Advertisement
Published: July 29th 2008
Edit Blog Post
The minute we started to explore Tokyo, I finally understood why Japanese tourists in the US always seem so lost! All of the street signs are in Japanese characters which are nothing like trying to figure out what something says in Spanish or Portuguese, but is more like trying to identify characters that look more like a combination of random boxes and slash marks... Needless to say, we were immediately lost and could only find things by trying to match the characters to what we had in our tour book or by asking people. Imagine not being able to read street signs, restaurants, bars, monuments, or any other place that you were trying to get to in a city that has approximately 35 million people. It can be overwhelming! So even if you could identify the street, finding the place on the street could sometimes seem impossible, especially since the addresses are in the order in which the buildings were constructed instead of numerical order. Plus, it is difficult to pronounce the names of almost anything properly.
Luckily, the people were extremely helpful. We relied on the locals to help us get to where we were headed countless times each
day and they were always helpful and often went out of their way. The first night we went to a sushi restaurant, sat at the sushi bar and we immediately had 2 locals on each side of us helping us communicate with the waiter and telling us what they liked off the menu. I've never really known the difference between good sushi and "ok" sushi, I usually just know that its bad when it smells fishy. But here you could clearly tell that the fish (especially the tuna) was really fresh and better tasting than anything I've ever had in LA. I've even had really fresh sushi in Hawaii and it didn't taste as good as Tokyo sushi for some reason. Not sure what they do to the stuff...
As I mentioned earlier, Tokyo is an amazing experience. I don't think that I had any food that I didn't like, the streets and subways are always packed with people, the lights on the buildings remind me of Vegas, and the people almost appear to prefer video game arcades to bars. Plus, for a city with so many people it is incredible how clean the streets are. Its really tuff
to find any trash on the ground and everywhere there are trash cans and bins designated for recycling. Through their cleanliness and their willingness to help, it was clear that Japanese people have a lot of pride in their city. Going out at night was also always an experience. Roppongi was probably the best area that we found since there were a couple of blocks in that district that had tons of bars all over the place. It was also cool being in the bars because for once in my life I was nearly the tallest person! Outside of Roppongi we had problems finding many of the places we wanted to go to, so we ended up walking around the streets late at night mainly watching people. There were a bunch of Japanese people that were way too drunk and wondering around trying to find their way home. I wish I could have had a video camera for this one guy, he was so drunk that his legs weren't working anymore so he would take two steps, nearly fall over, catch himself by leaning on a building, and repeat. It was pure comedy!
In Tokyo, there weren't too many
old temples and the temples that we did see were often reconstructed versions of the originals that were destroyed during the 2nd World War. So we decided to take the bullet train to Kyoto, which was the capital of Japan from the late 700s to late 1800s. Plus, it was spared from a lot of the bombings of WWII, so it is one of the most well preserved parts of Japan. The train ride by itself was a really cool experience since it travels at about 130 miles per hour and the scenery along the way is awesome. We would glide by these small towns and beach front villages and then the next minute you would go through a tunnel and you were in the middle of a forest. Kyoto has approximately 2000 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, so its difficult to see even the highlights in one day, but we did what we could given the limited amount of time we had. Probably even more spectacular than the actual temples and shrines is the well preserved and maintained gardens. These areas were so peaceful and quiet that they made you feel like you were out in the middle of
the forest somewhere, when in reality you are in a Japanese city with 1.5 million people. Regardless, this place left a lasting impression on me and has made me want to explore the country further and understand more about Buddhism.
Besides Japanese food being good, its also amazing how healthy everyone eats. For instance, a lot of times I would eat udon noodles, tofu, and vegetables served in a miso soup broth for lunch. Udon noodles are a wheat based noodle and miso is normally made out of soybeans. So its basically everything that has become popular health food options in the US over the past several years, but unlike us, they probably don't make those late night Mexican food runs or grab a burger and fries for a quick lunch. I swear, if you eat nothing but Japanese food for a month your bound to lose some weight in addition to just being a healthier person. While we are on the topic of food, we also went to a Shabu Shabu place that one of my co-workers, Jessica, suggested called Mo Mo Paradise. The name makes it sound touristy, but I assure you we were the only visitors
in there, plus the name wasn't written in English so it took us forever to figure out where the place was. Regardless, the food was awesome since it had different spices and sauces than the Shabu Shabu places that I've been to in the States. For those of you who don't know what Shabu Shabu is, its basically a restaurant where you are given a pot of boiling water and you throw in a bunch of vegetables, meat, and spices and it cooks at your table. Another example of very healthy Japanese food, except for the fact that it is all you can eat red meat!.
The last day we went to Tsukji, which is the largest fish market in the world! Its an insane place just because of everything that is going on at once. There is tons of forklift traffic transporting the fish, there are people bidding on pieces of fish, there are fish vendors and fisherman bring fish to the vendors all at the same time. Its chaos, but also a really cool place to experience. Its really like looking at what sushi looks like two to five hours before it ends up on your plate.
It was amazing to see the vendors cleaning huge whole tuna so they could sell them in the market. These things had to be well over 100 pounds each!
Up next, we are headed to Shanghai to meet up with Adisina, one of our friends from college who has lived in there for the past 5 years. Its going to be nice to not be completely lost for a couple of days! Make sure to check out the second page since there are a lot more pictures of Kyoto.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.265s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 10; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0605s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb