Click here to see all of the photos I took on this day...although there aren't too many.
When I say "the longest Thursday of my life" I mean that quite literally. From midnight Thursday morning to 11:59 Thursday night about 36 hours passed. The Sun rose and set twice, but it never quit being Thursday.
We started off the morning with a McDonalds breakfast. As I mentioned yesterday, we had discovered that in spite of packing loosely for the trip over we still didn't have enough luggage to carry all our stuff back home. The Limousine Bus to Narita Airport was leaving at 1 PM, so we had all morning to find another bag to buy. We decided that we'd buy a new carry-on that was as large as airlines allow and I'd use it instead of the backpack I had used on the way to Japan.
Unfortunately, here's where we ran into another strange thing about Japan: While they seem to be up and heading to work early in the morning, the stores in Tokyo don't open until 10 or 11 AM for the most part. We walked over to Tokyu Hands and found that, indeed, they didn't open until 10. Checkout time at our hotel was 11. There was nothing we could do about it, so we decided to just explore some parts of Shinjuku on foot until Tokyu Hands opened.
We walked a bit farther North than we had been previously, and saw several businesses setting up signs out front about the new model of the PlayStation Portable that was being released this morning. When we made it around to Yodabashi Camera, we actually saw a long line of people waiting to buy it, but the store wasn't opened yet. Erin bought just one last gashapon. We came across a store selling some luggage, but it was all too expensive and not quite what we were looking for.
It was now 10 AM, so we headed back to the hotel. At this point we did something we had never done before on our trip to Japan: we split up. Erin went ahead to Tokyu Hands to find a suitcase (it was a couple blocks away across a skybridge over the JR train tracks) and I went up to the room to unpack the backpack and fit as many unbreakable things as I could into our checked luggage, including the backpack itself. Then I headed over to meet her at Tokyu Hands.
She had already found a beautiful bright orange carry-on that she thought I would like. I agreed, and we bought it along with a Crocs cellphone case for my sister. After we bought the case, the cashier cut all of the tags off the baggage, opened up all of the compartments and removed the dessicant packages, then showed me that in one of the pockets there was a lock and key we could use. Then Erin headed back to the room to pack up our stuff and I headed up to a higher floor of Tokyu Hands to find the middle section to a three part Dragonball toy I needed, having bought the other two parts on an earlier day elsewhere. After asking for help in Japanese and carefully trying to explain in several different ways that I needed the middle of these three sections, the girl finally managed to interrupt me and say in English, "I'm sorry, but we're sold out of that part." Oh.
I headed back to the hotel to help Erin with the packing. When I got there, she was already finished, and everything had just barely fit. After a final once-over of the room and a last sniffly glance at the view out the window, we took our luggage downstairs and checked out. Under Japanese law, it's illegal for a hotel to hit you with extra taxes and fees when you check out (they are required to include those in your initial price), so all we had to pay was for the breakfasts we had charged to our room. They took our luggage and put it in a cordoned off section of the lobby with a net over it and gave us a claim tag.
With all of that taken care of and a couple hours to spare before our ride to the airport, we went back to Yodabashi Camera to buy my dad a little toy Mazda as a souvenir. People were now buying their PSP-3000s and TV crews were on hand to interview customers. One of the crew members gave me a funny look, as if for a second he thought we might have come all the way from America just to buy this new PSP. After that, we decided to go eat lunch at a bakery we had seen when walking past Takashimaya Times Square earlier and then do a little window-shopping in Times Square itself.
Takashimaya Times Square is a very high-class department store. We saw $1500 pairs of shoes and a guarded display of some Christian Lacroix (a famous designer) clothing from fashion shows of the past. In the basement of the store there was a large supermarket. We saw square watermelons and actual roots of wasabi for sale. I asked the ladies standing nearby if I could take a photo, and they gave me the emphatic head shake and hands raised to make an X that I was now all too familiar with.
We walked through a concourse tunnel that looked like it would be for employees only, but actually led to a bookstore. Erin found all of the books in the "Chi's Sweet Home" comic series and bought them. We then headed back to the hotel to wait for the bus.
We both slept on the bus to the airport, although Erin got a bit more in than I did. After the 90 minute ride, we were dropped off on the upper level. We had exited on the floor below when we arrived in Japan. It was a very intelligent setup, actually.
Navigating Narita Airport was a cinch. We scanned our passports on a kiosk and were given our boarding passes. They were printed on nice card stock instead of the flimsy receipt-style paper we had received in Oklahoma City. A woman said, "You want to see all of your bags when you arrive in Chicago," meaning that we had to claim all of our baggage and then re-check it for our connecting flight. We made our way though the security checkpoint (which had signs asking that you pack your bags neatly so that it would be easier to tell what you had in the X-ray) and to our gate. The flight didn't leave until 4:50 PM, so Erin sat and read her comics, and I set off to find her a Dr. Pepper and explore. The terminal was full of duty-free shops, bars and "last chance for good sushi" restaurants. At the far end I found a snack bar that had bottled Dr. Pepper, so I bought one and headed back.
Finally, the time came to board our plane. As we taxied down the runway, a deep red sun was setting; the perfect ending to a perfect trip to Japan.
Although the flight was supposedly completely booked, we were lucky enough to have no one sit in the aisle seat next to us, so we were able to get up and move around without having to disturb anyone and just generally be more comfortable. We saw several movies and an episode of Monk, but I slept a great deal more than I had on the way over. They fed us a strange meal (an omelete filled with spinach and a side of half a hashbrown and a little hot dog, or "pasta" that was really penne pasta with a hot dog cut up in it). Later we had a bowl of instant ramen again, followed by another meal, which was a hot sandwich or pot roast.
As I said, the Sun set as we were taking off. A mere 5 hours later, the Sun rose again. We were given US customs forms by the flight attendants, and they were a bit troubling. It explained (not very well) that each US citizen was allowed to bring $400 of items into the US duty free. Beyond that, you were supposed to list the items you had bought and their values on the back. Well, there were five spaces provided. We had bought dozens of individual items in Japan, and they were all packed. We had saved the receipts, but they were probably in our checked baggage. We decided to just wait and ask what to do when we got to Chicago.
Because of a strong tailwind, our flight was at least an hour shorter than scheduled, and we arrived in Chicago at 3 PM...two hours before we had left. O'hare Airport is a busy mess, even on a Thursday afternoon. We waited in a line for about thirty minutes just to reach the desk where we had to present our passports. During this time -- from discussions with others in the line -- we decided to just write "(dollar amount): Souvenirs" and "(dollar amount): Gifts" on our customs form and see what happened.
After showing our passports, we then went to a baggage carousel where we waited another 15 - 30 minutes for our bags to show up. Then we waited another 10 - 15 minutes in the customs line. We were nervous.
Finally, we got our turn, and I handed our form to the guy, who read it aloud, followed by, "Is this correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Could you prove all of this with receipts?"
"Yes, sir. I believe so." Erin and I started scrambling for the bags to get the receipts, when he stopped us.
"Wait, wait, now. I didn't ask you to prove it. I just asked you if you could prove it."
"Oh, yes."
"You're confident in these numbers?"
"Yes, sir. If anything, we overshot."
"Alright. Have a good day."
I then realized that customs officers don't want to go through your stuff any more than you want them to.
Next, we boarded a train to the terminal where we would catch the tiny plane to OKC. We then waited in the longest security line ever (at least another 30 minutes) to have our carry-ons checked yet again. The security officer started asking me all about our Nikon D90 camera (which he had read about but never seen), and we walked through the unbelievably crowded terminal to our gate. There were signs all over about how Chicago was a candidate city for the 2016 Olympics just like Tokyo. If this airport is this bad on a normal Thursday, I don't think it could handle the kind of traffic the Olympics would bring. With all of the lines we had to wait in, if our flight hadn't arrived an hour early we would have missed our connecting flight.
I called home and told my parents that we'd like them to meet us at the airport in OKC, because we were afraid we'd fall asleep on our way home. I think they were glad to hear it. We both slept this entire flight, and when we arrived in OKC the Sun was setting just as it had been when we took off from Japan.
We walked the length of the terminal and got to the exit, and were both very happy to see my family there waiting for us. Sid ran up and gave us hugs, and we all went down to the baggage claim. Then we got our car and headed to Whataburger for dinner. I drove home and never felt tired simply because I was too busy telling my dad all about our trip.
Click here to see all of the photos I took on this day.
The last full day! Time to spare up any "we have to do such-and-so when we're in Japan" items on our list. Some of these things included eating at a kaiten sushi restaurant, getting a view of Tokyo from the top of Mori Tower in Roppongi, and seeing the statue of Hachiko the dog in front of Shibuya station. First stop: Roppongi.
We hopped on the subway and headed toward Roppongi (just a few stops down the line from our hotel). It was rush hour, and the train we got on was completely packed. We were squished together in the middle of the car. Erin was facing me and I had my arm around her so she hopefully wouldn't get groped. Groping is a huge problem on Japanese subways...so much that they now have "Women Only" cars during busy times of the day.
Roppongi is a much more recently developed area of Tokyo, and is therefore much more western in appearance. The usual Japanese mess of overhead utility wiring (which I actually quite like) is nowhere to be found. This is also the heart of Tokyo's high-class society, where many celebrities live and shop.
It was a simple matter finding Mori Tower...it's the very tall building with a giant sculpture of a metal spider out in front of it. At the top of this tower is an observatory, so we set out finding the entrance. We saw signs saying that it opened at 9 AM, but then another that said it was closed. I asked a maintenance worker when it opened and he said 10 AM. It was just after 9, so we decided to look around the mall in the lower floors of the tower until the observatory opened.
None of the stores in the mall were open, either, but it's just as well. We couldn't have afforded anything they sold. There were many stores that sold only one very specialized type of thing. One store sold purses. Another sold gloves. Finally, it was 10 AM, so we headed to the observatory entrance.
The cost to visit the 52nd floor observatory (called "Tokyo City View") was 1500 Yen per person, but the price included a ticket to visit the 53rd floor Mori Art Museum and the roof observatory ("Sky Deck") as well. We paid our money and were led to an elevator where a uniformed woman reached in and pressed the button for us.
As the elevator rose, the interior lighting on the ceiling slowly faded from white to orange. We were greeted as we exited the elevator where it seemed to be expected that we wanted to visit the Sky Deck first. We were told that we could only take our camera to the roof and must put the rest of our belongings in a locker (which oddly enough cost a 100 Yen that was returned to us when we inserted the key to reclaim our belongings later). We were sent up yet another elevator. This one's lighting changed from orange to blue.
