Loving Japan

We're enamored with Japan. It's totally foreign to us, yet oddly familiar. There are beautiful, wild spaces, but plenty of civilization. The food is great, the hotels have hot springs baths (or "onsen"), folks are friendly, and the trains are awesome. Here's one of the famed Shinkansen, or bullet trains, which we've taken a few times:

We're on the north island of Hokkaido now, after visiting Kobe, Kyoto, Hakone, and Tokyo. It took us four trains to get up here from Tokyo, but only about 9 hours to cover the 1300 km (800 miles), including traversing the world's longest seabed tunnel -- over 50km long and 240 meters below sea level -- in this cool train:

Tokyo was a good stop, but fundamentally a big, global city. After living in and visiting so many cities, we're finding them all a bit the same in the larger ways, but different in the smaller ones. We stayed near the famed fish market, ate lots of sushi, wandered around a lot, and drank too much beer at one of the local brew pubs. Turns out Tokyo has an emerging craft brew scene. Here's the river near our hotel:

And here's a cityscape from the top of the Metropolitan Building (unlike in NYC, there's no charge to visit the top):

We also caught a glimpse of our future selves (in maybe fifteen years) while boarding a train at a Tokyo Station:

The ride north from Tokyo was beautiful, with some rural areas and weather rolling in:

And here's the platform in Sapporo where we changed trains for the fourth and final time that day.  Because the trains in Japan run precisely on time, you can actually make a 5-minute connection with no problem...

The ride went smoothly, and we arrived in Otaru at 7 last night in a driving cold rain.  Otaru is an old seaport on the north coast, about 45 minutes west of Sapporo. It's a destination for Japanese tourists, but only a few westerners visit, so very few people speak English.  But it's got some great hikes and a cool old downtown area complete with canals:

Wandering around town last night (wet, hungry, and cold) we stumbled onto a ramen place owned by the friendliest guy in town, Shin, who happened to speak English with a Sylvester Stallone accent. That conversation, along with his delicious ramen, the free beer, free sake, and loaned maps and guidebooks, made for a great night.  

Today, we explored the coast on a nice five hour hike. We also got stopped by the cops for the first time this year (not counting Brook's automated speeding ticket in New Zealand). Just a routine passport check, with a polite bow from the officers. Then another hot springs soak, sushi, some local beer, a little sake, and this blog post. Yep. Japan's a pretty great place. We could get used to it...