Honbasho Sumo Action!

We've got very convenient internet access at our hostel right now, which may not be the case for the next few weeks in Bhutan. The country has no traffic lights. They tried to put one in, but it didn't go over very well. Anyways, we figured we'd keep the updates coming as long as we have access.

Today, we found out that one of Japan's three annual Honbasho, or 15-day ultimate sumo tournaments, starts tomorrow, and the stadium is a 10 minute walk from our hostel. We couldn't turn up the chance to check it out, so we're headed down tomorrow afternoon to catch some top-tier sumo action. Both of the currently active Yokozuna, or supreme sumo champions, will be fighting.


Could be awesome. We'll keep you posted.

The Tsukiji Fish Market

Thanks to the magic of the international date line, this post is coming to you from the FUTURE!!! The future is similar to the present, except everyone speaks Japanese for some reason.

We woke up at 3:45am this morning to check out the Tsukiji Fish Market, which holds some sort of fish-based market world record. I forget exactly what. In any case, it was crazy. By the time we got there at 5am, the whole place was barely-controlled chaos, with trucks, scooters, bikes and hand-carts flying around in every direction, all loaded down with sea creatures. Some of them I recognized, others looked like props from a horror movie.

By far the coolest part of the market is the tuna auction, where the morning's tuna catch is laid out in a big warehouse, and restaurant representatives bid on them in a process that resembles a big-city stock market, with more disembodied fins on the floor. And man, those tuna are BIG. For example, this one:


The nicest of the day's tuna can go for more than $10,000 per fish.

After checking out the market we hit up a tiny sushi restaurant, hidden down a side street and behind a big red curtain. Very mysterious. Breakfast sushi is apparently the thing to do around Tsukiji, so we ordered with the time-honoured "point-at-pictures-and-smile" technique. We wound up getting a huge selection of incredibly fresh sushi and sashimi, including a few pieces of "o-toro", a kind of super-fatty tuna that is sort of like the Kobe beef of the fish world. Delicious.

Skymall

As promised, photographic evidence of the ridiculousness that is Skymall.

The voice-activated R2D2 that led to Mallory's loss of motor control.


The doggy porthole.

Tokyo

We've arrived safe and sound in Tokyo! Since getting in this afternoon, we've made our way from the airport to our hostel, tracked down some delicious, delicious tempura, and spent the rest of the time staring vacantly off into space. 13 hour time change = JET LAG.

No exciting travel stories yet, except for when we were flipping through the Skymall catalog on the plane, laughing at the ridiculous items on sale (a sample product: "doggy fence porthole"... picture to follow in an upcoming post, because it's too awesome not to share), and Mallory totally spazzed out and knocked a glass of water all over the place when she saw the "talking, voice activated R2D2". But really, who wouldn't have done the same?

Go

As of 6:45pm today, we are officially on the road... except we'll mostly be in the air, but that doesn't have as good a ring to it as "on the road".

As for Mallory's brief allusion to word theft - if you are in Kingston, check out this year's Welcome Back magazine, then check out the article about ultimate travel destinations, then compare the sample itinerary to our itinerary. You might notice they are pretty much identical, and that's because we were interviewed for the article, and they based it around our trip. Only you'd never know it, because our names don't appear in it once! Mildly upsetting. Alas, we'll have to console ourselves with the fact that we're actually on the trip in question.

Next post: on the road!

Commencing countdown, engines on

Holy crap, we leave for Tokyo in 36 hours. We've been planning and talking about this trip for so long, it's surreal to think we're actually about to head out for the great wide yonder. We just got our 100% finalized itinerary from our travel agent today, so I thought I'd post some dates to accompany our rough itinerary outline from a few posts ago. This is the schedule as it stands right now, though we may tweak it from the road as conditions dictate.

Sept. 11: Depart Syracuse for Washington, DC. Undergo insane security screening. A few hours later, depart Washington for Tokyo.