When we stepped out on the Sky Deck we were surrounded by heavy equipment behind fencing, and followed the signs around the corridor and up a flight of stairs to the roof, which was essentially a heliport surrounded by a wooden path. We were the first visitors that day, but a female employee was setting up a camera to take photos (for a fee, of course) of people standing in front of the nearby Tokyo Tower. The air was surprisingly still. We walked around the whole tower taking photos for a while, then headed down the elevator again.
After reclaiming our items, we headed up the escalator to the 53rd floor to see an exhibit of Anette Messager art installations in the museum. Our belongings were collected again (I put my camera in my backpack before checking it), but this time we gave them to a man who gave us a numbered plastic disc in exchange.
The art exhibit was very unusual. The first room was full of the stuffed bodies of actual animals wearing the heads of stuffed animal dolls as masks. Further in were strange installations of marionettes made from parts of stuffed animals and other bizarre creations. The descriptions posted next to most of the works sounded positive, but the works themselves were generally creepy to look at. One installation (which had won an award in Europe) was based on the story of Pinnochio and featured a huge red cloth that poured through a doorway in the back of the room and spread out on the floor. Periodically a breeze would blow from the back which made it look like a red flood pouring out onto the floor. There were vague shapes beneath the sheer red cloth that changed and lit up over time. We sat quietly with other visitors and watched this exhibit for a good ten minutes at least.
There was a gift shop and some works from a local artist comprised of wax animals and insects, then we collected our things again and headed back down the escalator to the Tokyo City View observatory. Here we walked around the halls and looked out at the city, but the view was basically the same as it had been on the roof, except through windows. Erin paid to use a video telescope for a minute, after which we headed back down to the ground level.
Erin was getting pretty hungry, so she stepped into a Lawsons in the mall to find some food while I looked through a book store. She found what she thought was a plain ham and cheese sandwich on a crescent roll (she'd been complaining about how every sandwich seemed to be drenched in mayonnaise here), but it turned out to have some sort of ranch dressing and basically a small salad on it. She still enjoyed it.
We left the tower and, just for fun, headed down an escalator to the basement level on our way to the subway station. By chance, Erin noticed a kaiten sushi restaurant below us, so we headed there to get my lunch and mark that off our mental list.
"Kaiten" means "conveyor belt". In these sushi restaurants, the chefs prepare the sushi and set it on a conveyor belt that makes a circuit around the bar. Customers simply grab the sushi they want and eat it. When you're finished, your plates are added up to determine your bill. Plate colors represent the different prices. Hot matcha (Japanese green tea) is complimentary, and you fix it yourself by scooping the green powder into your cup and pressing a button on the counter to fill it with hot water.
I grabbed a plate of tuna nigiri and another of octopus nigiri. Both were excellent. After conversing for a bit and getting some tips from an Australian woman who was sitting next to me, we asked for our check, at which time a girl scanned my stack of plates (the laser must have been able to detect the color or reflective flakes in the plates to determine the cost), we paid what was roughly six dollars, and left.
Now it was time to do some of the things left on Erin's list: Shop for crafting books and scrapbooking supplies. She had read on-line about a particular store in Kichijoji called "Yuzawaya Department Store" that was focused mainly on crafting supplies, so we took the subway back to Shinjuku, walked to the JR station and caught a train -- unexpectedly -- back to a familiar location.
Kichijoji sounded familiar to us, and when we arrived we realized why: This was where we had caught the train after visiting the Ghibli Museum, and in fact the department store was right next to the station. Also, I was pleased that my Japanese reading skills were actually necessary here, because the name "Yuzawaya" was not written in English anywhereon the department store's exterior. As we entered, we noticed a movie theater across the street that was showing Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, the latest Studio Ghibli film. We decided to go check that out after we were done shopping.
The Yuzawaya department store was huge and almost exclusively sold supplies used to make stuff, from clothing to comic booksand everything in between. Once again, being able to read Japanese was very useful in here, as nearly all of the signs were English words written in Japanese. After searching a few floors we stumbled across some stuffed felt craft design books that Erin had been wanting that cost a fortune on the Internet, but were reasonably priced here. I helped her sift through these to find several good ones, which she bought before we headed to another. We eventually found a bunch of stamps and a few scrapbooking stencils and stickers, but all of the papers were exactly the same as can be obtained in the US.
She bought some stuff on two other floors, then we headed across the street to find out if we could see Ponyo. Much like how we caught the Limited Express to Nikko, If we had arrived any later we would have missed it. The movie started at about 2:30pm and it was about 2:25pm. We paid about 1500 yen per ticket and headed up to the second floor theater to watch it. There was no concession stand, but there was a vending machine (where we bought a Dr. Pepper) and some weird hoppers containing popcorn and something else that looked vaguely like plain hot fries with vegetables in them...we passed on those.
The theater had a real curtainthat opened before the movie started and closed when the movie was over...I haven't seen that since I was a kid. I think we could have safely licked the floor, as the place was spotless. We saw previews for several Japanese movies which actually looked pretty good, plus the teaser trailer for the upcoming American made live-action Dragonball Z movie, after which I heard grumblings from the audience that seemed to indicate that the Japanese think that movie is as bad an idea as I do.
The movie was cute. After it was over we both had to use the restroom, so we went to do that. While I was in there going, I heard a little boy yell something and looked to my right (toward the sinks). In the mirror I saw several women standing out in the hall with nothing blocking their view of me going to the bathroom. This sort of thing seems common in Japan...at least more common than the US. The concern for personal privacy just doesn't seem as strong. I've read in reviews of our hotel that some rooms on the South side (ours was on the North) had nothing but a view of a row of urinals straight through a full length window in the adjacent building.
Heading back to the station, Erin saw some pastries she thought looked good in a bakery, so we stopped in. You were supposed to pick up a tray and a pair of tongs, then go around the store picking up what you wanted to buy. Erin got a big cheese filled pastry and we shared a few pigs-in-a-blanket style rolls, two of which had cheese instead of sausage. It was all great food, and it struck me as unusual that so much food containing cheeses and meat were just lying out in the open and not refrigerated as they would be in the United States. I guess we're a little over-reactive in the States about the kinds of foods that need constant refrigerated.
After eating, we decided to head back to the room and drop off the stuff we had bought before heading to Shibuya. We decided to take a different train line back to Shinjuku just for fun, and it turned out to not go there at all. The end of the line turned out to be Shibuya, so we decided it was better this way and just rolled with it.
By the time we got to Shibuya, it was dark, and even though it was just an average Wednesday night, it was crowded. After finding our way out of the station, our first stop was the famous statue of Hachiko the dog.
Hachiko was a dog who waited daily at Shibuya station for his master to come home from work. Then one day his master died at work and never came home. Even so, the dog came to the station every day for the next seven years until the dog himself died. To honor Hachiko's loyalty, a statue commemorating him was put up right outside the station, and is now a popular meeting place.
We had heard that there was a great view of the famously busy intersectionfrom the second floor of Starbucks, so we headed in to check it out. It actually ended up being too busy to see out the window, but we had a lot of fun shopping in the huge attached store. We spent a long time going through CDs on one floor before we realized it was only CD rental. Finding albums is difficult for an English speaker in Japan anyway, because things aren't alphabetized "A, B, C, D, etc." They are in the Japanese syllable order, which is "A, E, I, O, U, Ka, Ke, Ki, Ko, Ku, etc." I finally figured this out after a while, but never did end up buying any music there. We did buy several unusual Japanese videogames and movies, though. They were used, and when I was checking out the sales clerk opened all of the packaging and turned each disk over for me to inspect and give my approval of before he would sell them to me. This practice is common in Japan, and is in stark contrast to what happens when buying used goods in the USA...most stores will act annoyed if you even ask to see the condition first.
It was getting late, so we headed back to Shinjuku on the subway. I don't think we mentioned it to each other, but it was a little sad to leave the station knowing we wouldn't be riding it again before we went home the next day.
We dropped our stuff off at the room and I headed out to get us some dinner. I also told Erin to look out the window in about five minutes so I could take a picture of her from the street. Then we tried to pack our stuff and discovered we really didn't have enough room to take home everything we'd bought...but more on that tomorrow.
Click here to see all of the photos I took on this day.
Our trip to Mt. Fuji and the Hakone region had required very little walking, so we decided we were well enough rested to try catching a train to Nikko.
Nikko is a small mountain village about two hours North of Tokyo by train. The town is famous for its many shrines and important artworks concentrated into a small area, including the tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first Shogun of Japan. The entire area has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
From my research I had learned that there were several ways to get there, but the best was to take the Tobu Line from the Tobu-Asakusa station. We took the subway until we reached Asakusa, where we had to head out onto the street and walk about a block to the Tobu station beneath a department store.
Once there, we really weren't sure what to do, so I asked a gray-haired station employee for advice. His English was limited, but he asked if we intended to take the regular train or the limited train. I shrugged to indicate that I wasn't sure what that even meant. He helped us buy two tickets at about 1350 Yen each. He headed off to other duties, and after standing around for a minute or two we decided we needed to head up a nearby escalator where we found the train platform.
There were two young women working there, so I asked if this was the train to Nikko. They said it was the Limited Express, and informed me that our tickets were for the regular train. The Limited Express cost extra and was leaving at 9:30am. If we took the regular train we'd have to wait another 40 minutes. It was already 9:27am, so we quickly gave the necessary money to one of the women who then used it at a kiosk to purchase our upgrades. We got our tickets and hopped on board just in time.
The train was very nice, with foreward facing, reclining seats and fold out foot rests (for use only with your shoes removed). No one was on the car we boarded, so we picked a couple of seats near the front and got settled in just before the train left the station. We later learned that this train was much faster and more comfortable than any of the other options for getting to Nikko, and only two of them leave Tokyo daily at 7:30 and 9:30 AM.
As we rode along relaxing, the conductor came through the car and asked to see our tickets. He explained to us (in limited English) that all of the seats on the train were assigned, and we weren't sitting in ours. He didn't ask us to move, but instead scanned our tickets and changed our seating arrangements in a handheld computer.
Erin settled in for a nap, and I watched the scenery go by out the window. Leaving the city, we passed through a lot of open countryside that looked much like scenes from My Neighbor Totoro. I saw farmers harvesting rice, and many trees full of ripe, orange Japanese persimmons. I saw a group of school children and their teacher, who were following their teacher's lead and waving wildly at the train as we sped by.
Occasionally a girl would push a cart of snacks and drinks through the car, and a voice would come over the radio announcing "tasty ice cream" and other treats available for sale. We stopped two or three times and picked up more passengers, but our car stayed empty. Eventually, we arrived at the Tobu-Nikko station, which was actually the end of the line.
