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Published: March 13th 2006
Tokyo - Written Saturday evening, after 7pm Japan time, en route to Bangkok
We’re back in the air, Japan behind us and Bangkok, Thailand in our immediate future. The six hour flight barely registers as an annoyance with our memory fresh with the thirteen hour trip from Chicago to Tokyo. We opted to pay about eighty dollars extra for the extra five inches of space that United adds to “economy plus” seating (that’s economy plus Roger’s knees, which we elected not to leave in Japan).
We will prepare another entry collecting our various general impressions of Japan and the people we encountered. Here please find a sampling of our four nights and five days in Tokyo.
March 7
After another delightful ride on the bullet train we found ourselves at Tokyo Station, one of the city’s major regional and local transit hubs. The station, like several other large hubs around the city, features a massive underground labyrinth of restaurants, shops, and services, and provides access to at least three different rail systems in the city. After the peaceful trip from Kyoto it was like entering an anthill (only it was bigger and instead of ants there were
Breakfast on Bullet Train
We're sure the fellow passengers thought this was our food for the dayJapanese people). The bullet train that we disembarked from is operated by JR, a company that owns and operates a large network of lines that ring Tokyo and extend out in to the far reaches of the region. Tokyo Metro is similar to the basic subway we may all identify with New York City. Essentially the large stations around Tokyo are layered, multi-exit and entry points of convergence and constant movement. The guide book said that you are never far from a line of some sort and that certainly fits with our experience. Matching up lines and determining how many changes you must make is another challenge, but the system is user friendly and can get you virtually anywhere quickly.
We stayed the first three nights in the Tokyo neighborhood of Asakusa, the former entertainment district of the city, which now mostly consists largely of amll businesses and packinko parlors. We wanted to start and end our time in Tokyo at two of Japan’s unique accommodations, the capsule hotel and the love hotel. After some debate and some waiting for check in time we secured our capsules. Capsules hotels are essentially hives of bed-sized cubbies for rent during the
day for limited rest periods and over night to “stay”. The capsules originated to serve businessmen who may have had a few too many after work or missed their train home (the front desk sells fresh ties and shirts). Today they still serve that purpose, though they are open to others in need of simple and temporary shelter for whatever reason and are inexpensive accommodation while in Japan. Only in recent years have a few capsule opened to women.
We purchased our rooms from a vending machine and stowed our shoes in small lockers, trading them for slippers to be worn as if in a Japanese residence or guest house. Roger was given a locker in a small locker room off of the lobby. The locker, about three inches wide except for a briefcase sized expanse at the bottom, is clearly designed to hold little more than a suit. A number of hotel guests left larger unattended luggage on top of the lockers or in the lobby itself. Men are to change into peejays (provided) in the locker room and proceed through the lobby to the elevator that delivers them to their capsule’s floor or to the shower room
on the top floor. The comparable women’s facilities were on the single floor available to women thus almost totally separating the men and women.
The hallway on each floor was about six feet wide with three-by-three foot openings stacked two high. The capsules were about six and a half feet long, featured a slim but comfortable mattress pad, clean sheets and towels, an alarm clock, radio, and televisions equipped with three pay-per-view porn channels (at least on the men’s floor) and twelve Japanese stations. Your capsule “door” is a roll-down blind that ensures privacy from prying eyes but does nothing to insulate you for snoring, farting, tossing, turning and the shuffling of slippers for late night bathroom breaks.
After checking in to our capsules we headed out in to Asakusa to explore the neighborhood. The main concourse of the neighborhood is Kaminari-mon, an outdoor shopping arcade that leads to a prominent temple and pagoda, Senso-Ji. The concourse was far more tourism oriented than any place we had experienced in Hiroshima or Kyoto, but still not full of bustling hawkers quite like the American equivalents. The vendors seemed only slightly more interested in courting our business than elsewhere in
Japan. We immediately saw far more American and European travelers than we had previously, but the street was also buzzing with Japanese families and tourists. The main draw appeared to be the temple which was overrun with worshippers and gawkers alike. As we gawked ourselves a call came over the loudspeaker that the temple was soon to close. This prompted a surge of little old Japanese ladies to practically trample each other to get up the steps to make offerings and pray. If you have never seen a gaggle of thirty diminutive Japanese grandmothers elbow for the attention of Buddha, throwing coins and praying as if the roof was collapsing, we highly recommend it.
