Various Japan Pictures
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Various Trips Taken During The First Half Of
2005
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| Having washed a 10,000 yen bill, all I could do was to sit down and wait for it to duplicate. | Yuka and I standing in front of yet another temple in the old Japanese capital of Kamakura. |
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| This picture was actually taken in 2004, but I thought it would be important to prove that I have actually visited the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo. As one of the largest wholesale markets for fish in the world, it is a major tourist attraction for people interested in looking at crazy creatures from the ocean. | In early July, I went to visit the World Expo in Nagoya. The day I visited happened to be extremely warm, and the number of visitors was the second highest ever recorded for the park so far. Needless to say, lots of people passed out while waiting in several hour long lines to get into really silly attractions. |
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| The Expo is mainly divided into country and company exhibitions. Companies such as Toyota and Toshiba had gigantic pavilions, and the average waiting time to get into one was more than 3 hours. Most of the country exhibits, however, were less popular. One obvious reason is that most of them sucked, the Nordic pavilion being no exception. | The Expo put Nagoya on the world map for a some months, but few people are likely to remember the city after the event closes its doors in September. One thing that did not suck about the Expo was the excellent transportation to and from the Expo area. When I think of it, that was probably the only thing that did not suck. |
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| Once the Expo has closed down, the only attraction worth visiting in Nagoya is the Nagoya Castle. While its history dates back several hundred years, the current structure was built in 1959 following the castle's destruction during the second world war. As most other castles in Japan, nothing of the inside is preserved, and the castle thus functions more as a museum than as a historic building. | The castle was undergoing repairs while we visited. While that somewhat ruined the view of the building, there may be even more construction in the future as there are plans to rebuild the buildings that used to surround the castle. |