'm confident that it broke my brain.

Not every street in Tokyo was completely filled with neon. In most streets the only neon you saw came from the local pachinko place (more on this later). But the streets that were filled with neon more than compensated for those lacking it. I felt over stimulated just glancing at the Shinjuku and Shibuya areas.

Japanese TV is similarly over the top. Not every show is super crazy, but none of even approaches our level of calmness.

If you ever want to kill 12 hours, go to a Tokyo toy store. There's so much cool stuff in there I can't believe that the Japanese haven't conquered the world yet. Be it little solar powered dudes made of corn or awesome boxing games, Japanese kids are lucky,

You know how there's some people who are completely obsessed with anime and manga to the point where it runs their lives. I'm pretty sure every third person in Tokyo fits this description. The shops selling anime and manga were huge and always busy. It was a very common site to see a 40 year old business man whip out a manga comic and start reading it on the train.

Video Games

We were able to see many cool futurist electronics but the thing that captured my attention the most was the arcades. Namely the size and popularity of the arcades.

In Canada an arcade often describes a dusty machine shoved in the back of a lobby in a movie theater. In Japan, an arcade refers to a five floor building filled with rows upon rows of games.

I was able to find most of my favorite classics, but the thing that captured my attention the most were the games you could only find in Japan . Take for example this awesome game that involved one sitting at a table with a screen in front. You would purchase cards and then move the cards on the table. The table would read the movement of the card and then move your players in the game. If this was in Canada I would play it every day.

Also cool was this large Gundam (giant fighting robots) virtual reality pod. Each player had their own pod filled with a huge screen (which filled your vision) and realistic Gundam control system. In order to play it you had to buy a card which would track your progress and allow you to earn upgrades. I of course had to play then and it was awesome.

The most popular form of "arcade" were pachinko places. Pachinko is a form of gambling (it's the thing with the little metal balls). Pretty much every block had one and they were often filled.

Gambling was actually pretty prevalent throughout Tokyo and it wasn't hard to find slot machines or electronic horse racing.

Green Space

Tokyo is considered to the be the city with the most green space in the world. At first this is hard to believe until you see it's parks. Each one is huge and filled with beautiful plants and often temples.

One of the most interesting Japanese culture experiences was in the park just outside Meiji-Jingu Shrine. We visited the park on Sunday by accident but were surprised by what we saw. The park was filled with various groups of people just chilling out or doing some odd activity. It should be noted that pretty much everybody was drinking heavily. The park was huge so the groups were fairly spread out.

Some of the activities we saw included dancing, juggling, dressing up in elaborate costumes that would put KISS to shame and playing music. My person favorite was a group who had brought a couple of mixing tables to the park and set up several tapestries. They even had candles and a dude was doing a good job mixing.

It was surreal.

Goodbye Asia

Tokyo was a great way to end our trip. It was different enough from Canada that it was still interesting, but relaxing enough that to be a good wind down from India. I had always wanted to go to Tokyo and it didn't disappoint.

I will probably have to go back to Japan again since I missed many of Japan's big sites (Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, etc.) but I'm glad we stayed in Tokyo .

I'm happy that we took two months off in order to go traveling. However for me, I think 2 months was enough for nonstop travel. While I'm capable of more (I wasn't feeling homesick), I noticed that near the end, I wasn't appreciating things as much as I should. Also I need to save some parts of Asia for my next trip.