As the light faded we strolled the narrow and winding commercial streets near the temple grounds. Many of the streets were either closed to motor vehicles or generated a bare minimum of non-pedestrian traffic. We scouted out a sushi restaurant row and perused the numerous pachinko and slot machine parlors. We later tried to figure out how to play pachinko, a form of gambling that resembles a cross between pinball and slots that requires no skill but which fascinates millions of Japanese, but couldn’t figure
it out. The bathrooms were top notch, though. We noticed that the Japanese appear to leave their winnings (which at this point are just little balls rather than actual cash) behind them in tubs rather than on their laps in Vegas style cups. We were constantly amazed at the level of trust and safety in Japan.
For dinner we sampled the local take on okonomiyaki, which you may recall we had in Hiroshima - this version was noodleless and was a “cook your own okonomiyaki” place. The chef appeared not to trust us and he cooked it for us on our little table for two. After dinner we stopped in at a little bar called The Orange Room for drinks. A small, dark, cement-walled pub, The Orange Room featured mellow jazz music, no other guests at the early hour of 8 pm, and the most industrious bartender either of us has ever seen. For the hour we savored our drinks the bartender, a squat guy with a good disposition, no neck to speak of, and the hair of a Brooklyn hood, worked steadily chipping away at perfectly clear bricks of ice. The ice was split in to rectangular chunks
The Imperial Palace
This is as close as we could get and all we saw of the actual grounds just smaller than the glasses or whittled in to an almost perfect sphere (the ice orbs took about five minutes to make and we were somewhat embarrassed when we asked about them only to receive one in a glass of water). Roger had his first drink of Southern Comfort on the “rock” (a nice combination of flavors - the bitter sterility of whiskey, the grim coagulant of low-grade cough syrup, just a hint of tree sap - that warmed his ears and put a smile on his face) and Amy sampled the local beer. The tab at The Orange Room for the Southern Comfort and one beer came to just slightly more than four times the cost of our capsules, a tab that nearly sent Amy spiraling in to the stratosphere, but a pleasant experience all the same. Any time a man risks frostbite and puncture by ice pick for your amusement is a good time.
March 8
March 8 was Roger’s 32nd birthday and it started like many of his previous birthdays, with a communal shower with four naked Japanese men on the roof of a capsule hotel. While “shower” and “naked” might seem redundant, the alliteration
is necessary to demonstrate just how much naked the communal shower involves. You strip in a small anteroom just as if you are about to hop in to your own little tub at home. You are, of course, not in your own little tub at home. The anteroom, on the ninth floor, overlooks the river and plenty of sidewalk and roadway. Anyone with binoculars or a good pair of eyes who knew where to look would see a number of moons over Tokyo each morning as men pass from anteroom to bath. In the shower, an impossibly sunlit and open room, you sit on a small blue stool about eight inches off the ground and attempt to wash things in a position unimagined as optimal by your big western bathroom mind. With, and it can not be said enough, four naked Japanese men. Being a good foot taller and hairier than a yeti compared to the other bathers Roger didn’t feel like he stood out at all. He felt like Bigfoot trying to wash his junk at The Hobbit YMCA. Amy examined the conditions, heard several Japanese voices in the bath, pictured herself showering while her body was discussed openly
in front of her in Japanese and elected to skip her morning shower. Perhaps she was just being paranoid but she’s spent too much time in the Washington, DC nail salons having her feet critiqued.
