I've longed to visit Japan, the country of rising sun. I appreciate the Japanese people because they have developed their country so well inspite of limited land, recurrent earthquakes and the two atom bombs! I got a chance to visit Japan when I was invited to present an idea at a techinical conferance held in Kobe, Japan. Kobe is located in Kansai region of Japan, the nearest airport being Osaka.

We were around 120+ people travelling to this conferance from my company. It was fun travelling together in such a large number! We occupied nearly 1/3 of Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore. We reached Osaka and took a bus to Kobe. The roads were amazing! They were narrow (too narrow when compared to some US expressways or even some Indian highways), but the traffic flowed smoothly and fastly. We resided at the Hotel Okura Kobe, one of the finest Hotels in Kobe with 33 floors. I got a room on 22nd Flr. There was a note in my room saying please dont panic if you feel that the building is swaying a little. It is build that way to withstand earthquakes upto a certain richter scale.

Kobe city view from my window - night and day

Now came the food part. Most of us were vegetarians and we were really worried about getting vegetarian food in Japan. But to our surprise the food was manageable. I used to have some starters which consisted of boiled vegetables, little rice (rice is sticky) and then feast on the desserts!

The Japanese are very punctual. One morning I came in a little late for breakfast and a session was about to begin at 9am. I came to the dining area around 8:50 and thought I could atleast grab a sandwich. But the dining room was deserted and the last person in there just left! The waiters there gave me a stare and I fled with just a glass of juice ! I found the Japenese to be freindlier than the western people and though the language was a barrier they expressed themselves quite well. Oh.. how can I forget their "bow"! At first I didn't know how to react when people bowed to me.. finally I too started bowing like a Japanese :)

We were taken on a half day tour to Rokko mountains and a sake brewery. Our guide spoke good english and thanked the Indians for 2 things, first - Buddhism and second was delicious Indian food especially curry. We first visited Rokko mountains. On the way I saw how Japensese eifficiently manage their city with so little land. They have well connected railway, sleek flyovers, smooth narrow roads, high (not very high) apartment complexes close to each other. The roads, flyovers and railway tracks are stacked over each other. No space is left wasted. They even have managed to plant few trees on road sides with few tiny gardens here and there. Some houses even have terrace gardens!

Fall colors - Rokko mountains and Sake bottles

Rokko mountains is just behind the Kobe town. These mountains were bare 100 years back and caused a lot of landslides. Then the japanese planted trees in the entire mountain range to prevent landslides and increase green cover. The mountains are now covered with forests and during fall time the entire forest is in shades of yellow, orange and red. For a change it's amazing to see the reversal of environmental destruction! Rokko mountains boasts the first golf ground in Japan. It also servers as a weekend getaway for city folks and trekkers.

We later visited a sake brewery. Sake is a alcoholic bewerage prepared out of rice with an alcoholic content of 14-16%. It comes in several flavors. I tasted a sake with plum flavor, it was very good but strong :)

Ikuta shrine & Nankin machi

We visited many shopping arcades, temple and Kobe port during next few days. The Ikuta shrine is possibly the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan. It is a beautiful shrine with red color used tastefully. Nankin Machi is China town in Japanese. It is a street filled with fresh chineese food (living creatures cooked in front of you) and some chineese stores. Suresh and I being vegetarian Brahmins had nothing to relish. Motamachi Arcade is nice shopping place. We bought kimonos, jewelry and shoes. We then found a 100yen shop. This place is worth visiting, it sells everything from gardening tools, cutlery to japanese fans!

Merikan park, Kobe port

Later in the evening we headed towards the Kobe Port. On one side are the illuminated Port Tower, Merikan Park, Hotel Okura Kobe and Oriental Hotel and on the other is a huge Ferris wheel. We took a ride on the Ferris wheel. The view from top was awesome, we could see the glittering Kobe city.

We visited the Maritime museum the next day. It houses a collection of ship models and also the Kawasaki museum. Kawasaki museum displays the prominent Kawasaki products over the lifespan of Kawasaki. There are also some cool bikes displayed there.

Nxt Gen bike model at Kawasaki museum FT(white robo) with robo creator

During our conference, we once had a talk from Tomotaka Takahashi, the robot creator. He creates robots singlehandedly. He has developed the first female robot named "FT". The FT catwalked till the edge of the table and came to a stop with her hand on her hip! The audience was awestruck. Walking like a human... more so walking like a woman is very difficult to achieve in robots. More info http://www.robo-garage.com/english/robo/index.html

Overall my Japan trip good and I look forward to visit this country again. The next time I would definitely visit the Fuji mountains and take a ride on the bullet train! Seonara till my next post.. which I assure will be sooner than the next appearence of the Halley's comet.

Interesting definition of Japan on wordweb: A string of more than 3,000 islands east of Asia extending 1,300 miles between the Sea of Japan and the western Pacific Ocean

My footsteps on Earth

Most of the places that I've travelled till now are mentioned above. I would love to travel to civilised worlds like Europe, less explored places like Artic & Antartic and incredibly fasinating places like Congo Basin!
There is so much to see in my own motherland India itself!

