Tokyo, Takamatsu, Kyoto

An overloaded week through Japan. Karaoke fiascos, hurling discs in Takamatsu, the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, and flying across the countryside 175 miles per hour were the highlights. It took me a week to recover from this one.

Quick Tips:

If you're taking the bullet train in Japan, get to the station early. The train only stops for one minute before it takes off.

Best Way To Get Around:

In Tokyo, of course, the subway is the way to go. Don't even attempt to rent a car and drive. You're nuts if you do. Also, the taxis are quite convenient after hours when the subway stops running. A word of advice: don't try to open the door of the taxi. The driver opens it automatically.

Takamatsu is a hidden treasure of a city located on the island of Shikoku, just on the banks of the Seto Inland Sea. Until 1988 you could only get there by airplane or boat. Now, thanks to the completion of the Seto Onashi Bridge connecting the island with mainland Honshu, you can easily reach Takamatsu via train.

The foremost attraction in the city is Risturin Park, an elegant and monumental botanical garden designed in the style of the Edo period. Spanning over 130 acres of land, the park contains bamboo groves, ponds, hills, a waterfall, tea houses, folkcraft museums, a zoo, and specific displays for each of the four seasons. There are plenty of serene areas to relax and contemplate whatever you want to contemplate. Every single step you take through the park gives you a different view. Wherever you go, you're smattered with a myriad of colors.

We spent an afternoon amongst the green landscapes, the bridges, the ponds, and the gardens. It was like stepping into a 400 year old Japanese landscape painting. The scenery was magnificent, the variety of foliage was intriguing and since the park is situated against Mount Shiun, the natural backdrop of it all was staggering.

An extensive variety of footpaths will take you all over the park, some areas being overrun with tourists, some being totally desolate. Most people hang out in the southern part of the park, leaving the rest of the facility to those who desire serenity and solitude.

We even did the tea ceremony (I don't know enough to say whether or not it was a stripped down, just-for-show version) in a tea house called Kikugetsu-tei, which was right on the main pond. The tea house was built during the Edo period and has been preserved ever since.

Ritsurin Park took a century to reach its completion and is a must for any visitor to Shikoku Island. There is a cheap admission fee of $4.

Known universally as a symbol of Tokyo, this gargantuan steel tower is 333 meters high and there are observation decks at 150 meters and at 250 meters. You can get lost inside the place, as the elevator system is quite unique. Some elevators only go to the deck at 150 meters, and some go only to the deck at 250 meters. At either location you can get a view of the entire metropolis of Tokyo, and, if it's clear enough, you can see Mount Fuji way off in the background.

The Tokyo Tower is the highest self-supporting steel tower in the world, but other than a place to grab a day shot of the skyline or a romantic nighttime view of Tokyo, there's really nothing else to it. Well, it's the broadcast site for many TV and radio stations, so I guess that's important. And there are many shops and eateries for you to experience.

During the summer nights the tower is lit up with a silvery-grey hue. We were there in November, so at night the tower was lit up with a bright orange color and it can be seen from all over Tokyo.

It was worthwhile for me because at the souvenir shop I picked up a couple of Mothra postcards that I had been looking for all day.

Kinkaku-ji or The Golden Temple is one of the most, if not the most gorgeous temples in all of Japan. However, if at all possible, visit the temple on a sunny day in order to intake the sheer beauty of the entire scene.

The temple sits on Kyoko-ike, or Mirror Pond, which takes its name from the fact that on a sunny day, the temple itself cannot be differentiated from its reflection in the water. Seriously. The two look exactly the same (see photo). Unfortunately, we were in Kyoto on a dismal rainy day, so this could not be seen properly. So, I swiped a badly-scanned photo from the Kyoto Convention Bureau to give you at least some idea of the incredible serenity of it all.

Even if you're there on a gloomy day, like we were, the overall scene presents a commanding, unequaled beauty. The painstaking detail with which the garden and the pond were created is evident, and the temple functions along with them as an integral whole.

In 1950 a man thought the temple was so beautiful that he decided to commit suicide and take the whole temple down with him. So he burned the entire thing to the ground, inspiring Yukio Mishima to write a novel based on the incident. (The concept has something to do with attaining a true state of beauty and is beyond the scope of this write-up).

The temple was rebuilt shortly thereafter and still remains one of the major tourist hot-spots of Japan.

'As long as we don't stay in there longer than an hour, we're fine,' Lou said as we paraded down a busy street in Roppongi. 'As soon as one hour passes, everything goes up and they start charging you ridiculous prices.'

I had never in my life done karaoke, so I was shivering in anticipation.

Lou was a seasoned entrepreneur, a CEO of an international telecom company, and a frequenter of Tokyo. We were with a lovely Japanese-born stewardess named Fumiko who was based out of Santa Monica. The three of us were ready for a luscious Karaoke experience in Roppongi, the most flamboyant all-night party playground of a neighborhood in all of Tokyo.