Google Earth didn't have a good satellite photo of Nikko, but I had an idea of the orientation of the station and thought I knew which way was North, but it was overcast. I decided that the shrines were a short walk to the West, and we headed out.
This was a mistake. We kinda got lost.
It didn't take us long to realize we weren't sure where we were going. After wandering around small town neighborhoods for about half an hour (this was the one time on the trip when I sort of lost my temper with Erin, who wasn't acting concerned and kept wanting to stop and shop or look at interesting things we came across...her outlook was too positive for me at the moment), we finally doubled back to the station and asked for directions. As it turns out, we were heading in the right direction, but the shrines were much farther away than I had anticipated and were up a steady slope. We bought two bus tickets, shopped in a Hello Kitty store (where Erin had wanted to shop earlier when I was irritated) and then waited at the bus station.
As we sat, a Japanese girl came by and handed me a piece of paper with her handwriting on it. It said something about how she wanted to request some songs for a radio station, but didn't know much good music and wanted us to recommend something. We didn't really know what to say, so Erin wrote a Kelly Clarkson song on her list and the girl gave us a Japanese stamp and a piece of candy.
The bus to the shrines had buttons in it that you were supposed to push when they approached the stop you wanted, but nearly all of us piled off at Stop 3, right at the base of the Toshogu Shrine complex.
The shrine area of Nikko is surrounded by a dense, ancient forest. A temporary wooden pass was being built up the main road through the tori gates in preparation for a semi-annual festival when the portable shrines housed here would be paraded through the streets. There was water running down small trenches on the side of the street. After paying the small admission fee, we headed up a flight of stairs into the main shrine grounds.
At the top of the hill were really too many structures, temples, and artwork to describe in detail, many over 1200 years old. Among the highlights were the original carving of the "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" monkeys and a famous carving of a sleeping cat.
We paid a few Yen more to head up to the actual tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa. As we wound up a path through beautiful forest, we climbed over 200 stairs, stopping to rest at landings along the way. Near the top were benches and a single vending machine that sold only cold green tea. The tomb itself looked like this. On our way back down, it was funny to hear all of the Japanese visitors panting and obviously complaining about the stairs, too.
Back at the bottom we were now required to take off our shoes to continue into the shrine itself. We saw some workers behind a veil restoring parts of the artwork. You couldn't take any pictures, but there sure were a lot of priests selling trinkets promising to bring wealth, happiness, etc. There were even window decals to put on your car to help you be safe while driving.
To the South was yet another temple that our shoes had to be removed for, and I was wishing I hadn't tied mine so tightly again after the previous temple. This one featured a huge painting of a dragon on the ceiling. A priest demonstrated by clacking two wooden blocks together loudly that only while standing directly beneath the dragon's head would a reverberating tone echo through the temple. This is said to be the sound of the dragon's roar.
Out the gate to the South of the complex we found yet another temple, this one named Rinno-Ji. We were getting hungry, so we headed to the south to find a place to eat. It was also beginning to sprinkle outside. We ran across a nice looking little noodle shop where Erin decided from looking at the plastic food models outside that she wanted to eat curry and rice, and I saw that they had zaru soba on the menu (which I had been wanting to try for a long time) so we went inside.
The place felt especially cozy, as the interior was dimly lit and the combination of the tall forest and rain made it seem almost like night. The waitress brought us an English menu and we pointed to our selections. A friendly collie was roaming the place like part of the family, and several people (either regular customers or the owner's relatives) talked to it often.
Erin enjoyed her curry, and I loved my zaru soba. Zaru soba consists of buckwheat noodles that are cooked and then served cold with a soy-based dipping sauce and some wasabi and sliced leeks on the side. This particular order also included some apparently local stems and greens that were unknown to me, but tasted good.
We paid and headed back East, down the hill. As the rain was picking up, we stopped into a store and bought a couple smaller clear plastic umbrellas for 350 Yen each before proceeding back past the bus stop where we had been dropped off and heading further down the hill toward the famous Shinkyo bridge.
It was sprinkling at a fairly steady pace, and the ancient, moss-covered stone path we were walking down was starting to worry me, so I kept reminding Erin to be careful. At one point, I noticed that there was a tiny inch worm dangling from my umbrella. I grabbed it and showed it to Erin, who said I should put it on a tree or something, so I stepped over a small stone ditch to the right and shook it off.
Stepping back onto the path, I slipped and fell.
I had The Rough Guide to Tokyo in one hand, an umbrella in the other, and my camera around my neck. In retrospect, I should have immediately tossed the book and the umbrella and grabbed my camera. Instead, I landed on my knees, left elbow and right hand, shortly followed by my camera's lens striking sharply against stone. The sting of the fall left me unable to answer Erin's "Are you okay?" for a few seconds, but I was pretty much fine. Nothing broken anyway, except for a big hole and moss stains on my knees, a stinging palm and an elbow badly friction-burned from the inside of my jacket (it's been nearly two weeks and my elbow is still trying to heal). The camera lens was only superficially damaged, as I took a quick test photo to make sure it was working fine. I kept laughing periodically for quite a while after that, but Erin didn't find it so amusing.
Anyway, at the bottom of the hill was the Shinkyo bridge, supposedly built by dragons to help a monk get across. After looking at it for a while, we asked a nearby monk where the bus stop was. He tried to give us directions, so we headed in that general direction, then decided to just walk down the hill back to the station...the hill that we had almost climbed at the start of this adventure and would have seriously regretted.
This ended up being the better idea, because we got to see a lot of local color -- gas stations, antique stores and thrift stores, bakeries, residences, etc. We finally passed a post office while it was open and mailed a card I had been carrying around for a friend. We also stopped into a SunKus convenience store and bought Erin a purin flavored ice cream cone with a Kit Kat shoved in the middle.
Once we made it back to the station, we bought Limited Express tickets back to Tokyo and hopped on. This time we knew enough to take our assigned seats, and the train was much more crowded.
The seats in these trains could be turned around so that a group could face each other. A loud group of women sitting opposite us were doing just that. During the train ride we slept quite a bit, but periodically we noticed these women drinking tall beers, eating french fries, discussing recipies, and even arm wrestling. They got off a few stops before us, so it got quite a bit quieter from there.
Once we made it back to Shinjuku station I was hungry again, so we stopped in McDonalds so I could try their Japan exclusive shrimp sandwich, the "Ebi Filet-O". Ebi is Japanese for shrimp, but don't ask me why it's not called the "Filet-O-Ebi". Anyway, it was basically a clump of shrimp battered together into one patty, and was very tasty. I'd buy it all the time if they had it here, so it's probably good that they don't.
It had been a packed day, so after a quick photo of my "wounds" that Erin insisted on taking, we watched some weird Japanese TV and went to bed.
Click here to see all of the photos I took on this day.
The best blue cheese and fried chicken I've ever eaten were at an Italian restaurant shaped like a carousel and sitting at the foot of Mt. Fuji. How many people can say that?
As we did on the morning of our Kamakura tour, we ate a quick breakfast at McDonalds and walked the half-mile to the Keio Plaza Hotel to catch the bus to the bus station where we would meet our tour guide and get on a different bus headed for Mt. Fuji. In the lobby of the hotel we saw women greco-roman wrestlers from around the world who we had seen competing in Tokyo on television the night before. We also ran into the same Italian couple we had come home from the Kamakura tour with, but they were headed elsewhere today.
Our tour guide said his name was Harry, but I'm not so sure. He was a bit difficult to understand at first, but after listening to him for a little bit you started to understand him a lot better. He informed us later that he is a school teacher for four days and a tour guide for the other three, and said he also used his computer to make counterfeit money to further supplement his income. He had a very dry sense of humor and often made deadpan jokes that went over very well. Over the course of the ninety minute drive to the base of Mt. Fuji he told us a lot of information about Japan, the culture, and modern society much like our tour guide to Kamakura had done.
We stopped at the visitor center at the base of Mt. Fuji for a short break, then headed on up the mountain. The road to the top of Mt. Fuji is known as the "Subaru Road" because it has seven stops (Subaru is the Japanese word for the Pleiades...that's why the car brand uses them as their logo). A vehicle can only go as far as the fifth stop. If you want to reach the top you must continue on foot. That wasn't on our agenda today.
Part-way up Fuji our tour guide said that we "must make a quick emergency stop for photographs" because the clouds had momentarily cleared from the top and we had a great view. The weather was slightly cool, and the trees up here had already started to turn their fall colors. The ground was entirely comprised of crushed black volcanic rock.
Arriving at the fifth station the road ended in a large cul-de-sac and there were several lodge-type buildings, some shrines, some monuments, and a lot of street vendors selling yakisoba, takoyaki, and stuff-on-a-stick, including entire squid and octopus tentacles.
Since we had such a short period of time here, Erin decided to go shopping while I photographed the scenery. The way the clouds floated through the area was really beautiful, and dampened the sound so much that the crunch of lava rocks beneath your feet seemed that much louder.
After I was done with that, I decided I would buy some yakisoba. I had to wait in line a bit, but it was worth it. Basically, it's soba noodles fried with soy sauce and a few vegetables, with a side of weird Japanese pickles, of course. The air was so damp and cool that steam billowed out of the container the entire time I ate.
When our time was up we headed back down the mountain to eat lunch at a large hotel near the visitor center. There was a pretty large roller coaster next to it, but our tour guide warned us not to try and ride it, as the wait is often over two and a half hours. I wouldn't have ridden it anyway.
Erin and I had elected for the tour without lunch, so while the group went into the hotel restaurant to be educated in a lunch probably not dissimilar to the one we had in Kamakura, we stepped into a strange attached Italian restaurant named "Angelo Mio!!!" that was shaped like a carousel. The front was a bakery (complete with some comically misspelled labels), and Erin bought a very tasty jack-o-lantern shaped pastry which was a bit like a jelly doughnut filled with pumpkin pie filling and dusted with cinnamon and sugar. Then we decided to just go ahead and eat at their restaurant.
I had already eaten yakisoba on Fuji, so Erin and I ordered just a couple of appetizers: The assorted cheese plate and chicken wings. They were both amazing. There were also some french fries included, which were also great. Our tour guide came in to make sure we were being taken care of, which I thought was very nice of him.
After paying (you don't tip in Japan, by the way) we went back out and met our tour group again. When we had all gotten on the bus and were about to pull away, I looked out the window to see several of the hotel staff bow deeply in unison before waving goodbye to us.
