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Published: February 14th 2008
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My first trip to Asia - I started my trip with a 6:30 am flight from KC to Minneapolis. Since I used airline miles to pay for my flight, I didn’t get the chance to pick my route. I went Minneapolis, Portland then to Tokyo. The flights were actually really nice and the planes were ½ full. I got my own TV from Portland to Tokyo so that kept me entertained for my never ending flight. I landed at 6:00 pm Monday evening. I had to meet Patty, Stu and Jess at the hotel which was no where near the airport. I took the train from Narita to downtown Tokyo. From there I switched trains and went on the local subway to the hotel stop. From there, I walked to the hotel. It took me about 2 ½ hours from the time I landed to the time I hit the hotel. My first impressions of Japan: there are 1000000000 million Japanese people who use the subway, there is no trash anywhere, not many people speak English, and the people are so nice. My first night we stayed at the Tokyo Westin which was one of the granddaddy hotels in Tokyo. The
room was enormous and posh. We had access to the concierge lounge so we had free drinks, breakfast and appetizers. The 4 of us took the train to the Park Hyatt where we went to the top to have drinks. This was the spot from the movie Lost in Translation, although I have never seen the movie. It was a beautiful scene from the 52 story. I was a little jet lagged so I stayed up until around 10:00 pm local time and then went to sleep.
We woke up pretty early and we were up and out around 7:00 am. We took the bullet train to Kyoto. The train took around 2 hours and went about 150 mph which was really neat to watch. We passed Mt. Fuji and we could see the whole mountain from the train. Locals say you can only see the mountain about 60 days a year due to the clouds so we really lucked out. Kyoto was nice but not what I expected. I thought it would be a small city with a lot of cool houses and shrines. It ended up to be a large metropolitan city with a lot of traffic
and a hard to read map. We stayed at a hostel which was the first time I have ever stayed in a hostel. I must say it was very nice, but I wouldn’t consider it a hostel. The 4 of us shared one room and it was just the 4 of us. The showers and toilets were in their own room so there was plenty of privacy. Not a bad place! We found a few shrines and temples that were interesting to explore. Our hostel suggested we go to this one place which ended up to be a big rock garden. We were supposed to stand there and decide our own meaning of the rock garden. The 4 of us were too impatient so we made fun of it and carried on. That evening we found the geisha district known as Gion. At first we were having a hard time spotting the geishas but then a van pulled up and geishas were popping out all over the place. It reminded me of a clown car at the circus. Jess snapped a ton of pictures and we looked like paparazzis. After geisha hunting we found a restaurant that looked like a
hole-in-a-wall. When we walked in they said they had an English menu but I think they interpreted our question as “do you speak English?” Both answers were incorrect - no English menu and not very much English spoken. Luckily the menu had pictures but unfortunately they didn’t have enough detail in the picture to tell us what it was. Jess got her food first which was an egg like pancake which was deep fried - not bad. My food arrived second which was bowl of crab legs soaked in a spicy garlic sauce. I was excited at first until I realized the crab legs were not cooked so it was cold, uncooked crab. Let me preface that I love sushi and there is few foods I don’t like - uncooked crab legs is now on the list of things I don’t really care for.
The next morning we got up and went to another Shrine that was absolutely gorgeous. It was on a huge hill with torris all the way up (torris are the red gates that you see all over Japan). The place was incredible and that is what I pictured of Kyoto. All in all Kyoto was
not what I expected and if it wasn’t for the last shrine we went to, I don’t know if it is that great to visit.
We took the bullet train back to Tokyo that afternoon and moved to another hotel. So far for me 3 nights - 3 different hotels. Our next hotel was the Le Merdian Pacific which was located in the Ginza district. The Ginza district is the “Time Square” of Tokyo. The area was really neat but the hotel was not very good. It was safe and clean, but it wasn’t remodeled since 1970 and our room was so hot. We didn’t spend much time in the hotel so it could have been worse. We walked all over the Ginza district that night and we found a sushi restaurant from our guide book. It was a complete whole in the wall and had a sushi train around the bar. Jess didn’t want to join us for the sushi so she went to an Italian place next door. Our sushi was awesome and I could have stayed there all night long. After our sushi extravaganza Stu, Patty and I joined Jess at her restaurant for more drinking. After 2 more bottles of wine we decided to go find a karaoke bar but instead found an Irish bar in the basement of some building. A few more drinks later we decided to continue our quest for karaoke but to no avail. We had a mini pub crawl in some office building but everything was closed. That was our sign to call it a night and we retired in our hot as hell hotel room.
The next morning we woke up and toured the east gardens of Imperial Palace. The garden was nice but the walk was cold. Jess departed us at the gardens to head to the airport to go to Korea. Patty, Stu and I went on a quest to find more sushi. We ended up on the 51st floor of some office building called the Sumitomo Tower. We found a place that spoke no English, no English menu but we recognized the universal sign of Chinese buffet and it was good. The view was nice, food was good and we tried stuff we never knew existed nor we will ever know what we ate. After lunch we meandered back to our hotel where had to kill a few more hours before we left for the airport. We sat in the lobby at the hotel’s tea room and sipped on a $10 cup of coffee which Stu said wasn’t very good. We trained it back to Narita and boarded our flight to Bangkok.
My impressions of Japan - it reminded me of a bee-hive. There were so many people all the time but everything was in perfect order. No one talked, no trash, no homeless, no graffiti, no honking, etc. The food wasn’t very good although it was my fault for not knowing Japanese when I ordered. The portion sizes were small and we always felt that we were hungry in a few hours. It was probably because we only ordered appetizers the entire time since we couldn’t read the menu. The temperature was always extreme - outside was cold and windy and inside buildings had the heat cranked way up. I was never comfortable with the weather. Japan was a very sterile place that was very cosmopolitan and pretty. If any of you to go Japan to visit, get a good map, a small translation guide book and someone who can help you order food!
Now off to Bangkok!
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