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Wayanad - Way full of Ananda!

On an early Saturday morning around 3am; GS, LK, SP and I were ready to drive to Wayanad. All of us needed a break from life's routine and this trip was just to relax and enjoy rather than to move around seeing places.The trip started with my car autocop making loud sounds to wake up my neighbors. We then met up few other friends at Raja Rajeshwari nagar. We took a break at Café Coffee day Mysore Rd at 5am. Early mornings are so beautiful and rare! We, software professionals hadn’t watched the sun rise for ages!

We again broke our journey near Gundlupet to have breakfast. Next halt was at Bandipur to watch few monkeys cross the road. We could not sight any other animals. The forest grew thicker as we approached Kerala (Muthanga wildlife sanctuary), and the roads got better ;). I was telling SP that if something goes wrong with the car, then we gals are going to sit inside and he has to push the car. And he said “No way; I’m going to halt where ever the car stops and picnic over there itself”. Something was waiting for him in next few hours :)

We visited Banasurasagar Dam on our way to Vythiri. We crossed Vythiri and proceeded towards Lakkidi thinking our cottage was situated near Lakkidi. This place gets second highest rainfall in India after Chirapunji. On our way to Lakkidi, the ghat was covered with think fog and the visibility was low. The place looked heavenly with water trickling down the huge black rock on one side of the road and a deep valley on the other side. We decided to stop for few minutes. All of us got down and were looking down the valley, when my car began to roll down the slope! SP saw it first as he was driving all that while and he tried stopping it from the front. I heard his scream, and looked back, the car was on it way down the road and SP was running in front of it! What a scene it was! There was a Maruti Zen some 20 feet away and any moment my car would bang into it! I didn’t know whether I should join SP (made no sense as I was sure our combined effort could not stop the car) or try something else. “Think quickly” I said to myself. Then I went running and tried to bend through the front window of the car to apply the hand break. The SLR hanging around my neck was coming in way and I had to keep pace with the car. I was afraid SP would get smashed between our car and the Zen. I was just praying he would move to the side, which he eventually did. Finally, I managed to apply the hand break and shift the gear to 1st gear. The car touched the Zen and came to a halt. Thank God there was no damage whatsoever. SP and I were completely shocked with the incident and took some time to recover. We still burst out laughing thinking about this incident. We continued our journey down the ghat and later found that we were heading in a wrong direction. Our cottage was in Vythiri itself! We had to drive back to Vythiri in the rain. All of us were starving by the time we reached our cottage.

The cottage was cozy and well furnished. We instantly liked it. It was also environment friendly. It made up for all the hours we had lost finding the resort. The drawing room opened up to a balcony that overlooked a stream. It was lush green all around the cottage. By the time we freshened up the food had arrived. It was authentic Kerala food! Hmm.. my mouth still waters thinking about that food. The non-veggies always get a better deal in food than the veggies! That’s the price we veggies pay for being non-violent :(. We later slept for few hours and woke up only after LK started screaming! She was trying to wake us up for nearly an hour :). We had tea and hot pakodas. We later went on a short walk into the forest. Four of us were sitting in the forest lost into our own thoughts. I was thinking why our lives are not in tune with the nature? Why do we feel peaceful when we are surrounded by unspoilt nature? What do we want to achieve in this life? Why can’t we easily overcome the setbacks in our life?

We were back in our resort with an additional small company, a firefly. LK (303 ranking) was trying to answer why the fly glows at night. The explanation can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly. The entire resort was filled with the loud croaking sound of the frogs, they were trying to beat LK's screeches :)

We ordered food and got back to our cottage. The starters arrived first and we were having it while chatting in the balcony. LK was in full form, she zapped us all when she said "Rohini.. he is .... ". SP used to get high when we used to take his trip and used to say "If u are all happy, then I'm happy". What a philosophy in life! Lady on wheels... GS was busy walking.. walking and walking.. so we named her Jonnie Walker........ Keep walking :). We had an awesome time and laughed so much that we stopped feeling the burden of life! Finally we had our dinner and were in our beds by midnight. SP wanted to watch TV, but after LK's strict warning (she claims it to be a humble request), he switched off the TV.

The next day we visited the Pookot lake which was filled with water lilies. We started off to Bangalore at 5pm. On the way back we stopped at Muthanga for tea and then at Kamat Lokaruchi for dinner. The quality of Kamat Lokaruchi has decreased over the years. Moreover, my car got a dent when it was parked there :(. We reached Bangalore past 1am and were off to work the next day. Overall Wayanad is a very beautiful heavenly place and true to its name Kerala is God's own country.

Places to visit at Wayanad though we did not cover all of them :
Banasurasagar dam
Soojipara falls
Pookot lake
Kuruva islands
Chembra peak
Edakkal caves