Month: February 2007

Categories
Anime

Nekobus

Well known by everyone who has ever watched the movie “My neighbor Totoro”, the Nekobus is a cat-bus (“Neko” is cat in Japanese) that can travel very fast on any type of terrain. One of the most fabulous means of transport that you can imagine. There are many Nekobus fans around the world, and some of them try to create Nekobuses replicas in the real world. Here are some pictures I found thanks to Google:


This is not a Nekobus but it is very “Ghibli”. I travelled using this bus when I went to the Ghibli Museum at Mitaka.


This is the original Nekobus.

I finished at this web and this web where you “Totoro Station” pictures. It seems there is a real bus station called “Totoro” somewhere in a little village at southern Japan.


“Totoro” bus station.

Categories
Various

First time it doesn't snow in Tokyo since 1876

From 1876 when they started to gather weather data in Tokyo it snowed at least one time before February 10h every year. This year, it’s almost March and it didn’t snowed, and I don’t think it will do with 15-17 degrees that we are having these days. In order to be registered as “it snowed in Tokyo” it has to snow in a place called “Otemachi” at Tokyo’s city center, it didn’t happened for the first time in more than one hundred years.

Because of this warm weather Sakura and Ume flowers blossomed before expected. Japanese LOVE Sakura and Ume flowers, they will have conversation topic for next weeks “Is the global warming changing our Sakura season?”, “Was Sakura more beautiful in the old times?”.

Categories
Travel

First impression

The first thing you see in Japan after Narita International Airport is:


Rice, rice and more rice!

I took this video from a Narita Express train, my favorite train (fast and comfortable) to travel from Narita to Tokyo. Other lines from the Airport to Tokyo are Keisei Skyliner a little bit cheaper, JR Sobu Line much slower and Keisei Limited Express that is the slowest and the cheapest one.

For lines from the airport, not bad. The problem is that Narita is very far away from Tokyo. Narita Express takes more than one hour, and is the fastest train. In the seventies they started to built a shinkansen (bullet train) from the airport to Tokyo but the project stop because there were some political problems… (Who knows). Good news is that right now there is a new line in construction called Narita Rapid Railway that will start to work around 2010 and will connect Narita Airport and Tokyo in 36 minutes.

One curiosity about Narita is that there is a “type” of divorce known as “Narita Divorce” (Narita rikon). “Narita rikon” is broadly used by people because it seems that many Japanese couples decide to divorce when they are back at Narita Airport after their honey moon travel. There is even a Japanese drama called “Narita rikon” that made the expression even more popular.