Another Short Trip to Japan, Part One—Tokyo

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It seems like such a long time since I wrote the last entry, but my computer tells me it was less than a month ago. I’ve been busier than usual. The first week of January I taught classes at a high school and my middle school for Winter English Camp. It was my last week teaching of the school year (the Korean school year runs March to December), and it ended up being the most classes I taught in one week all year! But the classes were good because there were fewer students at a higher level than usual, and I had freedom to teach anything I wanted without a Korean coteacher. I had the next week off, and I went to Japan (be patient—I’ll tell you about that next).As soon as I got back from Japan, I restarted my TESOL course, so I’ve been going a little crazy planning sample lessons for that.


So, Japan trip #2 was . . . exhausting but super! If you don’t know/remember, the first time I went to Japan, I went to the main southern island, Kyushu, and saw Fukuoka and Nagasaki (wonderful!). This time I flew to Tokyo in the hopes of meeting up with some Japanese friends from college. The trip was from Wednesday to Sunday. I should tell you first that I was going alone and was a lot more stressed and nervous about my trip than the first trip. It was probably because I didn’t take a lot of time planning it, and the Tokyo metro map is ridiculous. I was really intimidated by the variety of public transportation, especially because of my poor sense of direction.

On Wednesday I got into Narita Airport in the early afternoon and took a train from there to Tokyo (about 1-1 ½ hours). I went straight to my hostel, which was in Asakusa, an area of Tokyo known for having some of the remaining “Old Tokyo” architecture. I dropped my bags there and rushed back out the door because I wanted to get to Sensoji Temple before it closed for the day. It was only about a 15 minute walk from my hostel. The Buddhist temple is one of the oldest in Tokyo. The weather was a little drizzly and it was dusk, but the temple was pretty busy with people coming to pray. There was also a kind of stall with smoke or incense that people wafted towards themselves for purification. The area around the temple has traditional souvenirs for sale, but most of the stalls were closed because it was late in the day. I went back to the hostel and had ramen for dinner (of course), then headed to Shinjuku for a night view of the city.

In my research of the best free things to do in Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building was often mentioned, so I was excited to go to the 45^th floor to see the city. It was relatively easy to find the Government Building Complex, but for some reason I had a lot of difficulty figuring out where I could enter the observation tower. It was around 8pm then, and it was an area of huge office buildings with hardly anyone around to ask. I finally found an entrance with a security guard, who gave me directions in English. After 15 more minutes of wandering I found an underground-ish area with lights on to enter. There actually was a subway exit there, so it must be possible to come up right there—I just have bad luck and/or observation skills. After all that work, the view wasn’t that amazing. I’m from Pittsburgh, which has a pretty awesome night view, so maybe my standards are too high. The daytime or sunset view may be better. I didn’t get any good pictures there—sorry.

On Thursday morning, I decided to walk down to Ryogoku, only 15-20 minutes from my hostel. I was lucky that my trip coincided with one of the sumo tournaments which took place in Ryogoku. I didn’t really care about watching grown men knock each other over, but I’d heard I could see the sumo wrestlers entering the tournament, so I went just to see what I could see from outside the arena and in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is where a lot of sumo wrestlers live and train, so it was possible I’d just see them walking around too. After walking around the arena a little and taking some pictures, an old English lady came up to me and asked if I had a ticket yet. I said I’d just come to look, but I asked her if she did (thinking maybe she needed help getting one). She said she had one she wanted to get rid of. Even though I didn’t really consider buying it, I asked, “How much are you selling it for?”. She answered, “I’m not selling it, I’m giving it.” It was so sweet. I accepted and thanked her with misty eyes. The wrestling had started at 8am, so I went in to see some action. I got a lot of English info pamphlets which pretty much told me that the morning and early afternoon were novices and then the better wrestlers came at 3. I decided to try to come back around 3 to see the bigger events.