Now we headed to Hakone. The traffic was horrible along our intended path (indicated by red lights on highway signs), as it was rush hour on the final day of a three-day weekend, so our tour guide instructed the bus driver to go through some back roads through the community to avoid most of it. This provided for some interesting local color, including some giggling pre-teen school girls who waved at us as we went by and a supermarket called "Potato".
Along this route we noticed some tall grass much like wheat shining brightly in the evening sun and covering the hillsides. Our tour guide informed us that this area is where the events that the movie "The Last Samurai" were based on occurred, and also that this grass only grows like this for a couple weeks out of the year and many people come to hike through the fields. Sure enough, we ran into some heavy traffic and saw a long line of folks hiking up the mountainside and back down.
We arrived at Hakone a bit late, as three tour buses had left for the same tour that morning and intended to take the same boat across the lake, and the other two groups were waiting on us. We rushed onto the boat and it got underway.
Crossing the lake we saw other boats that looked like pirate ships taking people on tours. Ours, thankfully, was a standard ferry boat. We also saw a red tori gate standing in the water; the first gate headed up to a shrine where samurai used to pray for success. This gate has been featured in Hokusai Ukioe prints.
When we arrived at the other side we only had a few minutes to catch the ropeway (gondola) up the mountain. As we waited, a local merchant gave us a presentation about some trick boxes that are supposedly popular souvenirs.
The ropeway car made Erin a little uneasy due to her tendency for motion sickness) as it swayed every time it passed a major support, but we made it to the top without a problem. There we were met with colder weather than we experienced even on Mt. Fuji. On a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji from this mountain. This wasn't a clear day. There were no trees, but the entire hill was covered in a thick grass. There was a shrine on the far side and several derelict buildings of unknown age and purpose. We were informed that we only had about 10 minutes if we wanted to shop back at the bottom of the hill, and 40 if we wanted to wait until the last ropeway car left. Erin wanted to shop, and in the end I decided to go back down with her, unsure I wanted to stand around in the cold for so long.
After some shopping we met the group again for the bus ride to the train station where we would ride a shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo station. It was dark now, and the traffic was even worse than before. We slowly crept down mountainsides toward a valley town, finally arriving about 20 minutes before the next Shinkansen would arrive. This allowed us to watch a few other shinkansen blow through the station at high speed, which was pretty spectacular. Harry informed us that ours wouldn't be going top speed since we weren't headed so far, and would only reach speeds of 230 kph.
When we got on the train we found that the interior was much like a passenger plane, except that it was standing room only. We weren't thrown back, as the train accelerated slowly and rode very smoothly, and at the next stop enough people exited that we were able to sit.
When we arrived back at Tokyo station, Harry helped everyone get on the train they needed to ride to their respective hotels. He almost sent us by an alternate route, having learned that there had been an accident on our subway line, but we learned that the accident hadn't stopped service, so we went ahead and rode it. I couldn't help but wonder if it had been a suicide.
Back in our familiar Shinjuku neighborhood, Erin wanted to try a couple triangle-shaped things in the AM/PM hot case which I had translated as "cheese in chicken" and "tomato in chicken". She enjoyed them. Then we headed out to explore parts of our surrounding area that we hadn't seen yet, since it wasn't even 8 PM and we hadn't worn ourselves out walking this day.
We were glad we did, because we found a great used videogame and DVD store (where I bought an old copy of Bust-A-Move for PlayStation for 300 yen) and the Yodobashi Camera store where we bought a lot of gashapons and some other videogame related stuff. We also found a kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi restaurant, but I thought it was a bit late for sushi and I decided to save it for another day.
In one store I found a copy of an Ys game for Windows Vista for only 1000 yen. Before I bought that, I saw a copy of The Orange Box (my son's favorite game) for the Xbox 360 and tried to take a picture of its Japanese packaging to show my son. A worker ran over and tapped me on the shoulder, giving me the familiar "X" with his arms indicating that I was not allowed to do that. For some reason, this really ticked me off and I was in a bit of a bad mood for the rest of the evening. Otherwise, it was a pretty good day.
Click here to see all of the photos I took on this day.
On this morning we intended to get up very early and visit a flea market in Yoyogi Park, then listen to musicians play on the street. However, due to a slightly late start and accidentally taking the subway instead of the JR line (which would have gotten us there about a half an hour earlier), we didn’t arrive until nearly 10 AM. I was a bit frustrated about wasting the time, but we arrived at Meiji Jingumae station and walked out to see what we’d find.
Some street vendors and musicians were beginning to set up their equipment. There was a rabbit foraging. It looked like a few people were beginning to set up some flea market wares. There was no crowd at all. We walked through a rose garden and saw a bandana-wearing worker carefully pruning the bushes. We guessed that we hadn’t missed anything after all and decided to visit Meiji Jingu (right next to Yoyogi Park) and then check back later.
Meiji Jingu is one of the major shrines of the Shinto religion. Its enormous wooden tori gates are quite famous, and I was looking forward to walking through them. To my disappointment, the front tori was completely covered in scaffolding and drop cloths, being restored, and an alternate route had to be taken to enter the shrine grounds. Thankfully, however, the second tori gate -- which is identical to the first -- was not being worked on at all. So you could still visit the shrine on that day, but only got half-way purified on your way there.
The shrine itself is not gaudily embellished in any way, and is designed to blend into the surrounding forest as seamlessly as possible. As we approached, we heard the pounding of a lot of hammers on wood, and saw a sign apologizing that they were building a stage and seats for a Noh play that evening, and that all seats were already taken. To the side we had the privilege of seeing a Shinto wedding taking place, and also several children dressed in kimonos. Inside, a businessman was chanting a prayer with his hands clasped, his forefingers outstretched.
Leaving through the Western gate, we decided to sit a minute on the temple steps (the walk up to the shrine was a long one through beautiful forest in the heart of Tokyo, but there were no benches), and were informed by a patrolling security guard that we had to stand.
Walking back to the entrance via a different route, we decided to check on Yoyogi park again. Now more musicians were setting up and testing their equipment, and some people had set up tarps on the ground and were carefully setting out their wares (electronic equipment, video games, trinkets, shoes, etc.). The street vendors were cleaning their grills and prepping their ingredients.
Across the street (next to the 1964 Olympic gymnasium) a larger pavilion had been set up. We never did quite figure out what it was about, but it seemed to be some sort of travel fair. At any rate, there were lots of great booths full of food and desserts, but it was still to early for that. We decided to go visit Harajuku and come back again closer to lunch. Walking back down the sidewalk we stopped to listen to several bands practicing and took a free CD from one of them. Also, a homeless-looking flea market worker ran up to me laughing, pointed to my Nikon D90, then pointed back to an ancient digital camera he had for sale, indicating that I really needed to upgrade to his model.
I saw a street vendor selling a type of Japanese omelette called okonomiyaki, which consists of eggs and cabbage, plus other things of your choosing. I had him put some pickled…well, pickled something that was purplish-red…on it (EDIT: I've since learned it was pickled ginger), a fried egg, some bacon, bonito (dried fish flakes), and sauce. I tried to decline another topping, and he sort of laughed…it was the rubber band he was going to close the plastic container with.
The omelette was good, and the strange pickles worked surprisingly well with all the other ingredients. However, the thing was huge and I wasn’t able to eat even half of it. Besides, I wanted to buy some takoyaki later.
Harajuku is the center of the teen fashion world in Japan. Erin had been wanting to visit the shops there to see for herself. A Japanese looking guy who spoke perfect English and said he was from Canada approached us and asked for a donation to a supposed charity that helped orphans. It was probably a cult or a scam, but I gave him a 500 Yen coin anyway and he left.
We visited several shops, including a used clothing store called Kinji. Most of the clothes in there were the sort of stuff Americans had given to Goodwill years ago. It was fun to look at, but nothing we were going to buy, so we left and visited other stores, including one that specialized in American comics and toys.
Being Sunday morning, Harajuku was incredibly crowded. Everywhere you looked you saw nothing but a sea of people moving. We visited a toy store and bought a lot of gifts, then headed back up to Yoyogi to see if things had gotten started. They had. We heard loud 1950s style music playing, then saw several middle-aged Japanese men in leather clothes and huge pompadours dancing near a group of sock-hoppers. They all appeared to have been doing this same thing every Sunday since the 1980s when this sort of thing was popular in Japan, and have just become a fixture here.
Erin bought some steak on a stick, which the vendor very simply salted and grilled. She said it was great. We then listened to the bands play. One, called Prime Addict, seemed to have a pretty large following of teenage girls who knew all their lyrics and had specific dances they were doing for different parts of their songs. Moving on down the path, the bands began to blend together, although they were generally being courteous enough to wait until each other had finished playing a set before starting theirs. We heard several bands we liked, and I bought albums from two of them and Erin bought one from a swing band we heard.
When we had heard the bands on the outer sidewalk, we decided to walk through the park and see what was happening there. You know how sometimes in movies and television shows they’ll show a scene of a place, and everyone is doing something different all at once and you think, “That doesn’t happen in the real world?” That was happening in the real world here. The park was packed with people all doing their own things. Bicyclists and skateboarders doing stunts, pre-teen girls dancing in unison, a man juggling bottles, a dog riding a skateboard, girls and families playing badminton, etc. I can’t say whether this happens every Sunday or not, as this was a three day weekend (Monday was National Health and Sports Day).
The strangest thing we saw -- and I was prepared for this -- were teenagers dressed in outlandish but perfectly applied makeup, high, brightly colored hair like an anime character, and clothing straight out of manga comics. These people were just standing around in groups and posing for strangers’ photographs. To me it all just seemed so incredibly and unashamedly needy. I know I’m not qualified to really make this determination, but I suppose that a culture that values such a high level of conformity in daily life is likely to produce a microcosm of people starved for this kind of attention.
We headed over to the strange travel (or whatever) bazaar and get some more food. Erin got a cup of “purin”, which was a sort of pudding that tasted like a mix between custard and soft serve vanilla ice cream. I bought some takoyaki -- the little fried balls of octopus mixed with batter that I had at the zoo -- but this was the real stuff. No sooner had I nodded at the man running the booth than he flipped four takoyaki out of the cooker and into the box, dumped mayonaise, bonito, and some sort of green herb all over them, wrapped it in a rubber band with a pair of chopsticks and handed it to me. They -- like most things that you buy like this -- cost 500 Yen. They were quite good.
Something else I’d like to mention here: There were dogs everywhere! Tiny dogs, great danes, people walking three identical dogs at once or carrying them in baskets on the front of their bikes. Even on every other day of this trip we saw lots of dogs, but on this day it was overwhelming.