Sept. 12-15: Tokyo

Sept. 15-16: Travel, Tokyo-Bangkok-Calcutta, eventually winding up in Thimpu, Bhutan.

Sept. 16-25: Bhutan.

Sept. 26: Travel, back to Calcutta.

Sept. 26-Nov. 16: India.

Nov. 16: Travel, New Delhi-Beijing.

Nov. 22: Travel (train!), Beijing-Ulaan Baatar.

Nov. 23-26: Ulaan Baatar, Mongolian wilderness.

Nov. 27: Travel (train!), onwards to Russia.

Nov. 28-29: Irkutsk and Lake Baikal.

Nov. 30-Dec. 3: Travel (train!), Irkutsk-Moscow.

Dec. 4-6: Moscow.

Dec. 7: Travel (last leg of the train!), Moscow-St. Petersburg.

Dec. 8-9: St. Petersburg.

Dec. 9: Travel (bus), St. Petersburg to Tallinn, Estonia.

Dec. 10-12: Tallinn.

Dec. 12: Travel, Tallinn-Warsaw-Vienna.

Dec. 13-22: Austria, Switzerland, meandering by rail.

Dec. 22-26: Gryon, Switzerland.

Dec. 27-29: More Switzerland.

Dec. 29: Travel, Zurich to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Dec. 30-31: Tanzania, travel to Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Jan. 1-7: Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Jan. 8-19: Tanzania.

Jan. 20: Travel, Dar es Salaam-Johannesburg-Sao Paolo-Buenos Aires (ugh).

Jan. 21-Mar. 6: South America (generally, Argentina-Chile-Bolivia-Peru, via train and bus).

Mar. 6: Travel, Lima-Toronto.

And that's about it!

Drugs and Higher Education

Less than one week until we embark on a round-the-world adventure! Since we last "talked" to you lovely friends/family/internet stalkers, Bryce and I have been ultra busy preparing for the trip and doing the things that occupy our lives when we are not traveling. Surprising to learn, but we don't just plan travel outings and play cricket all day. For me, that means finishing up another summer of work at my super awesome job camping in the arctic (sometimes they ask me to do geology). For Bryce that means successfully defending his masters, which I'm pretty sure means we have earned the titles of Master and Mistress of Science. You may be asking yourself: "Why would they wait until after they had become qualified scientists to leave on this debt-inducing trip?". WELL, a master's is actually extremely useful while traveling! Consider the following scenarios in which our advanced degrees will come in handy:

Me: Geology/Toxicology
Here is how I picture it going down: We're in Russia near a nickel smelter when suddenly all the citizens of the surrounding city come down with asthma! The government offers a 5 million dollar reward to the person/scientist/witch who can identify the cause of the epidemic. That is when I step in and say 'HA! Did you consider the NICKEL SMELTER?!?!' and everyone is shocked and had never thought of that before and then I get the money and we all have vodka and Bryce and I become the next czar and czarina of Russia as a reward.

Bryce: Civil Engineering
We get stranded in the Mongolian steppe after our train leaves without us. Fortunately, I am able to use my mastery of alternative construction techniques to build us a mighty shelter that is both structurally and culturally appropriate, while also reducing energy use. Just not, like, a real building. More of a scale model. Like three bags of dirt, stacked on top of each other. The rest of the shelter is recommended as "future work".

Grad school taught us life skillz.

Though we've both been busy, we have had the time to begin packing, a feat which is much more complicated than we could have anticipated. As of right now, we have SEVENTEEN different drugs in our first aid kit (only one of which is a neurotoxin). One of us is going to have to sacrifice some clothes to fit this in the bag... and it's not going to be me.

Due to slowwww emailing on the part of our travel agent, we are still missing two visas: China and Russia. We can get the Chinese visa tomorrow, but it looks like we might have to get the Russian one in India! Sketchy... so hopefully that works out. If not, we'll have to think of some alternate plan or else sneak into Russia. We will just wait for a national guard holiday.

More posts to come, including a fascinating story about WORD THEFT! Check back soon!