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Two women in traditional Kimono
They also carry sunshades to keep their skin pale.Feeling a little inspired here in Singapore, I will attempt to write some more about Tokyo and post the best of some of the millions of photos we took whilst there. We decided to go all out "Japanese Tourist" and try and beat them at their own game. No, not Sumo; We decided to take millions of pictures of all the quintessentially Japanese, funny, different and quirky things we encountered in our short time there.
I'll describe each picture using the captions, so for now I'll take you through the place in my own way - off the top of my head (with just a little help from my notebook). The first things that catch my eye in my little book are "Sars mask" and "lots Japanese". The second one seems pretty obvious and I'm not sure why that's there - maybe I thought I was going to Moscow, and felt it necessary to comment on the high proportion of Japanese-looking people in relation to the stark absence of anyone Russian-looking. Who knows.
But Sars masks (those doctor masks that you use when sanding down your skirting boards) are common in Tokyo - presumably to filter the air a
Traffic conditions in Tokyo
On arrival at the airport we were presented with our first piece of technical wizardry. You can see there's a traffic jam just to the southwest of the centre! bit before you breath it, and stop you getting bird flu. Funny that you don't see them in London - a filthy place in comparison to Tokyo!
Next, I see "Nissan Cedric" - this relates to a new model of executive car I saw whilst having breakfast one morning in a cafe. I thought I would make note and maybe mention to Nissan that Cedric is not exactly the most inspiring name. Maybe for the Japanese market, Cedric being some local hero. I would call it the Tiger, or somesuch other expensive-and-potent-sounding name. That advice is ¥500,000 thanks Nissan.
The morning of the 7th was the morning we headed for the opening of the Isetan department store. Not the Grand Opening, just the normal Saturday morning opening. But it's really worth mentioning, as the whole experience is very special - the ceremony before opening the doors, the way people pour in at 10am, the suited managers bowing (not to mention every single employee) as you pass and uttering a polite "good morning and welcome" (in Japanese). This only happens for about 5 minutes - so be on time! Also the food hall downstairs is pretty damn cool. I've
Typically Japanese sign
Photo taken during the extreme "Papparazzi" phase included a couple of pictures of us opening a gorgeous little cake box.
That evening we (feeling very adventurous) decided to visit a traditional Japanese "Onsen" which was in the local vicinity. Onsen is public hot spring bathing. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the onsen - I thought the people might object, or worse prosecute me, if I were to start taking pictures in there. The general principal is this; Take your shoes off at the door and put them in little storage boxes, go in and pay, take off your clothes and enter the washing area with your towel and soap (and shaving kit etc.). I should also mention that the sexes are segregated, apart from the happy old lady who takes your money - she can see the whole procedings of both sections.
Next you take a little stool and bowl, find a place at one of the shower/tap points (there are many in organised into rows) and procede to wash yourself thoroughly. Very very thoroughly. And then rinse using the bowl and shower. Very very thoroughly.
Once you are sure you have
every little sud off you climb into one of the natural hot
spring tubs with everyone else - for as long as you can stand it. You then get into the even hotter natural spring tub, for as long as you can stand that.
You then go back to the little stool things, and wash yourself again. Very very thoroughly. Then you rinse off (can you guess how thoroughly?). Repeat this process many times until you have achieved the state of "boiled octopus" - and you have completed your onsen.
"Rice, cheese and gravy". I saw this on someone's plate at a "Western Restaurant". Maybe it's common in western somewhere-or-other. Who knows.
Kamakura's Temples On Monday we took a train out to Kamakura, a small town outisde Tokyo. Kamakura is famous for its collection of Buddhist (Japan is a Buddhist country by the way) temples, shrines and the like with the most famous being the "Big buddha".
The first temple we came to was off the main road, and we entered (paying a small fee) into a most beautifully tended garden containing graves and small shrines. The temple itself seemed to be partly under renovation so we spent our time looking around the garden. It was so tranquil after
Beautiful window-display at Isetan
All pink and pretty and makes me want to take wallet out and spend.... Tokyo and tended so carefully that it was really worth mentioning; the small headstones and the supremely neat and tidy appearance of everything.
The Zen Temple The next temple on our list was a Zen Temple (I don't have the name with me, but if you go to Kamakura you won't be able to miss it). Knowing as much about Zen as the average bloke on the street (minimalism, and on seeing some good feng shui we say "that's very Zen isn't it") we entered under a huge carved wooden archway. It was beautifully carved and very imposing - but welcoming at the same time! So, after wandering around a bit and lighting some incense sticks in a big pot of incense sticks, we entered another part of the temple complex, where we had to take off our shoes. We walked around the deck outside what appeared to be a very open, breezy prayer or meditation room. On reaching the back there was an amazing garden with a small lake sitting kind of in the middle. The lake was entitled "the Lake of Mind" and was said to represent the mind - and in a typically penetrating Buddhist
"Western-style" Toilet
You can control the temperature of the seat, and you have 3 options for spraying (bidet-like)! way the lake was almost totally random - the slopes to the sides varied in gradient from steep to shallow, there was a small bridge in the middle, a couple of trees. But the most interesting thing was the shape - at one end it actually ended not at a normal lake's edge - i.e. water turns into shore, but at the walls of one of the monastery buildings. Made me think for a while.