We headed back to the hotel and rested a bit before going out to explore a bit more around our neighborhood. We saw pachinko parlors, arcades and restaurants everywhere. We shopped in a huge store called “Yodobashi Camera”, which is actually a group of multi-storied shops spread around a four block radius. We bought some used videogames there and a bunch of gashapons, then found another used videogame store where I found several old games I have wanted for years. Erin bought a Japanese DVD that looked too weird to pass up, then we went back to the hotel and went to sleep, because the next day we had to get up early for our trip to Mt. Fuji.
We've had a fantastic time, but it's time to head home. I've fallen several days behind on this blog because we've been out so late or going to bed so early, but I hope to catch up a bit on the airplane for as long as my battery lasts. Don't forget, though, that you can see all of our photos by clicking here.
Click here to see all of the pictures I took on this day.
When we woke up this Saturday morning and saw that it was cloudy, we decided to go ahead and go to the Tokyo Game Show in the nearby town of Chiba.
Tokyo Game Show (TGS) is an annual expo where all of the video game manufacturers and developers showcase their upcoming products to the media and -- for the final two days -- to any fans who want to pay the 1000 Yen admission fee. There are closed screenings of footage from upcoming projects, demos to play, etc. I have always wanted to attend, and it just so happened to be taking place while were were visiting Japan.
We bought a ticket for a JR train that would take us to Makuhari-Messe (the convention center where the event was being held). On our way there, I noticed the route seemed a bit strange, so I asked a Japanese girl and her mother if we were on the right one. They indicated that we were, but seemed to be trying to tell us something else. Noticing this, another Japanese girl told us that we would have to change trains at a particular station. She and her French boyfriend were on their way to TGS as well, so we just stuck with them all the way there.
When we got to Chiba, immediately after exiting the station we became part of the longest queue I have ever seen. However, it was moving at a fast pace (actually faster than we would have liked to walk some of the time). We walked up stairs, rounded corners, came back down the same stairs, and all in a design created by the staff to make sure a massive mob didn't just overwhelm the ticket gate. Every so often there were men shouting into megaphones, thanking us for staying in line and appreciating our patience.
Eventually -- after easily walking about a mile -- we arrived at a spot where the line broke into about a dozen smaller lines side-by-side and our walk slowed to a crawl. Almost immediately it started sprinkling. Erin and I had not brought our umbrella, but luckily it didn't sprinkle much or for long, and actually cooled us down a bit, as it was very muggy and warm in spite of it having been overcast all day so far.
Eventually we got our tickets and made our way inside. A sign seemed to be indicating that you weren't supposed to take pictures, so I put my camera in my backpack. Then I saw everyone taking pictures anyway, so I got it out again.
Never in my life have I been in a place that was so crowded. Words can hardly describe it. We walked around and saw a few games we wanted to see, but it was hot and we could barely move in a direction the crowd wasn't already going. I took pictures of a couple people in costumes, walked through a fantastic gallery of Chrono Trigger artwork that Akira Toriyama (my favorite artist) had done, bought some gifts, and left.
We went to a nearby mall to find somewhere to eat. To Erin's excitement, there was a Tony Roma's restaurant: A place we've never eaten at while in America, but that Erin didn't want to pass up now. Inside it was indistinguishable from an American steak house in every respect except for one Asahi Beer sign. Also, it was the first time I have had to eat sitting next to smokers in years.
Erin got a hamburger. I got a hamburger steak with rice. While they did seem to be Japanese approximations of American food (my hamburger steak tasted an awful lot like meatloaf and I got the smallest portion of french fries I've ever seen), it was close enough, and Erin got full for the first time since we came here.
Heading back to the train station, we decided it was early enough that we should visit the Tokyo Sea Life Park. It was one stop past Tokyo Disney on the same line we were riding back on, anyway.
We had bought so much stuff at TGS that we decided to stash our backpack in a "koin rokka" (coin locker) while we visited the aquarium.
The aquarium was very stylishly designed and had huge tanks of tuna, a large penguin habitat, and many other exhibits. We were finished visiting just as they were closing (5 PM). There is an incredibly large ferris wheel nearby (one rotation takes 15 minutes) that we had planned to ride, but it was farther away than the train station and our feet were really worn out at this point, so we collected our backpack and headed back to the train station.
As we walked from Shinjuku station to our hotel we were stopped by a small parade of activists protesting the death penalty. Japan has been recently putting to death many criminals who have been on death row for years, and it has caused a bit of a public uprising against it.
We stopped by the AM/PM where Erin ordered spaghetti with mozzarella and tomato sauce and I ordered a strange sort of burger-type thing in which the "bun" was actually two formed patties of rice and the meat was like yakitori beef. They were both excellent.
Then we watched a goofy TV movie we had been seeing advertised everywhere called "Bloody Monday" which co-starred a guy who looked just like Christopher Walken if he were Japanese, and went to bed.
Click here to see all of the pictures I took on this day.
Along with the hotel and flight package to Tokyo that we purchased, we also bought a couple of guided tours: Kamakura and Mt. Fuji. Today was the day for Kamakura.
We had to walk about half a mile to the Keio Plaza Hotel to catch a bus at 7:55 AM, so we grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonalds on the way. In the lobby, a woman from the tour agency was attempting to corral all of the foreigners into their correct groups. We got on a bus that took us across town to the tour agency's main office. On the way, a woman got on the microphone and said what I actually thought was, "Prease rook out the window. Godzilla is coming." As it turned out, she was saying that we might want to see a tunnel we were driving through. Oh well.
Once we got to the main office we were once again sorted, and given fabric stickers to wear that indicated what tour we were with. We met our tour guide, a sweet little lady named Mariko. Her first task was to give us all train tickets and lead us while waving a yellow flag in the air (as she did anytime we were walking through a crowded area that day) to the train platform. Then we had about an hour and a half train ride south to Kamakura. Along the way she spoke to each of us where we were sitting on the train about the general plan for the day.
Kamakura is a rustic little beach-side town that for a short time about eight hundred years ago was actually the capital city of Japan. The first thing we had to do on arrival was switch to a smaller, local train to head down to Hase-dera, a temple containing the largest wooden statue in Japan: A huge image of the Goddess of Mercy, Kannon. Her seven heads supposedly allow her to look in all directions to help her find suffering people in need.
Near this shrine is an overwhelming place filled with literally thousands of tiny statues. Each one commemorates the soul of a stillborn or miscarried child.
There was also a low cavern carved through the hillside (only Erin didn't have to duck) and a statue that Japanese women were rubbing all over, believing it would bring them wealth.
Next we walked up the street to see the famous Daibutsu (Great Buddha). This giant bronze buddha was built 800 years ago, covered in gold leaf, and a temple was built over it. Two hundred years later a tsunami washed away the building and the buddha has been sitting out in the elements ever since. Only a small bit of his gold can be seen on his right cheek. There was an offering of grapefruit and flowers set in front of him, and a small gift shop to the side selling trinkets and buddhist literature. Erin and I paid an additional 20 yen each (20 cents) to walk inside the statue and see how it was put together.
I mentioned to the tour guide that there is a place very similar in purpose and style to the Daibutsu in America in the state of Arkansas, where a giant statue of Jesus is used as a pretext to tell people about Christianity as well as make a quick buck off tourists.
At all of these locations we were given some free time, and Erin and I often talked with the tour guide, asking her questions about things we've been puzzled by since we came here, and surprising her with news of some differences she didn't realize. She told us that most Japanese aren't really religious, but just come to these temples on special occasions or when they want to selfishly obtain some good fortune. I told her it was basically the same in the US. She asked if we were Christians, and we explained that we are, and that we take our belief seriously. I was wanting to explain to her how Christianity is all about purification just as the Shintoism she had been explaining to us is, except that we believe that no amount of ritual could ever make us even a little bit purer, so God became a man and paid the price for the sinfulness of his creation. Instead, this big oaf of a guy on our tour monopolized her time with the old "Why do you guys get your Rs and Ls messed up" question.
After the Daibutsu we had lunch at a restaurant on the second floor of a nearby building which seemed to cater exclusively to groups like this. Happily, it was not as weird as I had feared it would be. It was also handy to have someone present who could explain what each part of the set meal was.
Next we had some free time to shop before meeting back at the local station to ride the train to another part of town and see Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu. On the way we passed a Catholic church, at which point she explained that only 1% of Japan is Christian.
Hachiman-gu is a huge shrine on a hill at the end of a long road. Along the road are many candy and treat vendors. I bought an ice-cold slice of pineapple on a stick for 200 yen from a woman, who played a round of Jan Ken Pon (Paper Rock Scissors) with me for a chance to win another for free. I won the practice round (scissors vs paper), but the actual match was a draw (rock vs rock), and the house wins on a draw. Still, it was fun and the pineapple was one of the best I've ever had.
Mariko explained many of the standard sights at a shinto or buddhist shrine to us. It was very informative. Erin and I bowed twice, throw a five yen coin each into the shrine, clapped twice, then bowed again.
We also saw a one month old baby being dedicated at the shrine. This ritual dates back to a time when a baby was hidden in drab clothing for the first month of their life to hide them from evil spirits (because the infant mortality rate was so high).
We had about 45 minutes of free time to shop on our way back to the train station. I saw a lady cooking big rice crackers on the street, and handed her a 50 yen coin. She grabbed a hot rice cracker with tongs, dunked it in soy sauce, then wrapped a piece of nori seaweed around the other end so I could grab it. It tasted great!
Erin looked in some shoe stores and we checked out some trinket shops, but with only about five minutes left before we were supposed to meet our group she found a Studio Ghibli store in the basement of a building. It was full of things she wanted to buy, so I went ahead and explained that she would be following shortly. Our train wasn't going to arrive for a few more minutes, so there was no problem.
On the way back toward Tokyo, the group slowly split up as our tour guide helped each member of our group get back to their own destination. We were part of the final group, and thanked her for all of her help. Then we rode the Chuo Line back to Shinjuku station and helped an Italian couple on our tour get pointed in the direction of their hotel.
After a rest and a trip to the Seven Eleven to withdraw more cash for tomorrow, I finally convinced Erin to go with me to the Metropolitan Government Building's 45th floor observatory that evening. We had to walk another half mile and had a bit of difficulty finding the entrance to the tower (it ended up being on the basement level), but we made it. It was -- like many places in Tokyo -- uncomfortably warm up there, and I wished the lights had been dimmer. As it was, I had to cover my camera with Erin's jacket to get any photos to turn out. I was honored to see a Japanese dude nudge his friend and point at my camera in envy, though.
