You can’t exactly do a lot of winter sports in Tokyo. Firstly, there is no snow in Tokyo. Secondly, there aren’t any mountains nearby. So what is a Tokyoite to do when the desire to carve up a mountain hits? Whether by bus or train, you head to the mountains.

Japan’s geography: From the north to south is very long and narrow. Running down the middle of the country are mountains. These mountains take up a lot of Japan’s land space, which made life in the old days of Japan very difficult (you can’t grow rice on rocks). But, now that Japan imports all of its rice from Thailand, the mountains have a more friendly reputation as a recreation area. They are no Alps, but they are beautiful and do qualify as proper mountains in my book.

What kinds of ski trips can you choose from? One popular option is the day-trip. This option will probably include a round-trip charter bus ticket, lift ticket, and equipment rental. I went on a day trip for the low price of ~$40. You start early in the morning (think 6 am), meeting someplace in Tokyo to catch the bus. The place my bus left from was the same place that about 10 other day-trips were leaving from at the same time, so, as you start nearing your train stop to transfer to bus, you start to see other people carrying snowboards or skis walking through train stations and on the sitting on the train, something that you don’t see on your normal train ride. You don’t expect to see many people at 5-6 am, but when you get to the bus station, you see that there is a sizeable crowd of other people taking day trips. It depends on where you go, but my bus-trip took about 3-4 hours, getting us to the ski place at around 10:30 with one pit stop on the way. The mountain closes at 5 pm, at which time the bus leaves to get back to Tokyo at a respectable hour, leaving you with a satisfying 5-6 hours of mountain fun.

Another option is the real trip. You stay at a hotel and ski or snowboard for a few days. I went with some friends, leaving early in the morning and taking the train all the way there, about 4 hours to Niigata, which has some pretty nice skiing places. The price will surely be more than $40 for lodging and lift tickets, but you get the fun of eating out and having some fun in the evening with your friends in addition to the skiing time together.

The kind of hotel I stayed at, called a ryokan, was a traditional Japanese place which served a delicious Japanese dinner and breakfast in the form of a set-meal. These meals give you at least 10 little dishes with different kinds of vegetables and meat to add to your rice. The rooms at these places are also traditional Japanese-style, complete with the tatami mat floors, midget tables, futon beds and everything. It is definitely worth it, you should try staying at one of these places at least once if you can fit it in your budget.

Japan is famous for hot spring baths, called onsen, and after a long day on the cold slopes, visiting one of these luxurious revitalizing mineral baths will sooth your aching muscles and make you ready for one more day of beautiful tumbles down the mountain. In fact, some people will stay at one of these ryokan that have an onsen in-house, and do nothing but eat the set meals sandwiched between long dips in the steamy onsen. If you aren’t the outgoing type, this can be the ideal get-away from the hectic Tokyo lifestyle.

So, even if though winter can be a depressing time, there are still ways to have fun outdoors if you life in Tokyo. Get out there with some friends and make some memories to last a lifetime.

I figured it out, how to update Twitter from my cell phone. Now twitter has turned into a really fun thing. Check out some of the random thoughts I have at http://twitter.com/alex_berg

Just a quick update on my schoolin’. I got my grades for the first semester back, and they look like somebody fell asleep on the keyboard with a pinky on the ‘A’ key. Round 2 starts April 1st.

In other news about me, I got results back from the JLPT test I took, and I officially passed level 3. Yeah, I can’t exactly use that anywhere, but it does mean that I am learning something.

So, with all of the good news, I am heading out to karaoke tonight. Peace.

from Game1980 on Flickr

Visiting Japan? Of the many things to do when visiting Japan, karaoke invariably makes the top ten. It is popular, that is for sure. It is not a peculiar aspect of Japanese tastes that are taken out of context, I have Japanese friends and it is a popular choice to go to karaoke. But wait, what is “karaoke”? You definitely have your own ideas of what karaoke is, but let me tell you what karaoke is to me, a college exchange student living in Japan.