Roger likes to begin and end most days with sweets and so for his birthday we ate at Mister Donut. Amy had ramen and a meat bun while Roger stuck to the donuts. Our first stop that day was a walk along Kappa-bashi-dori, essentially the restaurant supply district for Tokyo. Each store appears to specialize in everything from neon signs, stools, decorative pottery, sushi dishes, and plastic food for display in front of restaurants. The plastic food, which is ubiquitous in restaurant displays, is simply a work of art (and is priced accordingly). If we had known about this street back in October we might have registered here rather than Bed Bath & Beyond.
From Kappa-bashi-dori we paid a visit to the Eastern Gardens of the Imperial Place in the heart of Tokyo. As former palace grounds the gardens are separated from the rest of the city by massive walls and a large moat. This “island” in the city is beautifully manicured and
includes former samurai guard houses, water gardens, open fields, sculpted trees and patches of dense forest. From the Eastern Garden we walked virtually the entire length of the palace property trying to get in to see the Imperial Palace grounds but much like in Kyoto they won’t let you in and you don’t get to see much (although we were able to catch a glimpse of the Emperor’s home from the southernmost point of the grounds, a stunning white house built overlooking an interior channel of water).
After a long half day of walking we strolled in to Ginza, one of Tokyo’s most trendy and electric business and shopping districts. It is here that you fully realize the vertical nature of Tokyo. In addition to the signs, electric and otherwise, that dot the storefronts and eye-level vistas, signs run up the sides of building from bottom to top. The signs reveal to you what each building contains and until you get the feel for this index of vertical shopping centers and restaurants you completely miss the mass of commercial opportunities extending above your head. We know that we missed a lot by mainly sticking to the first floor shops.
The sidewalks were bustling and packed shoulder to shoulder. For a midday snack we found Yoshinoya, the noodle equivalent to Taco John’s or the old 39 Cent Hamburger Stand, and discovered that ordering from pictures can be very deceiving. After our Ginza experience we returned to Asakusa to check in to our lodgings, a hostel situated in an otherwise quiet neighborhood, and head out for dinner at a very popular conveyor belt sushi restaurant. The restaurant, essentially five sushi chefs on a platform surrounded by a moving belt that they supply with sushi, provided us with a very nice meal and good people watching. We pride ourselves with being able to gobble down the raw fish, but the lady next to Amy was eating like she was going to be launched in to space the next day and she devoured things bearing no resemblance to any animal or animal part that we could identify.
Most confectioners and dessert shops were closed and Roger likes - loves - donuts, so we ended up back at Mister Donut for dessert (which did not represent any sort of compromise whatsoever. Bless you, Mister Donut.). Roger was also finally able to navigate the
seventeen hour time change to talk to his parents on his birthday from a pay phone near the hostel.
Hostel life is odd. This particular hostel was a series of private and dorm-style rooms separated by walls that did not extend fully to the ceiling. If you are asking whether this means you can hear the drunk British kids coming in at 5:30 am or the Serbian kid clear his throat at midnight for ten minutes then wonder no more: you can. In surround sound. George Lucas wishes he could capture these acoustics. It was cheap and secure and had free internet access and we had a private room, so who cares if you can hear the flem of the world in 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. The real oddity was that the hardened (and hairy) world traveling guests seemed to spend the vast majority of their time eating ramen or bread and butter from the grocery store and lying around the common room watching bootleg DVDs of classics like Blade and The Day After Tomorrow. Every hour of the day, all day, the room was full of glassy eyed zombies who seemed bothered that they had to go outside
to the Tokyo air to smoke a cigarette. Not that it bothered us. We just cannot understand coming to a city and not eating the local food - why travel? But we’ve only been traveling for 10 days so talk to us in 6 months when perhaps our description of South Africa will involve the grocery store’s macaroni and cheese and a communal viewing of Fantastic Four (which sucked the first time so who knows how bad it will be in a hostel). We desperately hope we can maintain our sampling of local foods and treats.
