Future World Traveller

Author: Jonas Sommer

  • Harukas 300

    Valentines day we set out in a new direction from the hotel. Turning a corner we were suddenly at a pretty high building.

    “I think that’s the highest building I have ever seen…” Isa said. My reply was; naaah it’s not that high… We then started counting and both got to 60 floors. Turns out Harukas is the highest building in Japan. Access to a little garden at the 16th floor was free, but to go to the top floor (58-60) you had to pay an admission fee.

    The view from 16th floor garden was impressive. The city went as far as the eyes could see in all directions. But it was early in the day and we needed food so we opted for a nearby shopping mall.

    We found a huge collection of photo booths that was heavily visited next to a very nice food court. Denmark could really learn something from Japan when it comes to eating out. Even a food court in a shopping mall serves really good food. We spend the day browsing shops and eating.

    As the sun set we went back to Harukas, this time to the top, and was meet by this view:

    On our first day we came by this tower which suddenly didn’t look so big any more.

    North
    North
    East
    East
    South
    South
    West
    West

    We had fun playing around with the shutter speed on our camera and annoyed everyone around us by crawling around on the floor and moving things around to get the right framing.

    We ended up spending almost 3 hours up there and was kicked out as the last ones by 10pm.

  • Great stuff in Japan #1

    Japan is all about the little differences. At first glance it might look very similar to what you’re used to, but once you start looking, you find things like this:

    I had a laugh when I stumbled on these packs of sliced bread. I never wondered about the slice thickness of bread, but clearly i missed out on something in Denmark. Sliches in the 4-pack, is at least 3 x the normal size. Still I like the idea; A bread is 15 cm, now choose how many slices you want…

    I still don’t get why they have these photo booths all over the place. They make “subtle” changes to the pictures, like slightly bigger eyes, or make you look more “caucasian”. And afterwards you can spiff up the image with text and graphics. In one place we found 6 – 9 booths packed together and they were obviously in use. It was fun though and a good souvenir.

    As this was the day before Valentines Day it might be a special case, but I still think that individually packed strawberries running at 4,5 USD (~ 30 DKK) is a bit steep. They looked really good, but still…

    The first public toilet I visited after 24 hours travel, was the one on the left. I didn’t learn until later that the seat is heated and it plays music. (Others shouldn’t be able to hear what you’re doing) And it can wash you “front” and “back”. I have to say it’s growing on me, even though I thought they were strange at first. This is the standard of most public toilets we have visited, and it makes me wonder what their private toilets look like.

    At our hotel at the moment, the toilets look like the one on the right. I didn’t realize at first but the small sink is filling the cistern. That is, when you flush, the water starts running and you can wash your hands while the cistern fills up. Genius šŸ™‚

    Ā 

    /Jonas

  • Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan

    Yesterday I cashed in on my Christmas present from Isa, a trip to Osaka Aquarium. One of the largest aquariums in the World, we spent 5 hours just walking through it. That’s when I noticed some funny things about the place. E.g. For every 30m there was a sign on the floor telling you 740m (to the exit), and a sign on the wall telling you 50m to next toilet. You wold never have to do more than turn your head to know exactly how far you were from basic necessities. And by basic necessities I mean a heated toilet seat with build in bidet and music and a sink with integrated soap dispenser and hand dryer.

    The aquarium was structured with habitats from the Ring of Fire going around the Pacific Ocean. With a huge 9 m deep tank in the middle, containing a whale shark and manta rays. You go down in a spiral around the tank and see all climates ranging from the Antarctic with pinguins to tropical with Sloths.

    The acrylic glass panes in the big Pacific Ocean Tank is 30 cm thick and weighs 314 tons in total.

    Some of the deep sea creatures were quite scary. I wouldn’t want to meet one of these craps in a dark alley.

    Most of the animals looked like they were fine, but off cause it’s hard not to feel a bit sad when you see the penguins which look like they were taken straight from the zoo scene in Happy Feet.

    These guys didn’t look too pleased either…

    The otters looked like they were having a ball though. Sprinting around, jumping through the water and cuddling on a rock.

    At the end of the day I must admit even though the whale shark was much smaller than expected (Quote: Isa) the Osaka Aquarium did kick Kattegatcentrets butt. (or at least it’s a lot bigger šŸ™‚

    Ā 

    Jonas

  • First “tech” post

    Happy Buddha
    Happy Buddha

    I thought I might add a little nerdiness to the blog. As this is my first post, I will start off light. I have been meddling around with the site. Trying to tidy it up a bit, with links to our different social media sites. I ended up with 3 standard links in the bottom. It was quite fun to google the different brand’s brand assets and guidelines. It turns out that twitter for instance doesn’t allow speech bubbles with their bird and it is never shown in black (which was the template standard). I ended up removing the Facebook icon but did learn that you should capitalize it, and shouldn’t use the Facebook logo instead of the word in a sentence.

    Back to the site. Isa brought me this tiny happy Buddha after our trip to Vietnam. He is really cute and Iā€™m still considering, if he should go with us. I never really liked the Squarespace standard, so now you might recognize him from the sites favicon. 

    He will also help you if you get lost. (Try loading it multiple times) This way he will be with us in the spiritual form, watching over the site and us, which makes me happy. As we are big fans of Black Books it was obvios that we needed quotes from The Little Book of Calm, and Isa helped picking out a bunch of relaxing quotes. Like the one below witch seems fitting at the moment.

    “Take alle the time in the world.

    Contrary to what you may tell yourself, you have all the time in the world to do whatever you choose.

    What cannot be fitted in to your day, cannot be done – forget about it. ”

    — The Little Book of Calm

    Though I guess my favorite must be:

    “Pretend it is Saturday”

    — The Little Book of Calm