Karaoke: although there are a few different kinds of karaoke places, at the most popular ones, you get your own room. At a cheaper place, the room is small, with enough room to cram 6-8 friends in on two bench seats around a table. At the end of the table is a normal television on its own table with a bunch of sound and karaoke equipment under it. You can change some equalizer and sound settings here to satisfy your tastes here. On the table is the touch-screen computer-thing that you use to search the huge song catalog and select songs to sing. There are a ton of Japanese songs, and, surprisingly, also a ton of American songs, too (Japan loves American media).  There are also a few dictionary-sized song catalogs if you prefer to look through the a book. If you need a picture (which usually helps), searh flickr or google for “small karaoke room” and glance through the results.

A smaller place that specializes in karaoke might have 20-30 rooms, so after you check in at the front counter, you are given a microphone, a room number, and maybe some other stuff. After you get your room number, you wander the corridors of thumping karaoke rooms looking for the one that matches up. The party begins.

It costs in the ballpark of 600-1000 yen per hour during the day, depending on the place. I prefer to do the much more cost-effective all-nighter plan, which is around 1500 yen for 11pm-5am. This may seem daunting to some, but I couldn’t imagine getting enough karaoke in if we only did 2-3 hours during the day. Some of your friends may drop dead when 2-3am rolls around, but keep the party rolling, because when a good song comes up, they will pop up to make sure it is sung right.

Most karaoke places also offer some nourishment to their customers, such as free ice cream, free (weak) soup, or a 100 yen all-you-can-drink drink bar, with coffee, tea, soda, or maybe slushees available. We always do the drink bar, because caffeine is needed to fuel an all-night karaoke rave party. Another option that is available at some karaoke places is a two-hour all-you-can-drink alcohol bar as well. That costs an extra 3000-3500 for two hours, so its price deters us from partaking every time.

Tip: Choose some songs that everybody knows, such as YMCA, The Beatles, or Backstreet Boys to ensure that everybody has a good time.

Tip: Don’t monopolize the room by selfishly picking 7 songs that only you know in a row, or even in the same hour.

Tip: Try entertain your audience. Stand up, do some dance moves, love your song, maybe even take your pants off. Memories are made in a karaoke room.

At the Makuhari Messe last week was an auto show. I am not a huge auto fan myself, but I happened across a few free tickets, so I went with a friend to check out the scene. These pictures should give you a pretty good sampling of what the show had to offer, so take a look.

Inside, I joined the throngs of people weaving their way around the exhibits. The age group seemed to be older, mostly of Japanese rednecks (a new sight for me) and hard core fans. I saw a typical white family there, with the wife and 14-ish yr old son and daughter waiting with glazed looks on their faces as their father was checking out the specs on a nearby car.

Outside, drivers were taking cars around a small track at high speeds, drifting around corners and entertaining crowds with daring feats. This was really entertaining even though I was in the back of a huge crowd and could hardly see it.

Matsuyama. According to the guide books, it is a city with two things going for it, the Dogo Onsen and the Matsuyama Castle. While these two things are quite interesting and are something that can fill your time in Matsuyama, what I most enjoyed was the smaller-town feel and the kind people (me coming from Tokyo). It is a great town to explore, allowing you to find delicious restuarants by going down some backstreets and some interesting temples that are part of the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimmage. Go with some friends and enjoy the trip.

Our first stop was Takamatsu, on Shikoku. Shikoku is south of Tokyo, but colder than Tokyo. I was quite disappointed to find this out. The train ride did take a long time, but the scenery and small towns you pass through kept my interest. Check out the pictures:

I have been out and about for the last few weeks. My brother two friends came to visit me in Japan and we have been traveling all over the place. I’ll split up the different places we traveled into separate posts for organization. First of all, an introduction:

We went lots of places, traveling hundreds of miles over the course of the trip. But, we are also very cheap travelers. How did we find the happy medium? We discovered the existence of a magical ticket that JR railways sells during school breaks called the Seishun Juhachi Kippu (The Youthful 18 Ticket). It really is a great deal if you don’t mind riding on the slow trains. Use one ticket, and you can travel on all JR local trains as much as you want for 24 hours. The cost works out to a cheap 2300 yen for a ticket, but you have to buy them in books of five, meaning you spend like 11,500 yen. Pretty great huh? Here is some more info on that ticket, here.

