BROOKLYN TO BROOKLYN: 2012

With regards to travel Japan is an amazing place; beautiful and tranquil with a very unique and progressive culture. But at this point in my life I much prefer cycling countries like China, Indonesia and Vietnam because they are cheaper and offer much more in terms of adventure and excitement. My first 40 days in Japan I was on such a tight budget that I ate only at supermarkets and my diet was mostly made up of fruit and rice...until my mate Jon met up with me in Osaka, at which point he and I went nuts and ate everything we could and Japan became possibly my favorite food country on earth...

I've divided this post into 5 sections:

Street snacks and diners
Noodles
Okonomi-yaki
Shabu shabu
Sushi

Street snacks and diners - On the cheaper (but still expensive) side of things there is a ton of street food on offer all over Osaka where a typical meal is around $4-$7 with sit down diners costing slightly more.


Tako-yaki (octopus balls) is definitely the most famous street food in Osaka

The batter forms balls around chunks of octopus as they cook

The finished product is covered with a spicy bbq sauce, mayo, and dried fish flakes


Seaweed ice cream

Gyoza (fried dumplings)

Street pancakes made from egg

The best late night meal that a drunk person could ever ask for: a big raw steak with pepper and butter sizzzzzling on a hot cast iron pan

Noodles - Hot bowls of noodles on a cold November day are extremely pleasurable

Soba

Udon

Ramen

More ramen

Okonomi-yaki -These 'pancakes' are made of a batter with rice and various kinds of stuffings, pretty much anything you can think of can be put into these things, and then they are cooked on a hot griddle in the middle of your table. The Japanese seem to love restaurants that have a 'hands on' aspect to the meal, meaning that you cook it yourself at your table, which I really like.

Batter and slabs of bacon go on the grill

covered with various sauces..

...and a thin mayo..

..and finished with more sauces and fish flakes

cheese doing what it does best: oozing

Shabu shabu - One of the best meals of my life. All you can eat raw beef and pork, which is dipped quickly in a simmering broth and then into a citrus soy sauce, and all you can drink beer/sake/plum wine for about $60/person. I wouldn't be surprised if this particular restaurant decided to revoke it's all-you-can options after me mate and I ate 10 plates of meat and drank about 20 drinks in 1.5 hours.

Preparing to devour a massive meal

Jon Doig pictured here with a beer, a cigarette, and chopsticks full of thinly sliced pork. He would be a pretty shitty Muslim, but an ideal dining buddy

Oh yeah

Sushi - My favorite of all, you sit in long narrow restaurants and small plates of sushi slowly pass by you on conveyor belts with each plate costing about $1.50, Jonni and I averaged well over 30 plates per meal and were quite proud of our 'stacks' which serve as concrete evidence to the other patrons of the restaurant, as well as the employees, that we don't f#$% around.

*Food post coming next

Comfortable boat rides - talking turn signals - overpriced food - space age toilets - gorgeous women - over development - introversion - cold weather - pristine mountains - cartoon pornography - polite people - flashing lights - casino arcades - octopus balls - cigarette/liquor vending machines - walking Buddhist pilgrims - clothed dogs - invisible police - odd shaped trees - crimelessness - sleeping under bridges - rhinoceros horns - crazy sea creatures - bukake parlors - autumn leaves - new culture - old traditions

I stuck to the south of Japan because of the cold weather, after Japan I flew from Osaka to the Philippines

Clearing customs

FUKUOKA - HIROSHIMA
Arrived in Fukuoka from Korea via ferry, from there I made my way east towards Hiroshima. Very pleasant ride - lots of mountains and forests.

First night under a bridge just outside of Fukuoka

Island hopping near Shimonoseki

A lonely fisherman

All the houses seem to have these strangely groomed trees

Spent 2 days in this little walkway underneath a highway due to never ending rain

A nice place to wake up, unfortunately it was too cold to leave my sleeping bag

Hiroshima is a beautiful port city full of parks and rivers

Hiroshima just after being destroyed by an atomic bomb

Depictions of children with their skin melting off

The outfit of a little boy killed in the atomic blast

The effects of nuclear radiation on a human body

Map showing the damage of 'little boy'

The 'Atomic Dome' is a very iconic building as it was the only one still standing at 'ground zero'

The US pilot flying the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was aiming for this bridge. The famous T bridge marks city center and I spent a very eery night under it after a day at the peace museum.

SHIKOKU ISLAND
I spent about 2 weeks going around this quaint and beautiful little island. As well as wild monkeys, there were lots of 'pilgrims' wearing traditional Japanese clothes and walking around the island (which takes about 2 months!) going from temple to temple. Some of these 'pilgrims' were westerners and I thought what they were doing was pretty amazing and a great way to spend 2 months.

$35 for a 2 hour ferry ride - painful

This was my home for 3 days while I was ill, a dugout in a baseball field next to a surfing beach. I had no appetite and ate only a couple of oranges per day, but enjoyed my free hospital room!

Coast near Kochi

Heading east along the southern coast of the island

Beer and cigarette vending machines. The youngsters in my hometown would like to see these start popping up.

On this evening I was feeling a bit sad and lonely. I slept in this school bus stop and an old man walked by me with his dog around sunset. He returned 10 minutes later with a bag of oranges, bananas, 2 cans of espresso, and 2 cans of beer! He really made my night and we talked for a while in no language at all, I was no longer sad and lonely.

A typical lunch of sushi and seasoned rice in tofu with kimchi

The Japanese recycle everything

A standard toilet in Japan comes equipped with the following: a temperature controlled heated seat, various hoses that spray water at many different parts of your bottom (depending on your sex), built in sink to mask any unwanted sounds, music, inter-galactic laser guns, and a small hadron collider for the scientifically curious

Don't accidentally push 'eject'!

I had so many lovely nights under bridges next to rivers, Japan is very clean and safe so you can literally sleep anywhere you want

Web building

In the middle of the island the road was lined with tall pine trees that gave off amazing autumn smells

A good feed

Spent an hour tramping around looking for a waterfall that I know exists because I could hear it, but never found it

A lake in the mountains

Following the river south towards Kochi

...but isn't that sign not very nice??

WAKAYAMA TO KYOTO

The last leg of my Japan journey took me across Mie Prefecture and through some great mountains.

Early morning, smoky village

Quaint little town

My horse and I entering Mie Prefecture at nearly 3000 ft

I love mountains!

Sleeping at a rest stop

This guy pissed somebody off

I fasted for 3 days to see if I could do it and clean out my mind and body, this was my first meal after 72 hours of just water

Kyoto!

OSAKA

Osaka is where I really fell in love with Japan, it's a huge mega-city with lots of character and plenty of things to do. My mate Jonni Doig came up for a week from Hanoi and he and I did Osaka properly: hotels, whisky, pool, countless amazing meals (next post!), bars, backgammon, aquarium, tons of walking, and lots and lots of beer...