March 9
We awoke and headed off to the Asusaka river port for a ferry ride
to Tokyo Harbor and Odeiba, an island “city” essentially being built
from scratch. The river cruise served to remind us that Tokyo,
despite its lengthy history, was essentially rebuilt completely
after World War II. The architecture for the most part is
unflattering but functional with a few newer and more dynamic
looking buildings scattered around. The river’s edge, at least in
the area along the eastern side of the city running down in to the
harbor, holds almost none of what we typically associate with such
real estate. No river view restaurants, few high rises, and a river
bank built apparently to contain the river rather than for
recreation. For large stretches the bank is dotted with evenly
spaced shanties, most featuring blue tarps for roofing and walls.
Some even appear to have fashioned out patio areas and most have
bicycles parked in front.
The Odeiba island is an amazing convergence of modernity, fashion,
and entertainment. Every other building is either a shopping mall
or a video arcade so Roger was in heaven. Right after getting off
the ferry we contemplated the meaning of the replica Statue of
Liberty. We still don’t understand why there is one in Odeiba.
Next stop was the first of many shopping malls where we bought a
couple of items from the Everything is 100 Yen Store. Unlike the $1
Store in America, this is filled not with crap but with lots of
useful enticing items. We are lucky that our backpacks are
preventing us from accumulating many items or Roger would have
purchased socks with toe "fingers".
After the mall we paid way too much for what was essentially a cross
between a cat zoo and petting farm
Fish Market
Amy held a salmon but we couldn’t resist because it
is something we’ve never seen. Yes, we both are allergic to cats
and, yes, Amy has always been frightened of cats convinced they
would claw her to death. But we can’t pass up unique kitschy
opportunities to drop $15. The “cat museum” was basically designed
to look like a house with a living room, kitchen and several other
rooms for about ten of the eighteen residnt cats to roam at any given moment. We walked around as timid as if we were in the Amazon convinced that a cat was going to get us.
The cats were cute and different from ones that we had spent time
around and some of them were even friendly and wanted to be petted.
We also spent awhile entranced by the hairless cat who was
thankfully in his cage. There is a good reason why cats have fur.
We made our way around the island looking at the different shopping
malls with a lot of very cute clothing stores. Two stores that
stood out for us, however, were Pet City and Pet Paradise. Here’s a
clue on how to determine whether people have high disposable incomes
-
do they have a store dedicated solely to clothing for their dogs?
While Pet City focused on your dog’s clothing needs, Pet Paradise
was more of a superstore containing everything from clothes, to
strollers, a doggie bakery and a large selection of readymade ramen
(for your dog of course). Yikes. They even had a monkey, but Amy and the potential difficulties in getting the little fellow through a series of customs counters prevented Roger from checking off another on the list of life long dreams ("monkey ownership" falls between "driving the Batmobile" and "banning the music of Aerosmith").
Odaiba houses the restaurants of three Iron Chefs - Iron
Chef Japan, Iron Chef Italy and Iron Chef France. We walked over
hoping to eat at Iron Chef Japan’s place but they didn’t have an
English menu or any pictures of what was on their lunch menu and we
didn’t want to take a chance on what we were eating considering the
prices. Instead, we enjoyed our first Japanese curry.
Our next step was Mega Web which is a cross between a museum and a
car dealership (with, of course, a giant ferris wheel). We were less interested in the
history of
cars and more interested in riding around a track in auto-drive in a
tiny Japanese car. We also liked checking out all of the latest models and posing with some of them to see how we look in them. Amy found a couple cute sporty models she wants to buy once we get back to the US.
Odaiba includes many arcades and so we sampled a few arcades and Amy
is sad to report that Roger beat her at pop-a-shot for the first
time in a loooooooooong time (Editor's note - Amy is on crack). Clearly, Roger excels at international
pop-a-shot. We also went to Joypolis which is a virtual simulation
theme park. We rode a real roller coaster (as opposed to virtual)
that went sideways and was pretty scary. We also did a hang gliding
simulation ride in which Amy kept plummeting the hang glider toward
the ground not realizing that our performance during the game
affected the length of the ride.
