Dragon Quest

I am not a great fan of video games but recently, I was intrigued to find this crowd at Akihabara enjoying the free wireless range for Dragon Quest players. It was late afternoon and still quite hot outside, but these hard core fans won't let it go!

Generous Bus

Found on a bus in Yokohama

Try at least once: Fish overies

This wasn't that bad. In fact my overly pampered taste buds could not register any taste at all. You may feel awkward by its slimy touch though.

This dish is offered in many places (fish may be different) as shown in this picture.

You can see the yellow bunch in the center. That's what you eat. Of course you can have the fish too and at least for me, the fish had great taste compared to ovaries. You can take out the overies  in separate dish and put some soy sauce （Shoyu - 醤油）on the top.

Name: I forgot the fish name but these are the ovaries of fish, uncooked.
Place: An Izakaya (Japanese restaurant) near Atami station.
 
I would appriciate if someone can tell me about the fish.

Mount Fuji

I am sure there are many blogs, articles on this topic but since the official season of climbing has started I just want to share my experiences when I climbed it last year.

It was my second time climbing Mt. Fuji. There is a saying in Japan that "If you haven't climbed Mt Fuji even once, you are fool. If you are climbing it twice, you are a fool". Well, I decided to be a fool and prepared for the climb based on my first experience.

There are loads of articles on internet on how to prepare for the climb. You can find some useful information here.

Me and my friends started climbing at 8 PM on a Friday and except for few minutes break to catch our breaths we reached till 8th station smoothly. The top of the mountain was in sight and I thought we will easily make it before sunrise. But after 8th station, situation was worse than a crowded escalator in any metro station in Tokyo. It wasn't moving at all. Somehow we crossed 9th station and the sky turned deep blue from black and then orange towards east. We could almost see faces of people lining up at the top to watch sunrise but I decided to take a good spot right there and watch the sunrise. It was a good decision because ever after watching sunrise it took us another 45 minutes to cover 10 minutes distance. Anyway the crowd was all calm and orderly as usual unlike any place in world.

Eventually it paid off since I could click amazing sunrise and moonset pictures from the same spot.

After enjoying some more hours at the top of Japan and enjoying extraordinarily pricy curry rice and noodles we decided to call it a day and get down. The descent is the worst part of this. It feels like forever. Something like a mirage. You see the end of the trail till your eyes can reach and once you reach there, the trail still goes on and on.

A word of caution: One of my friend and his wife nearly got stranded on their way back because they reached late and started their descent too late. Fortunately they met a Japanese person who helped them get back to nearest city and stay there overnight. Their first climb became a horror story to tell instead of a good memory. Study the routes well and call it quits if you can't make it within planned time. People have died here. Not to mention the horrible Aokigahara forest at the mountain base.

If you take basic precautions and read the instructions very well, Mt. Fuji is certainly a place to visit while in Japan.



Summer gifts

Rainy season is officially over! Hot and humid summer is here to stay for couple of months.
Summer is the period of various festivals. It is also the time when you send gift packs to your friends, family and colleagues. Since I first came to Japan, wonderful gift packets and the whole range of items presented as gifts have  always amazed me.

Assorted beer cans, cooking oils, soya sauce (shoyu) in summer gift packages

 High quality meat is also a  nice summer gift.

These are very few examples of what is available in summer gift packs. Of course wine, sake, coffee, green tea, cold drinks, dried fish, cookies are also available from wide choices of other gifts.


For me, when I see these in the super markets it's the feeling that time for hanabi (firework) is close!!