Nikko Japan Part 2: Lake Chuzenji to Yumoto Onsen

On day 2 in Nikko I took a bus up a mountain to the Lake Chuzenji area. My plan was to hike from the lake on the left hand side of the map, to the hot spring on the top right. My guide book said it should take about 3 hours, but it in the snow it took me 5. In that time I only saw 3 other people on the trail, I it was –10 degrees C, and I didn’t have a map until I found the sign above a few hours into the hike and took a picture of it.

But I felt relatively safe because most of the trail was on these elevated boards and I just had to follow the footprints.

This part of the hike is the Senjogahara Plateau Nature Trail. Most of the year this park is crowded with people, but it was very peaceful to be all alone in the woods.

  This panorama was stitched together using Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Then I went over the river and through the woods.


After 5 hours I finally made it to Yumoto Spa. To call this a “Spa” is a bit misleading. All I could find at this time of year were shuttered buildings, igloos, and a stinky pump house.

I found one place that was open for business. The Okunikko Konishi Hotel and Hot Spring. For about $10 you can use their hot spring baths even if you are not staying at the hotel.

 After warming up in the hot spring for a while I got a bus back to Nikko station, took a train to Tokyo, and was back home before 22:00.

Nikko Japan Part 1: Tobu Premium

My guidebook said the best way to get from Tokyo to Nikko is the Tobu Free Pass. When I got to the station they were advertising the Premium Pass, which had to be even better.

Inquiring about the premium pass I asked the lady at the counter:

• Me: “Excuse me. What is the Premium Pass?”
• Lady: “Do you want the Premium Pass?”
• Me: “What is it? What makes it premium?”
• Lady: “Premium pass is veery special? Do you want Premium Pass?”
• Me: “How much does it cost?”
• Lady: <After thinking hard for about a minute> “Excuse me.”

Then she went to back and whispered with her colleagues for a while and pointed at me and finally the manager came out.

• Manager: “Do you want Premium Pass?”
• Me: “Yes.” <I think this is right answer.>
• Manager: “I’m sorry. We don’t have Premium Pass!”

So I was on my way with the normal pass

Nikko is one of the most popular tourist sites in Japan because of the shrines, waterfalls, and nature. When you get off the train, it is about a mile walk up to where the shrines are.

A few blocks up the hill on the left hand side you can help yourself to delicious Nikko water. And there is a visitors center near here.

Near the top of the hill on the right hand side, you should definitely checkout Nazuna Antiques & Zakka shop. It lots of old Japanese stuff and local crafts that make great souvenirs—I have never seen a shop like it.

At the top of the hill there is a famous bridge. But if you actually want to walk across it you have to pay 300 Yen ($3), so just stay on the street.

Across the river is where all of the shrines are. On the way to the shrines are food stalls with Japanese snacks. These white balls (Dango) looked safe enough, but then they were slathered them with some disgusting black sauce.

Toshogo shrine is where the original see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys are from. Besides the temples, there are lots of walking trails and other sites around Nikko. Like these statues along the river, which are said to be uncountable (Narabi-jizo).

I spent the night in the Turtle Inn Hotori-An, which is kind of like a hostel but has nice private tatami rooms and a nice hot springs bath.

Homestyle Japanese Food from Masae’s Kitchen

This is some of the awesome food my mother in law made when I visited them in Japan.

View Full Album

Homemade Pickles

Kimpura Lotus Root

Oden (Japanese Stew)

Mendaiko Onigiro (Rice Balls filled with Spicy Cod Roe)

Homemade Red Kabu Pickles (Red Turnip)

Breakfast: Toast, Cheese, Salad, Fruit, Coffee

Cabbage Nimono (Simmered Cabbage)  

Seafood Agemono (Breaded deep-fried squid, prawns, oysters)

Seattle ThunderSnow 2008: Snow Day!!!

One thing I don’t miss about Iowa is the freezing cold and ice. But a snow day can be nice every once in a while.

View Full Album

This was the view outside my window.

I took a walk down to REI to buy some cozy socks. (Save 10% if you buy any 3 pairs!)

My friend Akemi built an awesome snow cat.

Note: This is an American style snow cat. Japanese snowcats/men have only 2 balls (snicker snicker) and no nose. They look more like him More Japanese snowmen >

And then I ended the day checking out a new restaurant on Capitol Hill, Oddfellows Cafe + Bar that just opened today.

The inside looks pretty cool too, it’s kind of like an old school house. It feels like a cross between a coffee shop and pub.