There's a huge amount of foreigners in Roppongi due to the plethora of embassies in the surrounding area. Many Japanese twenty-somethings, Lou told us, flock to the neighborhood to practice their English. Roppongi is filled with dance clubs, street vendors, various karaoke dens of iniquity, and hoards of pedestrians of all shapes and sizes. The area literally never sleeps. We passed by the Almond Cafe (see Anatol Filin's photo below) which was the main pick-up spot of the entire neighborhood. Hoards of femme fatales were hovering about, and I wanted to remain and gawk for a while, but the rest of the party insisted on continuing down the street. Cars flew by, people were screaming, it smelled like smog and oil, and, like all of Tokyo, noise was omnipresent.

'As long as we don't stay for more than an hour,' Lou told us again, 'we'll be O.K. After one hour they start charging you more.'

Within minutes we reached our destination: a narrow stairway leading up off the sidewalk to a bleak obsidian doorway. Lou led us in. As soon as we had crossed the threshold of the place, the employees came to us like iron particles to a magnet. We were directed to a corner booth, where a lovely oriental girl promptly sat down with us and began to pour our beers. Lou put his arm around her and introduced us all. 'This is Kelly,' he said, 'she's from Manila.' I felt like I was in a sleazy soft-porn movie.

After about 45 minutes of drinking and botching pop tunes, Fumiko and I felt it was time to go. Lou was busy mingling with the owner of the place, a huge intimidating old Japanese lady whom he referred to as 'Ma.' They were laughing together and seemed to be recounting old times. A huge Samoan chap stood in the corner, gradually eyeing us. He stood like a pillar of observation, always looking over the entire establishment.

To make a long story short, they wound up charging us $480 for being there 50 minutes. I was scared to death. There was no way in hell I could possibly come up with my share of the bill.

'Don't worry about it,' Lou waved his hand in the air with drunken disregard, 'I'll take care of this.'

We sat and watched Lou bicker with Ma and the big Samoan dude, who was obviously American by birth, since he spoke perfect California English. Kelly, the hostess girl, tried to explain the prices to us, be she wasn't making any sense. I looked at my watch and hoped to god that we would get out of the place alive. Fumiko looked worried too. I began to consider 1970's crime show escape methods, like climbing out the window and scaling down the building to the crowded street below. This was definitely the last time I would even consider a Karaoke club in Roppongi.

Lou motioned for us to leave the club as he said, 'I'll take care of this, just leave, I'll take care of it.' Without hesitation, Fumiko and I wholeheartedly agreed.

Karaoke joints come in several flavors, so you must be very careful, especially in Roppongi, where the seductive hostesses will lure you inside for an hour and then stick you with a $500 bill. You're much better off going to one of the cheaper places, like the Big Echo chain, which can be found all over Tokyo. Big Echo is a 'karaoke box' place, where you sit with a few friends in a room by yourselves and sing your songs. For $35 per person, you get the room for two hours and all the free drinks you want. That's not a bad deal.

Yashima is a pine-wooded, tabletop-shaped plateau that juts out into the Seto Inland Sea directly Northeast of Takamatsu. One of the world's only mesas formed out of lava, Yashima, meaning 'rooftop island' is a sightseers paradise. You can take a cable car up to the top and visit the Yashima-ji temple, the hilltop aquarium, Chi No Ike (the pond of blood), the many shops, or the Shish-no-Reigan observatory point where you can get a spectacular panoramic bird's eye view of Takamatsu city as it meets the sea. (Try and go for this view after nightfall, as the entire city will be lit up for you to see. It's amazing).

This was also the site of a famous battle, our tour guide told us. 800 years ago the famous Gempei battle took place here, with the Genji clan defeating the Heike clan in a number of bloody skirmishes. The Genji clan (the Minamotos) celebrated by going to the top of Yashima plateau and hurling their hats over the cliff.

Nowadays this celebration has turned into a ritual where natives and tourists alike take circular shaped crackers or 'shingles' and hurl them over the cliff in memory of this battle while making a wish. We all did this, some of us being able to hurl the cracker all the way down the mountain, while others barely being able to throw them more than thirty feet or so over the cliff. It's called 'kawara-rage,' 'kawara' meaning shingles and 'rage' meaning throwing down. I forgot what I wished for.

The Japanese bullet train, or shinkansen which means 'new trunk line,' comes in many different types and models, which go at many different speeds. The trains are extremely punctual and are hardly ever late, making the system a pleasure to work with. The service is impeccable, the seats are comfortable, and finding one's way around is very easy. Employees stand at every single doorway of the train when it stops, to ensure that no one is forgotten. And there are markings on the platform to indicate where the doors of the train will be when it stops.

In the train stations themselves you won't have a problem locating the correct platform or anything like that. The Japanese are very organized and everything is laid out in a logical fashion. Just get to the platform early because the train only stops for about a minute before taking off again.

We rode the Nozomi Shinkansen which goes 175 miles per hour! I couldn't even tell that I was actually on a train. It felt more like an airplane ride.

Riding the bullet train in Japan, however, is very expensive. If you're going to be taking the train a lot, then the Japan Rail Pass is an absolute must. You'll save a huge amount of money.