The Not Zen Temple After another lunch in one of the ubiquitous narrow street restaurants and another session of "point at what you want" we discovered a rather different type of temple, this one belonging to a different sect of the Buddhist faith. These guys seemed far more ostentatious in their outlook. There was a long, straight, wide path leading up to the temple from the town which, before culminating in a huge set of steps, semi-culminated with a kind of fountain at which the worshippers would pick up one of a set of long-handled spoons and procede to wash their mouths with some of the fountain water (spitting into the trough below) and then their hands before washing the spoon itself by filling
Classic Tokyo
They were handing out all these Redbull type drinks for free. It tasted weird. it with water and tilting it up high so that the water washed down the handle - thus cleaning it. People also seemed to be using this place to baptise (obviously not in the Christian way) their children, and we got a good shot of one of the families stood on the steps to the temple doing their 'baptisement' thing.
The temple itself was also being refurbished and there was lots of banging, so we couldn't really see so much of it. Besides, it was not anywhere near as nice as the Zen one - it was all gaudy and bright colours like a Chinese-style temple. I didn't like it anywhere near as much.
The Great Buddha The Great Buddha of Kamakura is a bronze statue of Amitaba Buddha (the Lord of the Western Pure Land) that is located on the grounds of the Kotokuin Temple. With a height of 13.35 meters, it is the second largest Buddha statue in Japan (the largest is located in the Todaiji Temple in Nara). The statue was cast in 1252 and originally located inside a large temple hall. However, the temple buildings were washed away by a tsunami tidal wave in the
end of the 15th century, and since then the Buddha stands in the open air.
Not quite the largest seated buddha, but maybe the fattest - he weighs nearly 850 tons!
So, after seeing the Great Buddha and all the temples it was time to head back to Tokyo. That evening we felt a little less adventurous food and culture-wise so we ended up in a "pub" (I think it was called the London Pub) and we had fish and chips and I had a pint of Guinness. The Guinness was excellent but the fish and chips weren't really up to scratch!
The World's Largest Fish Market We got up very early again on the Tuesday to visit another one of Tokyo's main attractions. Tsukiji Market is best known as one of the world's largest fish markets, handling over 2,000 tons of marine products per day - and it seems like every day the Japanese and their fleets of fishing vessels try their level best to extract as much of the World's life from the oceans as possible. It felt like everything had been trawled from the ocean and put in boxes of ice just for our
pleasure. In fact, we both found it quite distrubing to see still-breathing fish dying in front of us and the apparent torture chamber that was the market - fish crammed into tanks, so tightly that some of them were floating upside down with obviously no place to move.
I've wrestled with the dubious morals of eating fish and seafood for a while, and this really put paid to my desire to eat fish probably for a long time. I won't get on my soapbox about it, but I will ask people question their decision the next time they decide to eat fish for dinner.
The whole market was abuzz with action. The first thing that hits you, fortunately not literally, is these little scooter things that are madly charging around the place. They're called "mighty cars" and the best way to describe them is that they're a bit like dodgems with a small trailer part, and the driver is standing up. He twists the whole vertical engine part like a steering wheel which powers the front wheels and steers the cart too. It's typical Tokyo madness and very much a working market as opposed to a tourist attraction. Eventually
7 chaps filling the tiny restaurant to capacity
This is a common sight in Tokyo - restaurants are ten a penny. we found the famous tuna auctions. These huge fish were lying flash-frozen around the auction floor, while the various bidders walked around them inspecting them for quality, generally it seemed by lifting a purpose-cut flap of meat from near the fish's tail with their hooks and shining torches in.
Suitably put off our Sushi for breakfast idea we headed for coffee and toast instead.
Other last-day-in-Tokyo stuff Later that day we paid a visit to the Tokyo stock exchange (a mighty collection of computers and not much else, especially people) the Ginza area (Tokyo's really flashy bit), the Sony building (where we played with the new Sony gadgets and looked upon an incredible HD (high-definition) TV set). We also went to a 60th-floor observatory taking the world's second-fastest elevator to the top (feel your ears pop!). It took 25 seconds to make 60 floors. We also visited the Toyota Amlux "art gallery" which is really a giant Toyota showroom. It has about 6 floors of all the latest models, the really cool stuff being towards the top where you can get into the cars and play with the in-built TVs, touch screens and other flashy gadgets.
About Tokyo
Well, I've spent some time writing about what we did, but there's so much more - the small stuff - that needs to be mentioned. The Tokyoites have got to be the most polite people I have ever met - they bow all the time! Also, their sense of order and efficiency is second to none I have ever come across. The streets are clean, people obey the crossing signals, roadworks are there and gone in a day (we witnessed some do just that).
Also, there are vending machines EVERYWHERE - one for every twenty Tokyoites I read. We even saw some with TV screens built in. And of course, everything talks to you in Japanese.
There's also a really nice feature about the subway system, which is the fare adjustment machine. If you're running late or don't exactly know where you have to go you just buy the cheapest ticket available and upgrade it at the other end - you put it in the fare adjustment machine at the other end and it tells you the difference you have to pay in order to leave the station. Japanese brilliance.
Well, that's all I can think of for
now - time to write something about Hong Kong (which is nowhere near as cool as Tokyo!)
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cool pics