Travel Tips

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Tokyo, Japan

Akihabara Electric Shopping Street

Find all sorts of up-to-date and technologically advanced gadgets along this street! Use your bargaining techniques to get a great deal!

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Tokyo, Japan

Pavilion in Tokyo

The architecture found throughout Tokyo was absolutely amazing!

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Lake Ashi, Japan

Lake Ashi

Sailing along the beautiful waters of Lake Ashi, I was able to capture this serene photo of a Japanese sightseeing ship quietly drifting by.

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Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto Shopping

Walking down a street in Kyoto, I had to snap a photo of this Japanese grocery store as the workers prepared the shop for the day.

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Nagoya, Japan

Beer!

Ahhh, a universal love! The best thing about Japan is that beer is very abundant....who needs a bar or a restaurant to enjoy a cold brewski? Just walk down any street, throw a few bucks in a vending machine, and chug-a-lug! (YES, beer is sold in vending machines in Japan!)

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Tokyo, Japan

Pachinko

An acitivity enjoyed by locals in Japan is a slot-machine-like game called Pachinko.

Here's how it works:
"...........Pachinko is a mixture between slot machine and pinball. The player is quite passive while playing pachinko. He or she is only controlling the speed with which many small steel balls are thrown into the pachinko machine.

Most of the balls just fall down the machine and disappear, but a few find their way into special holes. This activates a kind of slot machine. As in the slot machine, you win if the same three pictures appear. This occurs quite rarely in pachinko, but if it happens, you win countless new balls. When just playing for 500 or 1000 Yen, you may likely just lose all your balls within a few minutes.

If you win balls, you can exchange them into goods that are available in the parlor's gift shop. But you can also bypass the law that prohibits gambling in Japan by exchanging the balls first into some special goods and then exchange them for cash at a small window just outside the parlor....."

My husband won about $45 in a pachinko machine, and it was quite interesting to see how he cashed in his winnings. With his $45 winning slip, he then purchased $45 worth of gold Japanese coins. He then had to exit the casino, go down a small alleyway, and knock on the front of a small window closed off with a wooden panel. The wooden panel opened after he knocked, but we were unable to see the person inside. We slid that person our gold coins, and the person gave us our $45 in cash then pulled the wooden panel closed. The law in Japan prohibits pachinko casinos from paying winnings in cash, and this is a way the Japanese have found to avert the law. Pretty cool.

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Tokyo, Japan

Asakusa Kannon Temple

Before entering the Asakusa Kannon Temple, it is a tradition among the locals to drink water from the guarded fountain in order to cleanse away impurites and evil spirits.

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Hakone, Japan

Owakudani

Owakudani is the area around a crater created in the last eruption of Mt. Hakone 3000 years ago. Sulfurous fumes, hot springs and hot rivers can be experienced on a walk in the area. There are many "pools" of hot springh water....in this photo you can see a little bit of the steam to the far right. Oddly enough, raw eggs are for sale at a little shop along the trail of this old volcano. If you place your raw egg into the hot spring and wait for it to boil, you then remove the egg with a long metal ladle then eat it. Eggs boiled in the hot springs are said to bring good fortune and luck, and prolong ones life for seven years.