We made pretty good use of our Seishun tickets. We left Tokyo on the first day at around 6am, arriving in Takamatsu on the large island of Shikoku around 8pm the same day. It was a long trip, but after living in the big city of Tokyo, it is very refreshing to see the countryside of Japan. I am using to taking ridiculously long road trips by car in America, and after taking this journey by train, I have to say that I almost prefer the train. If you have your itinerary, there is really no need to worry about driving, so half of the time you can sleep (it is very easy to do on a train). If you miss a train, just walk into town a little way to find a noodle shop and catch the next train thirty minutes later.

We traveled light. We each brought a small backpack with clothes, and that was about it. We are young, guys, and among friends, so we didn’t mind wearing the same clothes a few days in a row.

We made no hotel reservations. This was kind of a mistake, but everything worked out. This is one of the biggest holidays of the year for Japan, I think, and it really showed. 70% of the hotels we checked at were filled up, and we weren’t going to pay much more than $30 a person for lodging. We ended up fitting four people in a double hotel room most of the time (this may be against the rules, but we took our chances), and sleeping in hostels the other times. In some cities, we city-walked for probably two hours looking for hotels to check at, but everything worked out in the end.

We brought guidebooks. This is what we used to figure out what to do at each place we went to. Lonely Planet guidebook, Rough Guide, and some tourist information helped us out. But in the end, it was just walking around, figuring stuff out on our own that ended up being the most fun.

Alright, next time, some summaries of the destinations we hit and some pictures of the places.

Every cloud has a silver lining, or at least that is how the saying goes. I don’t know who first came up with it, but it doesn’t really make sense to me. Why would they choose a cloud to represent bad situations? Why not an angry elephant? And I don’t see clouds with silver linings very often.

But anyways, I thought that that would be a great intro into talking about my stressed life right now (yes, please feel bad for me). But, thinking back to how boring life can be, I am pretty thankful that stuff is happening, because in a few months, I am sure that things will get boring again. Work, study, sleep. Routines are nice, but are meant to be broken once in a while. Just remember this saying, “Every angry elephant gets tired.” It’s better than the  cloud with a silver lining one. And more fun to picture.

In other news, George Bush got attacked by a shoe. I found out by watching this morning’s Japanese show. Eating breakfast, I happened to look up and see George Bush dodging a shoe, with the Japanese  hosts commenting and laughing. I was really surprised because this is the kind of thing that you see on the internet. People on the television don’t play these clips and make funny commentary. But, hey, this is Japan, and they have a different sense of humor.

After playing the original clip of Bush dodgin the shoe, they played like 5 other clips from around the web, comparing Bush to Neo from the Matrix or making a flash game out of dodging the shoe. They probably took 15 minutes showing these videos and games and making commentary on them, laughing at how stupid or funny the American president is.

Thank you Japanese morning show for making my stressful day more bearable. And thank you Mr. Bush, not for the economy, but for making me laugh. He should consider being a comedian sometime. It’s pretty convendient that Obama is ready to take over for him…

Awesome, big news. My brother just arrived in Japan two days ago! He decided that he wanted to try to make his way from the airport to my train station. All by himself. I told this to my dorm-mother and she got really worried, asking me if he had my phone number here (which I forgot to give him) and if he could speak Japanese (which he can’t). I told her to not worry, he is just looking for an adventure.

How was his trip on the trains? He managed to make it without any real problems. He was only supposed to make one train transfer, which he messed up on. It was at a really big station, and he got on the wrong train line. Because the next station he went to was the wrong one, he was smart enough to head back and fix the mistake (he had a station worker who could luckily speak English help him out).

Now, not only do I have to keep my brother entertained, but I have to finish some final papers and take some final exams during this last week of school before break. No problem though, he knows that I have work to do, and I told him to just take the train to Tokyo and see where he ends up. One more week, and we head off to Kyoto and neighboring cities together. Maybe more news before then…