Niigata, part 1

~Hello, loyal readers. Next week is a vacation called "Golden Week" that is a collection of four of Japan's national holidays. I'll make good use of my time off to catch up on rest and get new pictures and crazy stories to share with everyone. For now, I'm going back a couple of weeks to write about my trip to Niigata. Here is a map of the area for reference:

Niigata is the largest city in the area; the prefecture (state) is named after it. It's a coastal city with a big harbor, many stores, and a lot of Russians (they have a consulate in the city). One of the main tourist attractions of the city is the "Rainbow Tower", a revolving observation platform that goes up and down 100 meters over four minutes. It was a great way to get a look at the city. Here are some of the pictures I took from near the top:

Above: The city skyline. Geographically, Niigata is much like New York City: the "Manhattan" area with most of the tall buildings is located on an island. You have to cross a river to get there:

Above: A view of the Shinano river and some of the bridges that cross it, leading to...

Above: The urban center of Niigata, complete with an imitation Eiffel Tower! If you click on the picture, you can see a huge mural of birds on the side of the building below the tower.



Above: Niigata sure is crowded, isn't it? The structure in the middle that looks like an aqueduct is actually the Joetsu line bullet train railway leading to the train station. Bullet trains, called "Shinkansen" in Japanese (or "shik" for short) are extremely fast (only 23 minutes to get to Niigata from Nagaoka!) and efficient; however, a trip on the shik can be expensive, so I got to Niigata on the regular train line (53 minutes). I'll be doing an entire post on them in the future. That is merely a taste of things to come! Mwahahaahaha!

Above: Niigata's industrial district. Nagaoka's main industries are petrochemicals, natural gas, and rice, so I'm guessing that these are refineries of some kind. Or maybe gigantic saké factories.

Above: The tallest building in Niigata (except, perhaps, for the Rainbow Tower itself). I wonder who works there...and more importantly, where do they park??

~As a special treat for you, my readers, I offer you this exclusive picture of Japan's latest technological/architectural marvel: the two-dimensional building!

Well, at least that's the way it appeared to be (this picture was taken from the street, not the tower). The truth is...
An interesting optical illusion. Attached to the building is a radio station (79.0 FM) that is apparently quite popular; there was a large crowd of teenagers outside standing in line for what I could only assume was some kind of promotional activity.

~Finally, I have a challenge for you. I will now reveal one of the greatest, as-yet-unsolved mysteries of Japan:

Above: Now, I may be just an ignorant Gaijin, but for the love of all that is right in the universe, HOW DO YOU GET THE TOP CARS DOWN??? It just dosen't make any sense! The lifts don't move the bottom car. They don't swivel in the other direction. They don't move horozontally and then go down. They don't, in fact, seem to do anything except go up and down.


For the life of me, I can't fathom how you're supposed to get your car down if you're stuck on the top! Teleportation, perhaps? The only viable explaination I came up with is that if you park in the lower space, and someone else raises the lift and parks underneath you, you're...screwed. And I'm not the only one who's confused. While I was taking the above picture, a Japanese couple was examining the lift and pointing at it with confused looks on their faces. Some things, it seems, are as confusing to the natives as they are to me.

So I ask again, does anyone have ANY ideas on how these really work? Or is this some kind of Japanese state secret that Man Was Not Meant to Know?

Coming up next: Niigata, part 2, where I blunder my way across the city in "tourist mode".

Earthshaking news!

~Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in updates--blogger.com has been on the fritz for the past few days and I couldn't create any new posts. This morning I experienced my first earthquake! It was only a small tremor that lasted for five seconds, but it was an earth tremor nonetheless. The shaking woke me up, and in my sleepy haze I thought that I had imagined the whole thing. I was mildly surprised to learn that other people had felt the same shaking. Hopefully, this is the worst earthquake that I will experience in Japan, as I have no desire to be in the middle of a 'big one', like last year's quake that left thousands homeless.

~On Sunday, I attended a going-away celebration for a teacher at one of the other English schools, who is being transferred to Toyko. The party was held at a bar called 'Nameless', which caters mostly to gaijin (they even have menus in English! Joy!). Because the teacher's name is Sarah, the theme of the party was the letter "S". I wore my blue smiley-face shirt (re: blog post #1, 'T-minus 38 hours'), and Sarah went as a Sakura tree. Sakura is Japanese for cherry blossom, which are currently in full bloom all over the city. Over the weekend, I rode around a bit and took some pictures guaranteed to brighten your day:

Above: Overlooking a canal near the train station that is lined with cherry trees on both sides. As I was aiming my camera for this picture, an old Japanese woman talked to me about the cherry trees; she mentioned Washington D.C. (re: previous blog post), and became very excited when I told her that I had lived near D.C. and had seen the festival there. She asked me if I was a high school student, and was very surpised when I told her I was an 'Ego Sensei' (=English teacher; although saying that always makes me think, "Leggo my Eggo!").

Above: Cherry trees along a different canal. Although they are very beautiful trees, they sure do make a mess. Here is a closeup of the lower-left part of the picture:

Above: At this time of the year, as in Washington D.C., cherry blossom petals are everywhere. Oh, they're very picturesque when they're floating through the air in a soft breeze, but someone has to clean them off of the streets, roofs, sidewalks, etc. Every day I see old men with brooms and dustpans sweeping the petals away. Where do the petals go? Some gigantic sakrua-landfill? An incinerator? My guess is that they are baked into cherry-flavored cakes (yes, the petals are edible).


Above: What must be a very old cherry tree along the canal. See that pile of petals on the ground?

Above: A closeup of some cherry blossoms. I recommend clicking on the picture to get the full effect.

Above: Another picture of a tree-lined canal. Note that by planting cherry trees along the canals, half of the petals fall into the water and therefore dispose of themselves. Brilliant!

~Here's something a little different:

Above: This is the most mysterious building in Nagaoka. I ride by this building every day on my bicycle commute to work. As you can see, the 'N-1' is a very large building, and at night it is brightly lit (it makes a great navigational landmark). Supposedly, it's a pachinko parlor on the bottom floor, and the upper seven floors are parking.

I don't buy that...seven floors of parking for one floor of pachinko? This building is large enough to hold a substantial chunk of Nagaoka's population, and I've never seen it very busy. My theory is that it is the regional headquarters for a) the yakuza, b) a group of vigilante superheroes, or c) some kind of anti-North-Korean defense system. Perhaps the entire building is just a shell that folds back, revealing some kind of futuristic giant robot launch pad. Or maybe it's just more floors of pachinko. Either way, it does have a nice group of cherry trees in front of it.