[Shaolin Crane]

Seems my porn chariot is cooperating for now so I can continue this.

So I left the Edo-Tokyo museum, headed back to change clothes, get more food, then left to AgeHa nightclub. The deal here is, the club doesn't even open the doors till midnight, which is when the train stops, so you take it to the end of the line WAY past Tsukiji Market nears the docks just before the trains last run. You are stuck there till 5am when the trains start up or pay $400 for a cab ride back to the hotel. No joke.
Not surprising I see nearly 100 white kids, all apparently from Ohio, barely 18 with fake ID's. All there to "hook up with Japanese" they got hooked up alright, good 20 of them got arrested for drugs within the first hour, Japanese take their drug laws seriously.

Once inside, the place is huge, On par with most LA/Vegas clubs
This was just the "food area" of the club, they know that most people are there all night so you can get shit like hot dogs, popcorn and candy.

Now I planned things out this way cause the night was scheduled as "Dubstep and Drum n Bass" but for three hours there was Jpop and a bunch of transvestite performers.



So by 3am I was ready to kill someone, I couldn't take the Jpop for that long. Dubstep never came, then two guys came out called the Hard Dance Rockers. That for two hours played the best hard dance sets I have ever heard in my life. Which is good cause I was ready to walk the two hours back in the pouring rain to get away from the Jpop.





This is a pretty big deal to me cause I'm a huge hard dance fan and we don't get much of it in the states and to top if off all of my favorite tracks were played too. I went apreshit for the remaining hours till the sun came up, top 5 club nights of my life for sure.
When the sun came up I left the club and jogged the few miles to Tsukiji Fish Market to have sushi for breakfast, why not.






Tsukiji is known through the world for it's fish trade, where if you are willing to wake up butt ass early in the morning you can have the freshest fish anywhere. There are dozens of little shops to eat at.





Now there are two restaurants that are the size of closets that people will wait in line 4-5 hours for, no joke. I seriously lucked out cause I was the only person by myself and there was one seat in the corner of the bar that I was able to sit at because the Japanese were kind enough to let me squeeze into.

The place was so small it only had stools with one leg that you could lean around on to let people into the back.

Freshest fish I've ever had, but not the best, fish is like beef, it needs to be aged to be premium.

Then I headed back to my hotel to grab my shit on head to Matsumoto. I also needed to get cash and found out the even though I called my bank three times to confirm my trip to Japan, they shut it off, after 4 hours on the phone, I was able to get cash and left.

[Shaolin Crane]

I finally make it to the Shinkansen, but I have no Idea where the fuck i'm supposed to go, i'm looking at the station route and a train attendant asks me where I'm heading, he informs me that my train is leaving in the next 50 seconds, I sprint through the station and make it just in time as the doors are closing, nearly crushing my pack as I make it through.



Naturally by the time I get situated i'm starving so I use this as an excuse to by one of everything the food cart had.


Not gonna lie, it was pretty gross.
I caught a quick 45 min nap and got off in Nagano for my connecting train into the mountains.

It was a premium train car that I was essentially alone on, it was also FREEZING, which was a oddity since when I left Tokyo it was pouring rain and over 100*

The train was older and had been converted at some point in its history to run on the newer train system, but was spotless, like everything else in Japan





However, when I got to Matsumoto the weather was perfect. It was a nice change of pace to sweating my balls off.

Little history about Matsumoto castle, it is the only 100% original castle in Japan, due to the war the US went about targeting castles on bombing runs since the Japanese didn't give a shit about human casualties. US forces notified Japanese forces that they were going to destroy Matsumoto castle, Japan offered the US whatever the wanted to preserve it, we were able to free many of our POW's in a trade for not destroying it. It was also the only castle in it's feudal history that was never successfully take over or burned to the ground. It is also black, where all other castles were a bright color.

[Shaolin Crane]

I spent the whole day there, this is the reason I wanted to go to Japan since I was a kid. Thanks to a private citizen in the early 1800s, who bought the castle estate at an Auction, renovated the grounds, then donated the castle to the city with the exception that people be allowed inside to experience the castle.



I didn't take many pictures of the inside cause I was in awe, and I was wearing my gopro on a chest mount that ran the whole time.

Yep, these are 17th century rocket propelled grenades.



No joke, the "stairs" were like ladders, and I could barely fit through some of the openings at the top.

[Shaolin Crane]

If you saw the shirt I was wearing I did not bring it just because it had kanji on it. The kanji says "San Shao" which is Japanese for "unbound hand" it is a term for Kempo fighters who do kumite without protective gear. Essentially bare knuckle fighters of Japan. A few of the instructors who participated with me got the shirts too.
I was one of the few people that went all over the grounds, there is a small pathway and a special bridge closed off to everyone that was only used for Ieyasu Tokugawa, and has been closed ever since. I was trying to get some pictures of the area while the grounds keepers were pruning the bushes, one of the waved me over and said it was ok to take pictures. I made sure that I stepped in the same footprints they did as they were raking the gravel at the same time.




I also got some incredible shots that most no one else will



On my walk back I thanked the grounds keeper who let me over there, he said "you're lucky we never let anyone here. I told him thanyou again, he pointed at the scars on my knuckles and my shirt and said "no thankyou" and bowed as I left.