March 10
Our day began bright and very early. We awoke at 4:30 am in order
to spend our morning at the Tsukiji Fish Market. The market is the
largest in the world and makes the fish market in Seattle look like
a neighborhood fish store. We didn’t actual make it to the market
until 6:30 which means that we missed the tuna auction which is the
first step in the fish market process. We were able to watch the
gigantic tuna (Amy could not quit taking pictures) being hauled to
different stalls to be cut up. Along with the tuna, the various
stalls contain every type of fish you can imagine (and some you can't). The squid
were the prettiest to look at because of their colors. That and they don't lie in pools of blood like the eels do. There are
rows upon rows of vendors lined down very narrow passageways and
hundreds of people (men mostly) in fisherman's boots scurrying along doing
their jobs. Just wandering the fish market was one of the more
stressful things we have done so far in our trip because you have to
dodge people, carts and motorized carts coming at you from all
different directions and with little patience for wide-eyed obstacles such as us. Periodically we would try to get out of everyone’s way just long enough to catch our breath. One of the
most amazing things about the market was the lack of any strong fish
smell especially when you compare it to vendors in the United
States. A vendor even put a salmon in Amy’s hands and her hands
didn’t smell when she was done. That is some fresh fish.
What to do at 7:30 am when you are done exploring the fish market?
Eat sushi, of course. We wandered around the outer marketplace
looking for a couple of recommended sushi restaurants but much like
our luck for recommendations the rest of our time in Japan we could
not find them. So we looked for a sushi restaurant that was full of
Japanese and ate there. We both love sushi and thought we had
both had good sushi but we have never had anything like this. We
had medium fatty tuna, fatty tuna, a couple of types of sea eel, a
bowl of miso soup with clams and some flounder that we watched one
of the sushi chefs filet. The sushi was amazing and we felt it
would be worth the price of an airline ticket just to have really
good sushi in Japan. Turns out our fish breakfast was the most
expensive meal of our time in Japan but worth every penny.
After breakfast we headed to Akihabara Electric Town which is a
neighborhood of electronic stores. Spending time in an area like
that convinces you that you need a paper shredder that you wheel
around like luggage or a massage chair that gave massages so deep
they were almost painful. We explored but we were mainly in the
market for a new computer bag. We have discovered in the last 10
days that although our backbacks work well, the extra backpack that
Roger is using to carry the electronics is not great because is
doesn’t work well with his main backpack. Since we have been in Japan
we have been looking for a messenger bag that would work better and
we bought a couple of things to try to replace the backpack.
Roger has been eagerly awaiting March 10 since arriving in Japan and
realizing that cherry blossom season starts at McDonalds. We had
lunch at McDonalds so that Roger could have the chicken mcnuggets
with their seasonal cherry blossom sauce.
We’ve noticed that adults in Japan enjoy some things that are only
for kids in the United States. For instance, the crane game at carnivals
where you use the claw to try to grab stuffed animals is everywhere
in Japan and the adults love it. They also love the plastic
figurines and pins that you get from gum ball machines and we found
these everywhere. In Electric Town we discovered a machine that
contained a couple of batman figures, a Batgirl figure, a Robin
figure and a Catwoman figure. Amy warned Roger not to do it because
she knew how it would end. 300 Yen in the machine and Batgirl comes
out. 300 more Yen in the machine and Batgirl comes out. At this
point Amy is pleading for them to walk away but 300 more Yen in the
machine and Catwoman comes out. Roger cannot believe it and is
disgusted that he spent $8 on crappy plastic figurines that he
doesn’t want so he leaves two behind. What he didn’t realize is
that the cost of trying for Batman three times was so much greater
than the $8 - Amy found it hilarious (Editor's note - Amy? Still on crack. And hating Batman, which is a huge turn off.).
From Electronic Avenue we headed to Meguro to try to find a parasite
museum that looked pretty interesting (and free admission) but of course it
could not be found. What we did stumble upon was one of the
outposts of Donut Plant that was discussed in our New York post.