The observation deck was basically a huge souvenir shop, but we saw what we came to see, bought a couple more gashapon, and headed back towards the hotel by a different route. We still hadn't eaten dinner and were getting pretty hungry, so we stopped into a convenience store. Erin got some mandarin oranges and I bought a "bigu furanku" ("big frank"...a hot-dog-on-a-stick), plus some other snacks. Then we headed back to the room and went to bed.
Click here to see the photos I took on this day.
The weather forecast for this day was "scattered showers", but when we woke up the weather looked pretty clear. On this day we did more walking than we will probably do on any other day of our trip, and we had the privilege of taking our shoes off to enter buildings twice, which was an unexpected surprise.
After breakfast at the hotel buffet again, we took the subway to Ueno Park. This part of the subway was actually the first subway anywhere in Asia and was built in the 1920s. This was obvious from the low ceilings and cramped passageways.
Ueno is also an obviously older and less modernized section of Tokyo prefecture, but the main attraction for us was the park and the zoo. (By the way, these blog entries have been getting a bit long winded...I'm going to try and keep it shorter today and maybe I can catch up).
There were dozens of school groups walking through the park on their way to the zoo. Each school identifies their children by their hats and their smocks. We noticed that some kids had elaborate felt pictures sewn into the back of their smocks, presumably by their mothers.
As we walked down the path through the forest, we noticed a row of tori gates heading down stairs to our left and decided to check it out. What we found was a secluded shinto temple (common throughout Tokyo) and an even more secluded fox shrine hidden away in a dark, cavernous hallway.
Along the way to the zoo we also visited a shinto temple and a shinto pagoda. I asked the monk watching the pagoda if it was okay for me to take pictures, and he told me (I think) that I could take pictures of statue of a face of Buddha that was on display, but not the pagoda itself. A pagoda is a building that houses a sacred relic. These relics are sometimes on display, but often are considered too holy for people to look at and are kept in a chest of some kind.
Finally arriving near the entrance to Ueno Park Zoo, we saw that some sort of bazaar was taking place, so we headed into the tent to check it out. In the front were people selling foods almost entirely foreign to us, and in the back were many vendors selling pottery, rugs, ornate chopsticks, etc. I bought a tiny hand carved cicada-shaped incense holder.
Amusing side note: At one point we heard an "eek!" and turned in time to see a giant crow land in a woman's lap, steal a huge chunk of the pastry she was eating, and fly away.
Now, on to the zoo. This is the zoo that was home to the famous panda, Ling Ling. Unfortunately, signs all over the park informed visitors that he had died in April of this year of heart failure. It was a little sad to see so much of the zoos architecture devoted to the popularity of this panda and for there to be no panda in residence.
We did see some interesting stuff there, although I won't go into too much detail. Red pandas (which look a bit like raccoons and can be seen at the Oklahoma City Zoo), elephants, the usual. But we were very glad to finally see an actual tanuki, which is a Japanese raccoon-dog featured in many Japanese legends and the statues you see of a smiling creature, standing upright with a huge grin, a hat, and a bag of money (In my photos you can see a huge selection of them in the bazaar we visited earlier). But the best attraction at the zoo were all the giddy school children running around in their uniforms.
Erin wants me to be sure and tell this story: While watching some Japanese monkeys we witnessed one of the most amazing things. A baby monkey strayed a little bit away from its mother and accidentally stumbled down a small hill. Unable to see her, he totally freaked out, curled his arms and legs in and started shaking and screaming in fright for his mother. She quickly ran down to get him. After that he became extra clingy for a bit.
For lunch, we ate at the zoo. I ordered takoyaki (fried balls of batter mixed with bits of octopus tentacles) and Erin ordered a box containing edamame (young soybeans you suck out of the husk), two plain rice onigiri with soy sauce baked on the outside, and a couple pieces of tempura fried chicken. After eating we smiled at an exhibit featuring the exotic creatures known as "prairie dogs" and "American Bison" as we left.
On our way out, Erin noticed that there seemed to be an interesting temple or shrine of some sort we had missed just to the south of the zoo. We couldn't be more glad we went to check it out.
This turned out to be Ueno Toshogu -- a shrine built 400 years ago in honor of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. After a long walk between ancient stone lanterns we paid 200 yen each for what we thought was a walk around the exterior of the building. Actually, the walk was leading us up to the entrance to the building itself, at which time we were told to remove our shoes before entering and not to take any photographs while there.
It was a pretty amazing place. The shogun's armor and some of his clothing was on display, as well as his actual will and other priceless artifacts. There was no security in the building...something you would never find in a place of such historical significance in the US, and with good reason. The walls were covered in actual gold leaf, and many of the artifacts weren't even displayed behind glass.
Back outside of this shrine -- to the side of the walk up to it -- was a shiny new monument consisting of a huge marble slab and a dove-shaped carving containing a live flame. Hanging on either side were bundles of 1000 origami cranes. This was the Eternal Flame of Peace. The amazing thing about the flame itself is that it has burned continually since 1945 when the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima started it. A man went to the home of his uncle in Hiroshima following the explosion, and found this flame still burning. He carried it back to his village and kept it burning. In 1968 his village built a torch and transfered the flame to it. Now it has been transferred to this spot to stand as a monument devoted to the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Say what you will about how the Japanese started the war and what we had to do to stop it, but when we turned around from this monument and saw a small group including an elderly Japanese man who clearly remembered first-hand what we did that day, we felt ashamed and wanted to apologize.
Next we headed North, and after making a few wrong turns we eventually asked a woman to point out on a map where we were, got our bearings, and found a giant cemetery we had been wanting to visit on our way to a museum.
We weren't sure about the respectfulness of taking photos in a Japanese cemetery, so I only took them when people weren't around. Some of the monuments were huge and well traveled, and we have since learned (from our tour guide in Kamakura the following day) that there are many famous authors and even some ancient royalty buried there.
Our ultimate goal, however, was the Asakura Choso Museum, which is actually the home of the late Asakura Choso, arguably Japan's greatest sculptor. Here again we were told we could not take pictures and were asked to take our shoes off before coming inside, only this time we were given slippers to wear. We both had trouble keeping them on our feet.
His sculptures -- nearly all of them in bronze -- really were amazing, and so was his house. Much of it was off-limits, but we were allowed to go upstairs where there were many statues of his cats in many different poses (obviously, Erin loved this). We also entered a room where we had to take off the slippers to walk on a tatami mat floor, and then again swap our slippers for sandals so we could climb up to the roof and take in the fantastic view. I wasn't sure if they wanted me to take a picture from there, either, but I couldn't resist sneaking just one.
Leaving there we headed towards the nearest JR train station and made our way to Asakusa to visit Senso-Ji temple. On the subway, an older Japanese man across the car was stumbling around, trying to reach under the chair for a jar he had spilled. The train was accellerating and he was obviously drunk, so I got up and grabbed it for him. Turns out it was a jar of sake (we had seen them for sale in stores). He laughed and thanked me. As we exited the car at Asakusa, he waved, smiled, and thanked me again.
Senso-Ji is famous for the HUGE shopping arcade lining the long walk toward it. There are all kinds of useless trinkets and trash souvenirs, but also some amazing snacks and desserts that you can buy and eat moments after they have been prepared. I kept smelling these shaped pancakes being cooked and couldn't resist buying a bag of 10 for 500 Yen. They threw in an extra one for free, which I ate immediately. I was surprised to find it filled with something -- sweet red bean paste -- but I was even more surprised at how much I loved it. It was a completely alien flavor to me, but it was wonderful. I'd bring some home, but their shelf-life is only three days.
So we viewed the temple, full of the usual people praying, purifying themselves, wafting incense over their ailing body parts, making wishes, purging themselves of evil spirits, tying bad fortunes to ropes, etc. Once we had done that we went to take a quick picture of a place featured in a videogame that Sid and I play called "The Last Guy", shopped around a bit, and headed back to the hotel.
Dang. I didn't get caught up -- nor was I brief -- and it's midnight. Maybe I'll catch up tomorrow.
Click here to see all the photos I took on this day.
Today was the day to use the tickets we bought in August for the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. Foreigners must purchase tickets to this museum before they enter Japan, as they limit the number of daily visitors and the tickets sell out months in advance.
Erin was still having stomach problems when she woke up, which unfortunately wasn't a contingency we had planned for. Still, the tickets were for today only and she wasn't about to miss it, so we decided to proceed as if things were going well.
First we had breakfast in our hotel's restaurant. The buffet was a combination of Western and Japanese breakfast items. Even some of the Western foods were not quite as we were used to. The scrambled eggs seemed unnaturally orange and very runny, but they tasted normal. There was bacon, but it was short and fat. There was also a container of poached eggs, cherry tomatoes, and some tiny potatoes. On the Japanese side of the buffet were salmon, miso soup, tofu, several different kinds of pickles and some white stuff labeled "shirasu", which I took to be some pickled white vegetable. I got some of each kind of thing I didn't recognize to try.
When I got to the table I noticed something about the shirasu. Each little piece had eyes. I went ahead and ate them. It sort of tasted like someone had set a few sardines on a bed of rice, then taken away the sardines and had me eat the rice. As I've since found out by searching the web, they are indeed baby sardines. They were actually quite delicious and not crunchy at all.
Leaving the hotel, we headed down the Chuo line subway entrance to find the train to Mitaka. We couldn't see it on any of the maps. A tall American girl asked us if we needed help, but it turned out we were trying to do the same thing. When we talked to the station attendant, he basically said, "You can't get there from here" and directed us to the JR line station.
As we walked, I asked this girl and her friend why they were here. She said she had won a contest in California to come see Radiohead play in Tokyo. She had only had a week to prepare, and admitted she was probably even more excited to be in Japan than to be seeing Radiohead.
We ended up wandering around quite a bit before finding the JR station, which we would have found if we'd have known to simply cross the street and go straight after exiting the hotel. At any rate, we finally got to Mitaka station and headed down off the platform. Thanks to Google Earth, I already felt like I knew the area and we set off in the correct direction.
Almost immediately, though, Erin said she needed to sit down and asked me if I could try and find her some medicine. Right in front of us was a sign for a pharmacy, which I mistakenly thought was on the second floor of a building, but finally found on the basement level. I walked up to the pharmacist and put both hands on my lower abdomen and said, "iite" (ouch). He tried to ask a few clarifying questions, but eventually handed us a bottle from behind the counter, which we bought. Erin took one of the pills and we walked on.
