Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

12/4/2004, Trip to Iga, the ninja town, with Jeremy and Akemi

My friend, Jeremy has been staying with me for about a week.  He lives in Gunma prefecture (state), north of Tokyo.  That's several hours from here by bullet train.  He has an interest in ninja's, so he asked to visit the town of Iga, which is famous for ninjas.  It turns out Akemi was born in Iga.  Quite a coincidence, especially considering that Iga is not a very big town.  Osaka is an hour and a half from Aioi where I live.  Iga is about 2 hours from Osaka.  (Note that these are different kinds of trains, so travel times aren't at all proportional to distances.)

(Note that some of these pictures were taken by Jeremy.  I didn't see the need to take my own picture of something he was taking a picture of.  In those cases, I'll make a (J) mark just to give credit where credit is due.)

Here's Jeremy, on the train on the way to Iga.

Some cute lovers Jeremy saw on the train. (J)

Jeremy took quite a few pictures of them.  Here's another. (J)

Arriving in Iga.

Arriving at the part of Iga where the ninja stuff is.

Some amateur ninjas we saw practicing in the woods in Iga. (J)

A funny building we saw in the ninja tourism area in Iga. (J)

We saw a show with some modern ninjas.  It was like a martial arts exhibition show, but with real weapons and stuff.  It was amazing how controlled and skillful these people were, and it wasn't at all gorey. (J)

A performer about to throw a throwing star.  All of these people were very skillful with throwing stars. (J)

A cool code the ninjas used for secret communication.  As if Japanese wasn't cryptic enough, they thought they needed a second layer of code.

And for those who think characters of any kind are way too obvious, they also used splotches of color to communicate - in Japanese.  I took these pictures so I could learn the code and write letters to people in Japanese that they couldn't read.  What a great goal, huh?

We also went to a castle in Iga.  There are castles all over Japan.  This one was quite nice.

Inside the castle.

The view from inside the castle.

In Japan, everything is small.  Jeremy found this tiny motorcycle on the street and thought it would make a nice photo.

After having a nice time in Iga, we headed back to Osaka, where we stayed the night.  Before bed, we went out for dinner and then dessert.  Dinner was okonomiyaki.  Dessert was the star of the evening, though.  We went to the Haagen Dazs shop in the Namba area of Osaka.

Here is Jeremy's apple pie sundae.  I had a bite or two.  It was scrumptious.

Akemi and Alex's caramel banana sundae.  We had high expectations for this one, and it was much better than our high expectations.  This place makes really, really tasty desserts with ice cream.  I was in hog heaven.

A poster at the Haagen Dazs shop.

And another.  Take a look at this one.  They really do some fancy stuff at this shop.

Jeremy holding the loot.

This stuff tastes even better than it looks.

I wanted to steal the menus from Haagen Dazs.  If it were the United States, I probably would, but I don't know what the penalties are for such crimes in Japan.  It's hard to judge if it's worth the risk if you don't know what you're risking.  The menus were craftfully designed to feature the ice cream in almost sexual settings.  It looked like pornography, but with ice cream instead of young women.

All three of us were quite impressed with the bathroom at Haagen Dazs.  All three of us took photographs of the inside of the bathroom.

The toilet.  When you walk up to the toilet, the lid automatically opens up.  You don't have to touch anything.  When you walk away, the lid closes and it automatically flushes.

All of the pilot controls for the toilet are built into the toilet paper dispenser.  It makes perfect sense if you think about it.  Other toilets put all the pilot controls next to the toilet.  This is much more ergonomic.

The controls include a clock so you can be sure not to let time slip away, if that's not your plan.

The toilet is made by Inax, the company Akemi works for.  I have to give them credit for making an extremely well designed and full-featured toilet. (J)

The sink.

Note they have a custom-made branded pot for the potpurri and girly decorations.  They must have had some kind of fancy interior designer for the bathroom.

A sign in the bathroom advertising for new employees.

We also did some walking around Namba.  Japan celebrates Christmas quite actively.

Here's a little picture-taking setup we found.

Here's some random girl who was having her picture taken.

That's Akemi in the seat. (J)

And again.

Then came some cute kids.

Their mother tried to tell them to wait. (J)

But, they couldn't resist the appeal of the neat red chair.  Soon, Akemi was banished and the cute kids had taken control of the cute picture-taking chair.  How cute! (J)

And, despite my best efforts at restraint, I had to go for one more tasty ice cream.

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