Then I saw a homie "see what I did there?"

The hotels in japan provide nearly anything you would need, sure does spoil you, the town is small and have bikes for the guests to use to get around, gives a cool feel of the city too.

Had a small dilemma that I had to fix, filled up my gopro and found a store called Edion, an electronics store that is like Frys, Bestbuy and New Egg on crack, bought a hard drive and the hotel let me use the computer in the lobby to transfer the stuff over, using windows in japanese sure was interesting. Also stopped in a supermarket for food.

Sushi and related was cheap and incredible. The jerkey however was $30US for the big bag and $10US for the small bag, the japanese are no big on protein and jerkey was no exception, if you wanted it, you had to pay for it.
Matsumoto is a skiing and castle town with no nightlife to speak of, so I caught up on sleep and was up bright and early for my last day.
The next day the weather was incredible, cold, high 40's but not a cloud in sight.

There was a group of old folks doing tai chi and I decided to join in, but far away and out of sight

[Shaolin Crane]

Photobucket is glitching up again, have to continue later.

[Vettezuki]

Great pics, stories, and some history I didn't know.

[Shaolin Crane]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

Great pics, stories, and some history I didn't know.

I'd like to do this all in one stint, but however photobucket does cookies on their site sucks balls and eventually gets to the point where I can't use it in the browser at all until I restart. The video links don't look the same either, now just small thumbnails compared to the photos. The pictures are one thing but many times it's what I experienced along with them that makes them notable.

[Shaolin Crane]

I ride around Matsumoto for a while looking at the castle town area before leaving for Nagano, which was the half point for many spots up north, so while I was there I went sight seeing.





Nagano really is a beautiful city
Now Nagano is best known for it's position in the Olympic Winter Games. Best known to the Japanese for Shichimi Togarashi, which is a seasoned crushed pepper I am quite fond of, so is my dad. So I trecked up into the Mountains for Tofuguji Temple, where the monks make the peppers. The trecked WAY further into the boonies of the Forest for Ninjadera Mura. One of the three remaining ninja training camps, now an amusement park aimed mainly at children. Tofukuji is as far as the bus goes, and takes about an hour from the train station.



Tofukuji is actually three temples that escalate up the mountain, each flight of stairs is about 1000' in the altitude with my pack is was quite exhausting. Then about a 2 hour walk to Ninjamura

Going through the small town on the way



Finally at the park


The park, even though now aimed at kids, had an excellent museum hidden in the back



One of the attractions was the ninja house, a entire house built with mazes and puzzles requiring you to figure your way into each room



Since the japanese are not litigious like americans there was no "safety" measures to speak of, apparently the rule of the ninja and the park, if you can reach it, have at it, there were kids on the fuckin roofs of places, including a large Ninja Warrior like obstical course the kids were falling off of right and left, hell even I had a hard time.

[Shaolin Crane]

There is a ton more pics of the Ninja museum in my photobucket. It was a long day and didn't make it to Kanazawa till late.

This is the ryokan I stayed in.
The inn keeper was a very nice man who insisted on showing sensei around town. He took me to a small sushi bar near by, EXCELLENT quality, tied with Tokyo for sure. Little different here, the served the sushi straight on the bar and you ate with your hands, no chop sticks






I spent probably 4 hours there, the locals were nice but uninterested in my presence until they found out I teach Kempo. They all insisted in taking pictures with me and where I had gone in Japan and where I was planning on going. I taught them all some simple techniques and they could not have been more thrilled. Then when back to the ryokan because of his curfew.





By now it had been a few days since I worked out, Horita let me do some iso/plymetrics in his garden so I wouldnt disturb the other guests, he also asked if I minded that he do the same as I, we stayed up talking and turns out he was a former olympic skiier and runner.



I had a long day and had to be up at 5am to make my schedule, I was only there for a night but Horita insisted on "driving Sensei around on his last day" He took me somewhere I could get some food and then drove me to Kenrokuen Garden quite some distance away.

Kenrokuen garden is HUGE, and I can easily see why it's often voted and the most beautiful Garden in the world


photobucket is glitching up, again, have to continue later.

[Shaolin Crane]

I spent a few hours at Kenrokuen, the place is massive.



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This is important, Basho is a big deal in Japan, remember this for later in my travels

Soooooooo generally I was really respectful of requests this time however I was sneaky and took a few pictures even though they asked for no photos, Seison Kaku Villa was pretty incredible, the entire home was built with song board. Which was highly polished wood, fitted with traditional japanese leverage mounts that required no nails, however, due to Ninja assassinations they would posistion nails upward and downward against each other, they would "chirp" like birds. It was quite fun to practice the ninjutsu techniques I learned for light stepping movement, it makes a large difference but in all honesty I am too heavy and would have been caught if I was a ninja, bummer. I did however scare the shit out of a few of the workers in the house because of how quiet I was, so maybe I could be B Team infiltration.









This paint is a big deal, blue was very difficult to make in the 17th century and VERY expensive, this whole room was painted this color because she wanted it.

Grounds layout for the Kanazawa Castle





[IMG]http://i524.photobucket.com/albums/cc322/ShaolinCrane/Japan%202015




If you're thinking the castle looks new, it is, this is one of the many replicas that were remodeled some time in history, Kanazawa castle was just completed last year.