If I lived in Japan, a community like Mitaka is where I would want to live. Narrow streets full of quaint houses and neighborhood shops, with lots of mothers driving their cute children around in the front basket of their bicycles. Several of these children waved at us, and one -- after her mother made an abrupt stop right in front of Erin after rounding a corner -- gave Erin a big toothy grin that really made our day. Her blue eyes seem to be really fascinating to these kids.
I found one of the rare vending machines that sell Dr. Pepper and bought one for Erin which she drank and started to feel a lot better. Eventually, after a pleasant walk of about half a mile, we saw Totoro manning a ticket booth and knew we had arrived.
Photos aren't allowed in the Ghibli museum, so I only got exterior shots, but the place really was pretty amazing. The first room we entered had some fantastic models of Hayao Miyazaki's studio and examples of how animation works. The most amazing thing was a sort of huge carousel with identical characters all around it, each one was in a slightly different pose. Suddenly it started spinning. After it reached full speed, a strobe light came on and everyone gasped. It was like watching a real life clay animation. Satsuki and a blue totoro swung a jump rope for Mei while the big totoro jumped in time in the background. Bats flew by overhead and a small white totoro ran up to the tree in the center. Words can hardly describe it. It was like a stroboscopic flip book made out of three-dimensional models.
Upstairs was a room filled with inspirational pieces and walls lined with the actual pencil and watercolor designs and storyboards for the films. Outside on the roof there was a statue of one of the robot guardians from Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and down in the courtyard was a restaurant. As I stood in line to order a hot dog it began to drizzle. No sooner had I felt a drop than several motorized awnings stretched out from the side of the building and covered the queue. The hot dog looked normal enough, but when I took a bite of it I noticed that it had coleslaw underneath it on the bun. It tasted fine, but I certainly wasn't expecting it.
I couldn't get Erin to eat, but she wasn't letting her stomach problems get her down. After buying a ton of stuff at the gift shop and using the tickets we were given to see a cute short film about a pre-school class imagining they were on an expedition to capture a whale at sea, we headed out toward Inokashira Park, which was right next door.
There were many muddy, spider web covered paths we decided not to travel down, so we kept walking until we was a clear path to the pond. On our way down we ran into a small shinto shrine and saw a woman walk up, toss a coin in a box, ring a bell, and pray. Each shinto shrine generally is famous for granting a certain kind of luck. I'm not sure what this one is for, but I have heard this park is a famous place to ask someone to marry you...but that may just be because of the swan-shaped paddle boats. ;)
The clouds were very thick and we were afraid we'd get caught out in the open without an umbrella. When we heard thunder and felt a little sprinkle, we took refuge under a shelter for a bit. Here is where Erin took the camera from me and got some proof that I was on this trip. She also needed to rest a bit, and was still feeling ill.
After the rain never really got going, we continued on. There was a bridge where lots of people were buying tubes of bubbles and blowing them out over the water. One small girl started crying because she couldn't get to them. Erin spotted an orange cat with a twisted-up tail and tried to approach it. As soon as she sat on a bench (which we noticed was dedicated in memory of a Japanese person who was killed on 9/11) the cat climbed into her lap and didn't want to leave. This was tough, because Erin also doesn't like to leave cats.
I bought a Mitsuya Cider from the vending machine and eventually pried Erin away from the cat and we headed further through the park. We watched a father and his two sons get their paddle boat tangled up in some low hanging tree branches, with the kids cackling the whole time. We saw a woman very systematically walk up and bow at a tiny fox shrine by the water. There was a zoo, but it was dinky, so we kept moving. Finally, climbing up a staircase out of the park, we ended up in what felt like part of the real, everyday Japan. The kind of suburban life you might find anywhere in the country. There was graffiti and run-down little shops, but it still felt safe and homey.
We went into a couple shops and were shocked to find that not only were they not running their air conditioning, but they had the HEAT on! It was over 70 degrees outside! I really don't understand these people, temperature wise. No matter the weather, they always seem to be wearing several layers of clothing, too. But I digress.
At this point it really did start raining. We tried to wait it out under an awning for a bit, but we eventually gave up and made a break for it. We didn't have to go far, though, before we ran into a Seven Eleven and were able to buy a nice clear umbrella for 500 Yen. We then walked under it until we reached the train station and headed back to the hotel.
Erin couldn't make it any further, so even though it was 3 PM we called it a day. We watched some hilarious variety and game shows on the TV, including a quiz show designed to make pop stars look stupid, and another show in which comedy acts would come out, do their bit, and then be yanked off stage on a conveyor belt red carpet while a cast of celebrities judged them.
Erin went to bed early, and in fact ended up getting between 13 and 14 hours of sleep. I don't have time to write up what happened on day four yet, but I will tell you that Erin woke up feeling fantastic and felt well for the rest of the trip.
I've finally managed to work out a system so I can get my photos on the web quickly. I'm batch converting them to JPEG and shrinking them, then putting these smaller photos up on Flickr. You can look at all of my Tokyo trip photo sets by clicking here. Feel free to comment on them!
Click here to see all the photos I took on this day.
After we had rested we decided it was time to try and figure out the subway system. The ticket kiosk had an English option, so all we had to do was type in the first two letters of the station we wanted to travel to, put in the cash it said we owed, and it spit out the tickets. Unfortunately, we got on an express train by mistake, which skipped our stop and went on to the next one. We got off there and put our tickets in the "fare adjustment" kiosk, which told us we didn't owe anything. However, we still had to buy another ticket and travel back one station to reach Akihabara. We now realize how the express trains are identified, so that's a lesson pretty painlessly learned.
By the time we got to our intended stop we were starving. The first thing we saw on the street was a McDonalds, so we thought we'd try their dinner menu.
Leaving McDonalds, we were ready to head for Akihabara, but I couldn't figure out which way was North because of the clouds and the twists and turns of our subway ride. Soon, though, we found the river we knew we had to cross and got our bearings.
Akihabara has been known for electronic supplies and gadgetry since the days immediately following World War 2 when shady-types began selling black market radio parts left over from the war underneath the train station here. In fact, some of the original electronics parts stores still exist, although they are now completely on the up and up.
We got suckered into a duty-free store by a woman standing next to a loud speaker blaring expletive-filled crunk-rap music...I suppose they thought it was great American bait. The woman followed us around telling us how great all their deals were (they weren't), but we finally managed to slip away.
Erin spotted an authorized iPod dealer and found a pair of noise isolating earbuds she had been wanting (she envied mine on the plane). I put 200 Yen in a claw machine and got three tries at grabbing Dragon Ball keychains. On my third try I actually succeeded.
There were gashapon machines everywhere, and Erin and I bought several. One entire store was nothing but goshapon machines stacked three high lining all the walls. Gashapons are those machines filled with plastic capsules containing toys which fall out when you turn a crank. "Gashapon" is Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound they make falling. Japanese goshapons are of a much higher quality than any toy you can get out of a similar machine in the US. If you've been to my house you've noticed the dozens of gashapons I have lined up along our front window.
We ran into Super Potato before I thought we were at the right place. Luckily, Erin noticed it. Super Potato is a classic videogame store occupying the top three floors of a tiny five story building. It is unbelievably packed with every videogame imaginable that is no longer in production. We spent a long time shopping here, and I filled a basket with goodies to buy. I ran into more foreigners there than anywhere else we've been so far. The third floor was PC-Engine (Turbografx in the US), MegaDrive (Genesis), Famicom and Super Famicom (NES and SNES), and actually many other systems I can't remember...even some I had never heard of. The fourth floor was more recent systems, such as Gameboy Advance and PlayStation One. The fifth floor housed a small classic arcade, complete with a life sized statue of Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 3 and a chair made entirely out of old Famicom cartridges.
Once we left here we wandered back towards the train station. I stopped into a store called Sofmap which carries current videogames. It didn't seem so big at first, and it only had Nintendo stuff. Then I realized it had eight floors, the first of which was exclusively Nintendo. All the other floors specialized in other systems.
Erin wasn't feeling so well, so she sat down outside while I went up to the Playstation floor. I found a ceramic white Playstation 2 in a new slimmer and even lighter model than is available in the US. I bought this for three reasons: It will play Japanese PS2 games, Japanese region DVDs, and Japanese PS1 games. I also bought a copy of Front Mission 5 for the PS2, which I didn't even know existed. Michael, you're free to come play it at my house anytime. ;)
When I came back downstairs, Erin told me she thought she had seen Morgan from the G4TV show "XPlay" (a show about videogames that trys to be funny and hip to an annoying degree). She's surely in town for the Tokyo Game Show.
Erin wanted to get a dessert at Starbucks, so we stopped in. The girl working the counter was almost too eager to try her English on us, so before we were even up to the counter or ready to order she asked, "Will you be getting your order to go or to stay?" Erin bought a cinnamon roll and we sat while she ate it. Although she didn't tell me at the time, she was feeling really bad and was just trying to get some food on her stomach.
Something I'll mention here: I don't know what the deal is, but the Japanese do not keep indoor places cool. Nearly everywhere inside is hot (except our hotel room, since we're in control of the thermostat).
Once we got back to the station we purchased the correct ticket and got off at the correct stop, but then had a little difficulty finding the right exit from the subway. The Shinjuku subway station is a sprawling network of tunnels that go beneath much of the Shinjuku area. Eventually we did find our way out, which ended up being in the basement of the Lumine department store. Erin was still feeling pretty rotten, so we stopped into the AM/PM to find her something to eat. By the time we found her something (a peanut butter sandwich and some small cheeses...I couldn't find any crackers that weren't rice crackers...) and she started to pay, she was feeling so nauseous that she forgot she had the money in her hand and started looking for it in her purse again. We paid and got back to the room as quickly as we could. Erin never ate the food, but went straight to bed. I stayed up and worked on this blog and some photos, then went to bed at 11.
Click here to see all the photos I took on this day.
I have to admit something here: At the end of day one we did not want to be in Japan. Total exhaustion and culture shock combined to make us almost regret our trip altogether. We went to bed agreeing that after a good night's sleep we would probably feel differently.
It was true. Day two was fantastic.
I woke up at 5:30 and, after a shower, called Sid on the Skype phone to ask him how school and Cub Scouts had been. After that, we headed down to the McDonalds, determined that we could at least get a breakfast order right.
As we walked up to the counter -- which happened to be open-air on the ground floor of this three-story McDonalds -- a girl started to ask us in Japanese what we wanted. Another girl nudged her and gave a look which indicated, "these people are obviously foreigners" and set a picture menu in front of us. It is interesting to point out here that in Japan, the Filet-o-Fish is on the breakfast menu.