The cherry vanilla donut (everything is cherry flavored right now)
helped to ease the sting of a wasted trip.
Amy had been eagerly anticipating trying out a “love hotel” while in
Japan and so we checked out of our hostel before heading to the fish
market and planned to stay in the bustling neighborhood of Shibuya. Shibuya is a big
entertainment area with restaurants and bars and the busiest
intersection in the world (seen in Lost in Translation). It is also
home to Love Hotel hill. In Japan, young adults usually live at
home until they get married and often times several generations are
living in cramped spaces. We also suspect there is a seamy side to these places, but can not really confirm it. In any case, love hotels were created for couples to
escape for a couple of hours or a night. The love hotels are all about
privacy and so you enter the lobby to a display with
pictures of each of the rooms that are currently available as well
as the price for a rest (2-3 hours) or a stay (12 hours, generally
from 10 pm to 10am). You push the button next to the picture of the
room that you want and then go to a partitioned glass where you pay
the invisible clerk behind the glass the money and you are then
slipped a key. The rooms range in quality but many are themed and
some even have swimming pools although those were out of our price
range.
It took us awhile to actually find the love hotels because we didn’t
know where they were, but once we were pointed in the right direction (by an American)
they were hard to miss because the names and architecture are very
flowery (castle turrets, etc.) After finding them and discovering
that you can check in for the night at 10 pm, we rode the metro to
the station where we had left our bags that morning (after checking
out of our hostel and before the fish market). When we got back to
Shibuya we had a couple of hours to kill so we went to another
karaoke bar, even more deluxe than the first one we tried. We had a
couple of drinks, dinner and sang a lot, all of which caused the bill
to be much much higher than the pocket change it was the first time that we did it for
thirty minutes without drinks or food. Clearly, the singing is not
how they get you. Highlights of the night's numbers include Amy's version of Eminem's "Stan" and Roger's version, in German, of "99 Luftballoons."
About 9:30 pm, we made our way back to Love Hotel hill to start
zeroing in on the room we wanted and this is where the evening
turned sour. Most of the rooms were booked but eventually we
realized that in at least three establishments we were being turned
away for not speaking Japanese. We were ready and eager to pay but
they would not give us a room and feigned the inability to stumble
through a basic conversation about how much the room cost. We are
still processing what happened and Amy is going to look on the
internet and see if she can find out if it is common for foreigners
to be refused rooms. If we find anything we will let you know.
(Amy’s note) It was at this point in the evening where my
meltdown occurred because it was now 10:30, we had been up for 18
hours, we had our bags, we had no place to stay and Shibuya is not
known for budget accommodation. As many of you know, Roger is a
very patient man and stayed incredibly calm while I whined and cried
about where we were going to sleep that night and how I was ready to
go back to the US. Eventually we took the metro to another area, Shinjuku,
that we had heard earlier had love hotels that only the Japanese know about and so we thought we could find a cheap room there. We have had trouble identifying lodging unless it was recommended in our travel guide and this was no different but eventually we
stumbled upon a room that was $50 above what we were paying at the
hostel but we were desperate and so we took it. This was also the
first night since being in Japan that we spent in a western style
bed for two. After quick showers we fell quickly to sleep. I can
tell you already that massive mood swings are caused by fatigue and
hunger and bumps in the road can really impact my day but I am going
to try to stay more calm and patient.
March 11, 2006
We only had a few hours in Tokyo before leaving for our plane which
was good because we blew through our daily budget yesterday. We had
lunch and went for the last time to a Japanese style internet caf้
before grabbing the train to Narita airport.
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Jon Hrobsky
non-member comment
Noriyuki "Pat" Morita
Was there any kind of eulogy, day of rememberance or shrine set aside for Okinawa's favorite son. Playing Al on Happy Days and as some slap-o sidekick to Jay Leno should have been enough, but then to become Mr. Kesuke Miyagi should be enough to get something going. I am hoping for an update on this situation.