The menu looks pretty good too. But I didn’t end up trying anything because my wife made me come home :(

Seattle ThunderSnow 2008: A Nightmare on Ice

Today downtown Seattle should have been declared a federal disaster zone. Unfortunately I had to go out and run some errands and got to witness the carnage firsthand.

View Full Album

Things started ominously in the middle of the night when I was woken up by the sonic boom of the ThunderSnow.  I thought a fuel tanker or something crashed and exploded outside my building. You can here it here http://www.king5.com/video/index.html?nvid=314479.

On Friday the roads were even worse than Thursday and some tour buses almost slid themselves off a wall onto I5 trying navigate all of the closed and blocked off streets.

They apparently thought it would be a good idea to try and drive their buses down the one hill that was not blocked off by the police. (No one was severely hurt.)

A lot of people made the clever mistake of trying to take a “shortcut” down some road that was free of traffic, only to end of crashed at the bottom. At one intersection I saw at least 5 different cars try and go down the same icy hill and end up slamming into the curb at the bottom of the hill. I warned this guy and not to go down the hill but he didn’t listen to me.

As you can see, the road is totally iced over.

I learned my lesson about driving in the Seattle snow about 2 years ago. I was at a party at the Red Hook Brewery in Redmond and then it started snowing. It took me about 6 hours to get home and along the way I crashed my car into a parked truck because there was just no traction.

The Seattle Times also has some good footage of the buses and other mishaps through out the area. Check it out before they go out of business.

Keirin: A day at the Japanese bike races

The last time I visited Japan I went out to see a bike race--a track event called 'keirin'. Keirin was in the world headlines this week because the BBC claims that Japanese lobbyists paid bribes to get Keirin included in the Olympics.

 

These Japanese bike races are not the wholesome events that would expect. The atmosphere is nothing like the Marymoor Park Velodrome, for example. The whole atmosphere is really weird.

It's more like a dog track race, where the audience place bets on their favorite riders. Most of the audience are their 50s-60s, milling around and smoking. And the entire track is surrounded by a rusty chain link fence, which ruins the view and makes the place kind of Mad Max. I was there for about 20 minutes before I saw any bikes.

And then the pageantry begins. Triumphant music plays over the speakers, 2 girls run out and wave flags, and the riders ride through an arch in their superhero uniforms up to the starting blocks, bow, and they're off.

The gamblers are not all that interested in bike racing really, and there is not much to do in between races so they have some entertainment in between the races to keep them around.

The best part of a day at the Keirin is probably the food. They have a dozen or so vendors selling really cheap and pretty healthy japanese food. Like a whole pickled cucumber on a stick, a grilled sweet potato, and rice porridge (okayu).

This place has 10 kinds of onigiri (rice balls), others had tempura, udon or sushi.

All in all, keirin is no tour de france (which I saw once too) and if you find yourself in Japan their are much more interesting things you can do with your time than this. But if you are in the neighborhood and a race is on, its a good place to get a snack. 

Oh yeah, if you want to see an actual keirin race, check this out...

Cuil. The worst search engine in the western world

I found the worst search engine in the world, and it’s not what you think it is. It's cuil.com (pronounced 'cool'). Founded by some ex-google execs, it sounded like it had some potential and got a lot of press when it launched today. But I couldn't agree more with PCMag when they say, "The New Cuil Search Engine Sucks."

Just how bad is it? Let me demostrate...

The home page does look kind of cuil, and it has a nice word prediction feature as you type your query. But that's where the cuilness ends.

 
First of all, it fails the ultimate test. If I type in "Alex Heaton" it doesn't even have this site, alexheaton.com. Just a bunch of imposter sites.

And that's if your lucky and the site actually works at all. Most of the time you get a 404 or some such error message.

 
In the 1 in 1,617,892,992 chance that the site actually works, my favorite feature is the "Explore by Category" links on the right side. According to their features page, "By looking at these suggestions, you may discover search data, concepts, or related areas of interest that you hadn’t expected." I'll say... Search for 'wonderbra' and for a category it suggest "mormonism"?

 
I feel most sorry for Cuil's investors, which include Seattle's Madrona Capital Partners. Some guys from Madrona taught a class when I was going to UW. I bet they thought this was their chance to get in on the next Google.

I'm sure that Cuil has gone down in flames so badly on day 1 that they won't recover. They won't go public, they won't be acquired by anyone, game over.

Their biggest mistake was not calling it beta. If the thing is not ready, then call it a beta. Then if it sucks you can just say, hey its just a beta. Look at gmail, it works just fine but they still call it a beta years later. Look at MobileMe from Apple--they didn't call it a beta and look what happened.