The first thing we noticed was that the place was packed, and yet no one was making a sound. It was a bit unnerving.There was American pop hip-hop of some kind playing softly, a guy was playing Animal Crossing on his DS, many were reading, and some others had their heads down, resting quietly.
The hash browns and sausage muffins were great...perfect comfort food for our first morning in a strange land. We agreed that they tasted just slightly different from their American counterparts, and were actually better. My Coke was served in a tiny Japanese portion and Erin's milk had a drawing of an anime-style Ronald McDonald kicking a soccer ball on it.
Clearing your tray is quite a bit more complicated at a Japanese McDonalds. They had separate containers for plastics and paper, and another place to pour out your excess beverages.
We decided that, since it was such a nice partly-cloudy morning, we should visit Shinjuku-Gyoen, a botanical garden (supposedly the best in Tokyo) just a few blocks from our hotel. The garden opens at 9 AM and we arrived at 8:45 AM, so we waited outside the gate. Inside, a man in a green uniform was making a broom by attaching sticks to a handle and using it to sweep leaves off the walk. Promptly at 9 a woman walked up to the gate and unlocked it. We paid our 200 yen each and walked through the turnstile.
For the next couple of hours we explored this huge park/garden. Several types of gardens are represented here: Densely forested areas with winding paths through dark, damp areas (as the first visitors of the day we had to avoid many spiders who had stretched their webs across the path), traditional Japanese gardens with ponds full of koi and bridges to small islands with carefully groomed trees, and lastly, organized french style flower gardens.
When the sun did come out it got a bit warm, but mostly it was comfortably shady and in the low 70s. We saw several groups of Japanese school children in matching yellow hats, several resident cats who all had their right ears identically notched, a photographer taking sexy photos of a girl on the grass, an elderly woman practicing tai chi in a huge open field, and much more. A sign indicated that we might see tanukis (Japanese raccoon dogs), but unfortunately we didn't. We did see and hear several species of birds we'd never seen, including a bright green parrot-looking thing...I couldn't quite translate its name.
After this we headed North to a Shinto shrine devoted to Yamma, the gatekeeper of Hell. Holding the highly specialized honor of being the largest wooden statue of Yamma in Tokyo, this quaint shrine has a button on the front that you push which temporarily illuminates the statue inside. Other things of interest on the shrine grounds were a tiny shrine devoted to foxes and one that seemed to have an actual mountain of snow inside it...I have no idea how it worked. No one else visited the grounds of this shrine the entire time we were visiting.
Walking back towards the hotel, we stopped in a Lawson's; yet another convenience store. Erin went out on a limb and bought a small can of sour cream and onion Pringles. I bought another onigiri. This one had soy sauce and bits of chicken mixed into the rice and half a boiled egg on top. It was the best thing I've tasted in Japan so far. We also split an awesome Sprite that had guarana and caffeine added. It tasted a bit more sour than a regular Sprite, but was otherwise the same.
We stopped by Takashimaya Times Square to visit a huge store called Tokyu Hands. It describes itself as a crafting supply store, but that doesn't do it justice. They have everything. We only looked at only one floor, really, and will have to go back later. I bought Sidney a couple Dragon Ball Z related toys, then we headed back to the hotel so Erin could rest.
While Erin rested I decided to explore the tower south of our hotel because I had heard it had an ATM that would dispense yen using foreign bank cards. I didn't find it, but I did get a good view of the area.
In the next post I'll describe our experience taking the subway to Akihabara and our visit to my Mecca: The classic videogame store "Super Potato".
Click here to see all the photos I took on this day.
As I sit typing this, I am looking out the window of my teeny-tiny hotel room at a fantastic view of some of the skyscrapers in Tokyo's Shinjuku district. It all feels very surreal to me. That's gotta be either because I imagined this day for so long, or more likely because it is 6:30 AM on Monday Morning back home (8:40 PM here in Tokyo), and I haven't slept since about 8:00 AM last Saturday.
Yeah, I just dozed off in mid sentence there, so I'm gonna chalk fatigue up as the cause.
Anyway, our flights went well. The flight from O'Hare to Narita was definitely an endurance test. They fed us three meals (Choice of pot roast or chicken and noodles, then later a bowl of ramen that the flight attendant filled up with hot water for you, then just before we landed the choice of a lasagna or a turkey and swiss sandwich) and showed us five movies.
Okay, I'm really tired. I'm gonna have to finish this tomorrow.
*UPDATE* Sorry about that. It's now 6:30 on Tuesday morning and I'm feeling well rested, so let me continue.
The five movies they played on the plane were two lame recent Matthew Broderick movies, including one with Helen Hunt and Bette Midler and another co-starring Alan Alda as a crazy old man. They also showed Speed Racer, Kit Kitteridge, and Hancock. During all of this the stewardesses brought around drinks periodically (I had hot green tea twice and water the rest of the time) and strangely enough, occasionally pushed by a cart trying to sell duty-free alcohol, tobacco and perfumes to us.
Nearly everyone on the plane slept most of the time, and most of the passengers were Japanese, Taiwanese, or Korean. I did spot two or three white people who were obviously traveling to TGS (Tokyo Game Show). At the end of the twelve hour flight Erin and I strained to see anything out the window, but it was so overcast that we couldn't see anything until literally seconds before landing.
Our experience at Narita airport was unbelievable simple. First we were funneled through an area where a device collected both of our index fingerprints digitally and photographed our faces. Then we collected our baggage, which had already been taken off the carousel and lined up neatly. We put our luggage on a cart and pushed it to the customs area. This is the area where we were worried about running into difficulties based on medicine that Erin takes. Here's the entire conversation we had with the gentleman:
"Why are you coming to Japan?"
"Vacation."
"How many days will you be staying?"
"Eleven."
"Okay. Enjoy your visit!"
That was it. They didn't even glance at our luggage. A girl with a cute young Labrador did come by and let it sniff our bags, but that was as close to an inspection we received.
I then took all of the cash that Erin and I had on us (about $750) to the currency exchange counter, filled out a small form, handed the money through a window to a woman who showed me a number on a calculator to which I nodded in approval, then handed me a dish full of strange bills and coins. They also gave me a little origami crane as a gift. After that, Erin and I bought tickets for a Limousine Bus ride to our hotel. We stood and watched other buses come and go for about thirty minutes until our scheduled ride (the 4:20 bus) arrived. The bus itself was nice and quiet with large windows to watch the scenery go by for the 70 or so minutes it took to get to our hotel. A woman's voice came over the intercom and explained several things in Japanese and then in English. She was clearly Japanese, yet she spoke English with a British accent. One of the things she said that made me chuckle was, "passengers are reminded not to use their cell phones as it annoys the neighbors."
Erin did start feeling a bit ill before we arrived, mainly due to lack of sleep, but got better as soon as we got off the bus.
We checked into our room -- Room 1330 at the Hotel Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku -- and brought up our luggage. I fully expected the room to be small, but this thing is tiny. I've seen larger dorm rooms. It was like playing a game of Tetris to figure out how to place our luggage so that the bathroom door would still open. There isn't even a closet...just a rack with five hangers on the wall near the door. I had to move a mirror to the floor to have a place to set up this laptop.
Here's the obligatory Japanese tourist story about the toilet. The toilet in our room -- like every other hotel and domestic toilet in Japan -- will shoot warm water on your rear. It's a surprisingly good shot. Let's move on.
We got the computer set up on the free internet without much trouble, so I called my mother (even though it was 4:20 AM in Ada) as she had asked me to in order to let her know we were safe. At this point we needed something to eat, so in spite of our almost mind-altering fatigue we decided to head out and explore the neighborhood.
We walked down to the local AM/PM, a convenience store chain ("combini" in Japanese) that is fairly ubiquitous in Japan. There were several business men inside standing with their faces to the wall. Upon entering we realized they were all reading manga off the rack without buying it; a practice that in the US would get you told, "Hey, buddy, this isn't a library" to which you would of course respond, "Okay, I'll talk louder then."
At the counter they had the standard hot boxes full of fried foods, but these were mostly full of strange and wonderful Japanese treats (with the exception of the "American Corn Dog") including steamed buns filled with meats and pickled plums and other things I could not identify. We did not buy anything on this visit, and moved on.
Down the street further we were greeted by an area full of the flash and neon Tokyo is famous for (since Japan doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time, it was already dark by now). We saw a store called "Lumine" which Erin recognized as being a department store, so we went inside.
Japanese department stores are much more closely related toa mall than they are to Dillards. In the eight or so floors there are two devoted entirely to restaurants and others devoted to clothing, housewares, books, etc. I found two Dragon Ball Z books I didn't have and decided to buy them. When I approached the counter and they were rung up, I handed my money to the cashier who promptly put the bills down in a tray that I should have put them in, and then picked up the tray. He returned my change to me in the same tray. I have since discovered that this is the way things are paid for almost everywhere in Japan.
The cashier said something to me that I didn't understand, but looked as if he were asking me if I wanted a sack for the books. I said "yes", after which he immediately pulled out a piece of wrapping paper and started to gift wrap the books. I quickly said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry," at which point he stopped, put the books in a sack, and taped it shut.
We gave up on eating at any of the restaurants in Lumine, feeling a bit ill from lack of sleep, and were worried that we couldn't even order correctly at McDonalds (Erin has to have her burgers "plain and dry", after all) so we went back to the AM/PM to get some food. I bought an onigiri (I've always wanted to try one since SonGoku seems to love them) with a filling unknown to me and Erin ordered a dish which I had translated as being "Meato Sausu Spaghetti". They gave us a little stick with the number 10 and a hand-made head of some cute animal on it. I remembered from Dragon Ball that 10 is "juu", so I listened for someone to say something including that number. It worked. We got our food and headed back to the room.
Erin couldn't identify some of the ingredients to her spaghetti sauce, but she loved it. My onigiri turned out to have salted raw salmon for the filling and it was also fantastic.
At this point Erin took a bath while I typed the first part of this blog entry, then I took a quick one myself and fell immediately asleep upon hitting the bed.
Another vacation planning tip: Download Google Earth.
With Google Earth you can literally see pretty much everywhere you want to visit before you get there. You can scope out the neighborhood through satellite maps and see what restaurants and shops are nearby, draw paths to figure out walking/driving distances, see everything in 3D including buildings and elevation changes, even make screenshots to print your own custom maps. As if that weren't enough, in most major cities you can zoom down and view "virtual reality" photos from every few feet down major streets. Because of this I know that there are a couple drink vending machines in an alley just around the corner on the north side of my Hotel in Tokyo, and that the McDonalds at the end of the block has a sign that says "24 OPEN" and a walk-up ordering counter outside. It really is amazing.