I headed towards Tokyo Station on foot. My destination was the Imperial Gardens. Japan still has an emperor, and he and his family live in a palace. Some of the gardens around the palace are open to the public, so I went to see them. On my map I estimated it was about 2 km from the sumo to the gardens. Well, it took me around an hour and a half with my atrocious sense of direction. The problem was it was kind of diagonal from where I started. There were a lot of maps along the street zoomed into the immediate area, but each time I had to compare them to my big map of Tokyo. At least 7 Japanese people stopped to help me, most without me even asking (staring hard at the map was enough). Some had only a little English, and one of them, after 5 minutes of staring at the map, offered to give me a lift on his scooter (I declined). It ended up being really close from there anyways. I’m not often such a helpless lost tourist in Korea anymore, but I don’t think Koreans are as likely to just stop and help without even being asked. It was really kind of them, especially the ones who weren’t very comfortable speaking English.

So I bought some 7-11 lunch (the best 7-11 meal I ate on both of my trips, and that’s a lot)—brown rice with grilled veggies, tofu, and lotus root with a nice sauce—and ate in the gardens. The gardens were nice, but it was winter, so not a lot was in bloom. Also, you’re meant to stroll, but by then, I was pretty sick of walking. I wanted to get over to Harajuku before going back to the wrestling. So I took a subway to Harajuku.

Near Harajuku is the Meiji Shrine, named after a former emperor of Japan. This Shinto shrine is really popular. Although it’s located near Harajuku, a busy shopping area, the shrine area is next to a park and is surrounded by lots of trees. It was like stepping into another, quiet, peaceful, world. It was maybe my favorite part of Tokyo. I wish I’d had more time to spend there. Now I see that I didn’t take many pictures there—my mind was totally absorbed by the place and looking and thinking instead of just being there to take pictures as a tourist. The other interesting thing about the Shrine was that there were outdoor exhibits along the path about Emperor Meiji and some other information.

Of course I went out of the shrine at a different place than I went in and completely mis-estimated where I was. I then had to walk a ways back to Harajuku. It was already 3 when I got there, so I quickly went to Daiso. Daiso is a store we have in Korea, kind of like Dollar General. It’s actually Japanese, and the Daiso in Harajuku was 4 stories, so I wanted to check it out. I bought a few things, then strolled through Harajuku a bit. It’s the place where teens come and dress in crazy fashion, but because it was a weekday, there weren’t too many strangely-dressed people. There was, however, an H&M, which I successfully persuaded myself not to visit (“budget budget budget”). Harajuku seemed less “alternative” than I expected—it was an area that I would like to shop in if I lived in Tokyo.

So, having seen Harajuku, I hiked to a subway stop and went back to see the sumo. In Tokyo, I was really careful with taking the subway because it was about $3 as a base rate and went up from there. There are 2 different companies which own Tokyo subway lines too, so you have to plan carefully so that you don’t have to transfer between them. This is why I walked so far to get to the other station—so I wouldn’t have to change lines. One more tidbit about the subway in Tokyo that never failed to amaze me was people lining up in orderly double-file lines before the subway approached. This is a huge difference from Korea, where people are very eager to get on the subway before people getting off can get off (I put that as diplomatically as I could). I finally made it back to Ryogoku and watched the tail-end of the sumo.

Even though I originally wasn’t interested in sumo, I ended up having a really good time. It’s kind of like baseball in that there is a period of time when nothing really happens and you don’t have to pay attention, but then for 10 seconds something exciting happens which makes it worthwhile. What I really liked was that the wrestlers have about 3 minutes before they wrestle where they try to intimidate each other. So they bow as if they will fight, then they putz around. They do this repeatedly until the referee-person tells them something like “Enough already”. Some bouts only lasted about 5-10 seconds, but others went on for maybe a minute. Something else interesting I read was that in daily life the wrestlers have to wear a special uniform and wooden sandals—even when they go to the grocery store or wherever. If you have the chance to go to the sumo tournament, you should just buy the cheapest seats (non-reserved) and go in the early afternoon. It’s a nice break from walking around. There’s food available there too.

That night I was pretty tired, so I just hung around my hostel. The next morning I took a train from Tokyo to Hakone, which you can read about in my concisely-titled next entry, Another Short Trip to Japan, Part Two—Hakone and Yokohama.

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Photos

Sensoji
There are a lot of buildings in the complex

From Inside Main Temple Building
Not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the building b/c taking pics of Buddha is disrespectful

Busy Place
Sumo in the morning

Houseboat District
Found it as I was wandering to the Imperial Gardens